Modernism and the Middle East

Modernism and the Middle East

Author: Sandy Isenstadt

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2011-03-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0295800305

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This provocative collection of essays is the first book-length treatment of the development of modern architecture in the Middle East. Ranging from Jerusalem at the turn of the twentieth century to Libya under Italian colonial rule, postwar Turkey, and on to present-day Iraq, the essays cohere around the historical encounter between the politics of nation-building and architectural modernism's new materials, methods, and motives. Architecture, as physical infrastructure and as symbolic expression, provides an exceptional window onto the powerful forces that shaped the modern Middle East and that continue to dominate it today. Experts in this volume demonstrate the political dimensions of both creating the built environment and, subsequently, inhabiting it. In revealing the tensions between achieving both international relevance and regional meaning, Modernism in the Middle East affords a dynamic view of the ongoing confrontations of deep traditions with rapid modernization. Political and cultural historians, as well as architects and urban planners, will find fresh material here on a range of diverse practices.


Pride in Modesty

Pride in Modesty

Author: Michelangelo Sabatino

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2011-05-21

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1442667370

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Following Italy's unification in 1861, architects, artists, politicians, and literati engaged in volatile debates over the pursuit of national and regional identity. Growing industrialization and urbanization across the country contrasted with the rediscovery of traditionally built forms and objects created by the agrarian peasantry. Pride in Modesty argues that these ordinary, often anonymous, everyday things inspired and transformed Italian art and architecture from the 1920s through the 1970s. Through in-depth examinations of texts, drawings, and buildings, Michelangelo Sabatino finds that the folk traditions of the pre-industrial countryside have provided formal, practical, and poetic inspiration directly affecting both design and construction practices over a period of sixty years and a number of different political regimes. This surprising continuity allows Sabatino to reject the division of Italian history into sharply delimited periods such as Fascist Interwar and Democratic Postwar and to instead emphasize the long, continuous process that transformed pastoral and urban ideals into a new, modernist Italy.


Modern Architecture

Modern Architecture

Author: Otto Wagner

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 1988

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0226869393

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In 1896, Otto Wagner's "Modern Architecture" shocked the European architectural community with its impassioned plea for an end to eclecticism and for a "modern" style suited to contemporary needs and ideals, utilizing the nascent constructional technologies and materials. Through the combined forces of his polemical, pedagogical, and professional efforts, this determined, newly appointed professor at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts emerged in the late 1890s - along with such contemporaries as Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Glasgow and Louis Sullivan in Chicago - as one of the leaders of the revolution soon to be identified as the "Modern Movement." Wagner's historic manifesto is now presented in a new English translation - the first in almost ninety years - based on the expanded 1902 text and noting emendations made to the 1896, 1898, and 1914 editions. In his introduction, Dr. Harry Mallgrave examines Wagner's tract against the backdrop of nineteenth-century theory, critically exploring the affinities of Wagner's revolutionary élan with the German eclectic debate of the 1840s, the materialistic tendencies of the 1870s and 1880s, and the emerging cultural ideology of modernity. Modern Architecture is one of those rare works in the literature of architecture that not only proclaimed the dawning of a new era, but also perspicaciously and cogently shaped the issues and the course of its development; it defined less the personal aspirations of one individual and more the collective hopes and dreams of a generation facing the sanguine promise of a new century


Italian Modernisms

Italian Modernisms

Author: Sergio Poretti

Publisher: Gangemi Editore spa

Published: 2015-02-17T00:00:00+01:00

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 8849297645

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The studies in this book focus on Italian twentieth-century architecture, in particular design and construction techniques. The descriptions of the worksites and building processes provide a much better and clearer picture of the different modernist styles that existed in Italy; they also reveal the ‘thin red line' that characterised an univocal construction method: mixed masonry enriched (and not replaced) by reinforced concrete – a technique well suited to small artisanal worksites. This was a mild version of modern construction, in line with the role construction played in slowing down an industrialisation process which in Italy was, in itself, slow. Each chapter illustrates a specific aspect of the history of construction and highlights several new issues involving architecture in general: the important tectonic similarities which one way or another link the Littorio style and the several different kinds of rationalisms in the thirties; the continuity between the autarchic experimentation and the techniques used in reconstruction; the connection between the large-scale works designed by engineers and the architectures of the fifties and sixties, which now appear to be one of the mainstays of the unique Italian Style.


Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean

Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean

Author: Jean-Francois Lejeune

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-12-04

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1135250278

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Considering the influence of the forms and tectonics of the Mediterranean vernacular on modern architectural practice and discourse from the 1920s to the 1960s.


Moderns Abroad

Moderns Abroad

Author: Mia Fuller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-01-24

Total Pages: 529

ISBN-13: 1134648308

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This volume studies the architecture and urbanism of modern-era Italian colonialism (1869-1943) as it sought to build colonies in North and East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Mia Fuller follows, not only the design of the physical architecture, but also the development of colonial design theory, based on the assumptions made about the colonized, and also the application of modernist theory to both Italian architecture and that of its colonies. Moderns Abroad is the first book to present an overview of Italian colonial architecture and city planning. In chronicling Italian architects' attempts to define a distinctly Italian colonial architecture that would set Italy apart from Britain and France, it provides a uniquely comparative study of Italian colonialism and architecture that will be of interest to specialists in modern architecture, colonial studies, and Italian studies alike.


Why Architecture Matters

Why Architecture Matters

Author: Paul Goldberger

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2023-01-31

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0300267398

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A classic work on the joy of experiencing architecture, with a new afterword reflecting on architecture’s place in the contemporary moment “Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, “when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.” In Why Architecture Matters, he shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao. He eloquently describes the Church of Sant’Ivo in Rome as a work that “embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.” In his afterword to this new edition, Goldberger addresses the current climate in architectural history and takes a more nuanced look at projects such as Thomas Jefferson’s academical village at the University of Virginia and figures including Philip Johnson, whose controversial status has been the topic of much recent discourse. He argues that the emotional impact of great architecture remains vital, even as he welcomes the shift in the field to an increased emphasis on social justice and sustainability.


Italian Imprints on Twentieth-Century Architecture

Italian Imprints on Twentieth-Century Architecture

Author: Denise Costanzo

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-05-19

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1350257745

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Italian architecture has long exerted a special influence on the evolution of architectural ideas elsewhere - from the Beaux-Arts academy's veneration of Rome, to modernist and postmodern interest in Renaissance proportion, Baroque space, and Mannerist ambiguity. This book critically examines this enduring phenomenon, exploring the privileged position of Italian architects, architecture, and cities in the architectural culture of the past century. Questioning the deep-rooted myth of Italy within architectural history, the book presents case studies of Italy's powerful yet problematic position in 20th-century architectural ideologies, at a time when established Eurocentric narratives are rightly being challenged. It reconciles the privileged position of Italian architecture and design with the imperative to write history across a more global, diverse, heterogenous cultural geography. Twenty chapters from distinguished international scholars cover subjects and architects ranging from Alberti to Gio Ponti, Aldo Rossi, Manfredo Tafuri, Vittorio Gregotti; cities from Rome and Venice to Milan; and an array of international architects, movements, and architectural ideas influenced by Italy. The chapters each question where, how, and why the disciplinary edifice of 20th-century architecture-its canon of built, visual, textual, and conceptual works-relied on Italian foundations, examining where and how those foundations have become insecure. Indispensable for students and scholars of both Italian and global architectural history, Italian Imprints on Twentieth-Century Architecture provides an opportunity to consider the architectural and urban landscape of Italy from substantially new points of view.


The Routledge Companion to Italian Fascist Architecture

The Routledge Companion to Italian Fascist Architecture

Author: Kay Bea Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-30

Total Pages: 719

ISBN-13: 1000061442

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Today, nearly a century after the National Fascist Party came to power in Italy, questions about the built legacy of the regime provoke polemics among architects and scholars. Mussolini’s government constructed thousands of new buildings across the Italian Peninsula and islands and in colonial territories. From hospitals, post offices and stadia to housing, summer camps, Fascist Party Headquarters, ceremonial spaces, roads, railways and bridges, the physical traces of the regime have a presence in nearly every Italian town. The Routledge Companion to Italian Fascist Architecture investigates what has become of the architectural and urban projects of Italian fascism, how sites have been transformed or adapted and what constitutes the meaning of these buildings and cities today. The essays include a rich array of new arguments by both senior and early career scholars from Italy and beyond. They examine the reception of fascist architecture through studies of destruction and adaptation, debates over reuse, artistic interventions and even routine daily practices, which may slowly alter collective understandings of such places. Paolo Portoghesi sheds light on the subject from his internal perspective, while Harald Bodenschatz situates Italy among period totalitarian authorities and their symbols across Europe. Section editors frame, synthesize and moderate essays that explore fascism’s afterlife; how the physical legacy of the regime has been altered and preserved and what it means now. This critical history of interpretations of fascist-era architecture and urban projects broadens our understanding of the relationships among politics, identity, memory and place. This companion will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of fields, including Italian history, architectural history, cultural studies, visual sociology, political science and art history.