Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #353417 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 189 pages

Synopsis
This revised edition of an essential work by Colin St. John Wilson, architect of the British Library and one of the most eminent voices in architectural theory and practice of the last 50 years, is here made available to a new readership. As important now as it was when first published, Professor Wilson sets out to examine the underlying themes of Modern European architecture, assessing their impact, influence, and continuing development. Rather than positioning Modernism as an historical moment, now left in the past, St. John Wilson argues for a continuing tradition, an 'uncompleted project', sustained against the rigidifying orthodoxy, the white walls, functionalism and blank boxes of C.I.A.M., by a 'resistance movement' carried by the largely independent work of Alvar Aalto, Hans Scharoun, Frank Lloyd Wright and Sigurd Lewerentz. This 'movement', he argues, worked within context, negotiation and use, and as such, provides a valuable model for an approach to which contemporary architects should aspire.

The book, then, is not merely an historical document but a rallying cry - not only to those practising in the field, but to a wider audience who have been alienated by the strictures of orthodox Modernism. Drawing upon philosophy, history, art and architectural theory, the work of these Modern masters is explored both in theory and by means of comparative analyses of specific buildings in a text that takes in an extraordinary range of references with erudition, insight and originality. Aesthetic theory, in the work of Adrian Stokes among others, and approaches to psychoanalysis in the work of Freud and Klein, are cited alongside a broad range of references, in a work that defines Wilson's own architectural criticism to date. This new edition is a precursor to a major volume on Colin St. John Wilson's work, which Black Dog Publishing is releasing in March 2007.

Customer Reviews

Colin St. John Wilson, architect of the British Library, pre
The Other Tradition of Modern Architecture  Colin St. John Wilson  Academy Editions, 1995, $38 paper, 128 pp., 150 illustrations Reviewed by Lester Paul Korzilius  Approximately 260 words  Published in Oculus, March 1996 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Colin St. John Wilson, architect of the British Library, presents a theory of architecture directly descended from Hugo Haring, and the work of Sharoun and Aalto. The initial CIAM meeting in 1928 at La Sarraz provides the catalyst for Wilson's thesis, where there was a split between the organic theories of Haring (CIAM's secretary), and the intellectual/abstract theories of Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Wilson passionately argues that buildings be designed from the inside out, resulting in specific solutions factoring in all elements. Architecture is a practical art whose virtue lies in the fulfillment of purpose, not an intellectual abstraction that produces "art for art's sake." He reserves particular vehemence for the International Style (and later Post Modernism) for their preconceived styles that have no relation to the content or use of the building. The arguments are well illustrated with projects primarily of Scharoun and Aalto, and buildings by Haring, Duiker, Corbusier, Ernst May, Wright, Mackintosh, Gropius, and an exceptional house by Eileen Gray. This book is valuable for expounding a viable alternative tradition within Modern Architecture. It would be stronger had Wilson been more impartial and less of a crusader. For example, some architects working on organic principles, e.g., Scharoun, have produced brilliant buildings that were ill-suited to their external environ-ment. Corbusier is often used as the antithesis, but without sufficient analysis about what gives this work its particular strength. However, Wilson, as crusader, deserves credit for re-igniting the passion of principle that underlay the Modern Movement, that is unfortunately lacking in architectural discourse today.