A new appreciation for the genius of architectural photographer Julius Shulman has opened the way for hundreds of abandoned masterworks to be rediscovered. The images burned in our memories, which to us represent the spirit of fifties and sixties design, were those widely published in magazines and books; but what about those that were not? The abandoned files of Julius Shulman show us another side of Modernism that has stayed quiet for many years. The exchange of visual information is crucial to the development, evolution, and promotion of architectural movements. If a building is not widely seen, its photograph rarely or never published, it simply does not enter into architectural discourse. Many buildings photographed by Shulman suffered this fate, their images falling into oblivion. With this new book, Taschen brings them to light, paying homage to California Modernism in all its forms. It's like sneaking into a private history, into homes that have rarely been seen and hardly appreciated as of yet. Bringing together nearly 300 forgotten masterpieces, Modernism Rediscovered breathes eternal life into these outstanding contributions to the modern architectural movement.

Many people think modernist architecture never flowered in California north of the San Fernando Valley. NorCalMod dispels that notion in a copiously illustrated history showcasing extraordinary examples of its proud contribution to the Bay Area and environs. As a style, modernist architecture was hotly debated in its day (why create modern structures where such distinctive Victorian and Arts and Crafts buildings already existed?) pulling heavyweights such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Lewis Mumford, and Walter Gropius into the fray. Ultimately, that existing "Bay Region Style" would remain the area's architectural hallmark, but not before hundreds of important modernist projects, many still standing yet unjustly neglected today, had been established. The remarkable photos in this book open our eyes to a long-lost chapter in the history of California architecture and make NorCalMod a volume to be enjoyed by those interested in California history and style as well as by architecture students and professionals.

American photographer Julius Shulman's images of Californian architecture have burned themselves into the retina of the 20th century. A book on modern architecture without Shulman is inconceivable. Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright's or Pierre Koenig's remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close Friend, Richard Neutra, was first brought to light by Shulman's photography. The clarity of his work demanded that architectural photography had to be considered as an independent art form. Each Schulman image unites perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape. The precise compositions reveal not just the architectural ideas behind a building's surface, but also the visions and hopes of an entire age. A sense of humanity is always present in his work, even when the human figure is absent from the actual photographs. Today, a great many of the buildings documented by Shulman have disappeared or been crudely converted, but the thirst for his pioneering images is stronger than ever before. This is a vivid journey across six decades of great architecture and classic photography through the famously incomparable eyes of Julius Shulman.

This text is a wide-ranging consideration of the cultural and symbolic significance of ornament, its rejection by modernism and its subsequent reinvention. Trilling explains how ornament works, why it has to be explained and why it matters.

This new account of international modernism explores the complex motivations behind this revolutionary movement and assesses its triumphs and failures. The work of the main architects of the movement such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe is re-examined shedding new light on their roles as acknowledged masters. Alan Colquhoun explores the evolution of the movement fron Art Nouveau in the 1890s to the megastructures of the 1960s, revealing the often contradictory demands of form, function, social engagement, modernity and tradition.

Forgotten Modern reveals the work of the innovative architects building in California from the 1930s to the 1970s. With groundbreaking and illuminating examples that will alter the way we think of California architecture, Hess and Weintraub focus on those that exemplify early mid-entury modern, variations on minimalism, and organic architecture. Though architects, historians, and the public alike have overlooked many of these superb architects from California's past century, this book intends to bring them back to our attention. All the architects included here are important in helping to show the breadth of design, that styles like Organic were more widely represented than we have previously realized, and that the fertile soil of California design fostered a wide spectrum of remarkable ideas-even if not all developed a significant school of followers. Chapters Include: A New Introduction to Midcentury California Searching For Midcentury Modern Variations on Wood and Steel Modernism Organic Architecture History Plus Modernism

From the Reliance Building and Coney Island to the Kimbell Museum and Disney Hall, the United States has been at the forefront of modern architecture. American life has generated many of the quintessential images of modern life, both generic types and particular buildings. Gwendolyn Wright’s USA is an engaging account of this evolution from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Upending conventional arguments about the origin of American modern architecture, Wright shows that it was not a mere offshoot of European modernism brought across the Atlantic Ocean by émigrés but rather an exciting, distinctive and mutable hybrid. USA traces a history that spans from early skyscrapers and suburbs in the aftermath of the American Civil War up to the museums, schools and ‘green architecture’ of today. Wright takes account of diverse interests that affected design, ranging from politicians and developers to ambitious immigrants and middle-class citizens. Famous and lesser-known buildings across America come together--model dwellings for German workers in rural Massachusetts, New York’s Rockefeller Center, Cincinnati’s Carew Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in the Arizona desert, the University of Miami campus, the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Plant, and the Corning Museum of Glass, among others--to show an extraordinary range of innovation. Ultimately, Wright reframes the history of American architecture as one of constantly evolving and volatile sensibilities, engaged with commerce, attuned to new media, exploring multiple concepts of freedom. The chapters are organized to show how changes in work life, home life and public life affected architecture--and vice versa. This book provides essential background for contemporary debates about affordable and luxury housing, avant-garde experiments, local identities, inspiring infrastructure and sustainable design. A clear, concise and richly illustrated account of modern American architecture, this timely book will be essential for all those who wonder about the remarkable legacy of American modernity in its most potent cultural expression.

In the first book of its kind, architectural critic Michael Webb and Esto photographer Roger Straus III examine 35 extraordinary modern houses that have been restored, enhanced, or extended by new owners who see them as timeless classics. Built in the heyday of modernism, from the 1930s through the early 1960s, these houses were designed by exceptional architects for themselves or for adventurous clients. A few were preserved as time capsules, but most endured years of neglect or abuse and might easily have been torn down. Webb explores how these houses were created-- as daring experiments or as creative responses to site and climate-- and the research and effort that went into their restoration. Included here are villas that fuse craft and invention, machines for living, and residences that embrace the landscape. Here, too, are houses inspired by the purity of classical temples, and frugal dwellings that have been sensitively enlarged. After a long eclipse, these houses and the enlightened attitudes they embody are being rediscovered by creative individuals searching for distinctive, open, light-filled places to live. Modernism is a way of living, more than a style, and this book celebrates the architects and owners who respect its character and scale. Also included are nearly 200 photographs taken by Roger Straus, all of which were specially commissioned for this book.

Through more than 100 structures, most of which are open to tourism, this volume makes it possible to experience the historical and architectural vestiges of the "New Architecture." Besides the famous buildings, it presents insider tips for sites to visit throughout Germany.

In this elegantly written and beautifully illustrated book, Nico Israel reveals how spirals are at the heart of the most significant literature and visual art of the twentieth century. Juxtaposing the work of writers and artists—including W. B. Yeats and Vladimir Tatlin, James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp, and Samuel Beckett and Robert Smithson—he argues that spirals provide a crucial frame for understanding the mutual involvement of modernity, history, and geopolitics, complicating the spatio-temporal logic of literary and artistic genres and of scholarly disciplines. The book takes the spiral not only as its topic but as its method. Drawing on the writings of Walter Benjamin and Alain Badiou, Israel theorizes a way of reading spirals, responding to their dual-directionality as well as their affective power. The sensations associated with spirals––flying, falling, drowning, being smothered—reflect the anxieties of limits tested or breached, and Israel charts these limits as they widen from the local to the global and recoil back. Chapters mix literary and art history to explore 'pataphysics, Futurism, Vorticism, Dada and Surrealism, "Concentrisme," minimalism, and entropic earth art; a coda considers the work of novelist W. G. Sebald and contemporary artist William Kentridge. In Spirals, Israel offers a refreshingly original approach to the history of modernism and its aftermaths, one that gives modernist studies, comparative literature, and art criticism an important new spin.