The Details of Modern Architecture: Volume 1 (Details of Modern Architecture)

How did the great architects of this century reconcile their vision of architecture with the realities of building? This is a crucial question that every student of architecture must confront. The Details of Modern Architecture the first comprehensive analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in the development of architecture, provides not one answer but many. The more than 500 illustrations are a major contribution in their own right. Providing a valuable collective resource, they present the details of notable architectural works drawn in similar styles and formats, allowing comparisons between works of different scales, periods, and styles. Covering the period 1890-1932, Ford focuses on various recognized masters, explaining the detailing and construction techniques that distort, camouflage, or enhance a building. He looks at the source of each architect's ideas, the translation of those ideas into practice, and the success or failure of the technical execution. Ford examines Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House and Fallingwater Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, and buildings by McKim, Mead & White, Lutyens, Mies van der Rohe, and Schindler from a point of view that acknowledges the importance of tradition, precedent, style, and ideology in architectural construction. He discusses critical details from a technical and contextual standpoint, considering how they perform how they add to or detract from the building as a whole, and how some have persisted and been adapted through time. Edward R. Ford, a practicing architect, is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. V. 1. H.H. Richardson, Ralph Adams Cram, and the Gothic revival McKim, Mead & White and classical rationalism Edwin Lutyens and the language of classicism Arts and crafts movement: the Greene brothers and their English contemporaries Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos: Viennese rationalism Le Corbusier: The classic villas Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the steel frame Residential construction in America: Rudolf Schindler, Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer Frank Lloyd Wright: The Usonian period. v. 2. Eliel Saarinen in Detroit: 1926-1940 Conversion of Erik Gunnar Asplund: 1930-1940 Richard Neutra and the architecture of surface: 1933-1952 Alvar Aalto nd Marcel Breuer: Light, industrialization and the vernacular, 1928-1963 Le Corbusier after 1928: 1928-1965 Saarinen, Eames, Fuller and the case study houses: 1940-1959 Eero Saarinen after 1945: 1945-1962 Louis Kahn, Sigurd Lewerentz and the new brutalism: 1954-1974 Venturis, Graves, Scarpa and the layers of history: 1963-1984 High tech, deconstruction, and the present day: 1972-1988. v.1, covering 1890-1932, focuses on various recognized architects, explaining the detailing and construction techniques that distort, camouflage, or enhance a building. v.2 continues the study of the relationships of the ideals of design and the realities of construction in modern architecture from the late 1920s to the present.

The Details of Modern Architecture the first comprehensive analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in the development of architecture, provides not one answer but many.

Covering the period 1890 - 1932 this book focuses on various recognised masters explaining the detailing and construction techniques used in their buildings