Product Description

Well illustrated, Mediating Modernism demonstrates how architectural books and journals have created the architectural culture of the twentieth century and that nowhere is this truer than in Britain.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #763161 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Review

'This is an interesting and useful book  ... Higgott's book is enjoyable to read.' – Architectural Review

'[makes] a significant ... contribution to the study of British architectural culture.' - The Magazine of the Twentieth Century Society

From the Back Cover

Mediating Modernism considers the history of modern architecture in Britain; however it is not primarily about the building of architecture itself but about influential architectural ideas and debates. This book brings to light the role of the publications, language and images which, in the act of ‘describing’, ‘interpreting’ or ‘illustrating’ it, in fact create the architecture by articulating and framing it.

Focusing on the crucial role played by the architectural media in creating architectural discourse, Andrew Higgott analyses the key books and architectural journals that have shaped thinking about architecture from the 1920s to today. This review seeks to examine and clarify why British architecture is now a world leader; as well as looking at those ideas that are seen to have negative results.

Seven chapters reflect a succession of discourses, including Brutalism, Archigram and AA School work, over the past eighty years. First, the transformation of architecture to a new style relevant to modern life, then the campaign to reconstruct Britain’s cities; later the rejection of the universal approach of modernism in favour of the local and specific in the 1950s. The sixties’ emphasis on technology proposed the making of architecture that enables rather than exists. More recently, architecture has been re-imagined as closer to art, finally reaching the analysis that architecture is primarily a cultural practice. Over this period, British architecture has adopted more forms, and taken more directions than could have been imagined.

Thus Mediating Modernism documents the journey from Blomfield’s 1920s conservatism to radical current projects by such practices as Plasma Studio. The chapters identify the process of change, where ideas in architecture shift and modify; at the same time arguing that, in Britain, the history of modern architecture can best be understood through the history of its published media.

About the Author

Andrew Higgott is Principal Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Visual Arts, University of East London. An architectural historian, he has previously contributed to a number of books including Travels in Modern Architecture (Architectural Association 1990), Architecture and the Sites of History (Butterworth, 1995), The Modern City Revisited (Routledge, 2000) and Peter Salter: 4+1 (Black Dog, 2000).

Customer Reviews

An excellent read
I am a little surprised at some of the comments and allotted rankings given by reviewers to this fine book. It is an excellent and well-written text that certainly does manage to find new angles on very familiar topics. I would happily recommend it to anyone interested in the history of modern architecture in this country.

New interpretations of an architectural culture
For someone who knows something about British architectural culture in the twentieth century, this book presents fresh relationships, trends and understandings of, for me, familiar but fascinating material. The strongest example of this, and my favourite chapter, is `The shift to the specific', wherein Higgott miraculously finds something new to say about brutalism and the fascination with ordinary, vernacular and industrial forms in the mid 20th C.

For the student, the text provides a vivid survey of British architectural culture, and perhaps its most useful lesson in this context, generally speaking, is that there is such a thing as `architectural culture' in the first place, not just a parade of flashy buildings. In bringing in discourse, periodicals, and schools of architecture, Higgott broadens the debate in, for me, a highly useful direction.

Abercrombie Plan for London
I liked this refreshing look back at modern British architecture from the viewpoint of contemporary architectural media. In particular Higgott's review and analysis of the Abercrombie Plan for the rebuilding of London after the Second World War is very enlightening. One wonders what London would be like today if those plans had been carried out in full. Would the attempt to create new communities have worked?