In 1935, the Russian-born Jewish architect Berthold Lubetkin and his firm Tecton designed Highpoint, a block of flats in London, which Le Corbusier called ‘revolutionary’. Three years later, Lubetkin completed a companion design. Yet Highpoint II felt very different, and the sense that the ideals of modernism had been abandoned seemed hard to dispute. Had modern architecture failed to take root in England? This book challenges the belief that English architecture was on hiatus during the 1930s. Using Highpoint II as a springboard, Deborah Lewittes takes us on a journey through the defining moments of modern English architecture – the ‘high points’ of the period surrounding Highpoint II. Drawing on Lubetkin’s work and his writings, the book argues that he advanced influential, lasting theories which were rooted in his design for Highpoint II. Lubetkin’s work is explored within the context of wider Jewish emigration to London during the interwar years as well as the anti-Semitism that pervaded Britain during the 1930s. As Lewittes demonstrates, this decade was anything but quiet. Providing a new perspective on twentieth-century English architecture, this book is of interest to students and scholars in architectural history, urban studies, Jewish studies, and related fields.

Drawing on the work and writings of Berthold Lubetkin, Deborah Lewittes explores the development of modernist architecture in England. The book also situates his work within the context of wider Jewish emigration to London during the interwar years.

This study reassesses modern architecture and town planning in mid-twentieth-century England, highlighting ideas and debates that were in circulation as modernist ideals gradually took root. The book reveals an architectural culture that was serious, active, and visionary, with impact that extended into the postwar years. Through close studies of specific works and writings, the author acknowledges the importance of the international context of modern architecture as it intersected with the variety of narratives that defined English modernism, such as national identity, the New Empiricism, and the picturesque, taking into account the large community of émigré architects who settled in England with the approach of World War II, as well as a more general dissemination of international style forms and theories from continental Europe. The book places familiar figures such as Berthold Lubetkin and Ernö Goldfinger, as well as projects such as Tecton’s Penguin Pool and the Festival of Britain’s “Live Architecture” Exhibition, in new light, presenting a rich picture of the modern architectural climate in England. The study draws attention to the debates, proposals, and processes that fed into the development of modernist, urban-minded, and forward-looking architectural ideals.

This volume addresses and analyses the important contribution of émigrés to Britain during the 1930s and postwar, across the applied arts, embracing mainstream practices such as photography, advertising architecture, graphics, printing, textiles and illustration, alongside less well known fields of animation, typography and puppetry.

An extensively revised and updated edition of a bestselling classic on modern architecture and its origins by Kenneth Frampton. Kenneth Frampton’s highly acclaimed survey of modern architecture and its origins has been a classic since it first appeared in 1980. Starting with the cultural developments since 1750 that drove the modern movement, moving through the creation of modern architecture, and exploring the effects of globalization and the phenomenon of international celebrity architects, this book is the definitive history of modern architecture. For this extensively revised and updated fifth edition of Modern Architecture, Frampton added new chapters exploring the ongoing modernist tradition in architecture while also examining the varied responses to the urgent need to build more sustainably and create structures that will withstand changing climates. This new edition features completely redesigned interiors and an updated and expanded bibliography, making this volume more indispensable than ever.

" To strengthen the contemporary focus of this volume, we have added about forty architects and have deleted some whose activity ceased before World War II. In making these decisions, we have been assisted by an Advisory Board. As in the first volume, we have continued to define the word "architect" very broadly, so as to include planners, theorists, structural engineers, and landscape architects whose work seems to be central to the enterprise of creating habitable spaces in our day." --Editor's note.

Compact history from the Feudal period to the early 1960's.