Reinterpreting the architectural principles of the Renaissance period. This book presents a fresh viewpoint on the use of symmetry and proportion in Alberti and Palladio with the help of new illustrations and examples. Covering the evolution of the Renaissance tradition into the twentieth century, this book offers a new evaluation which veers from Le Corbusier and the French school and moves toward the continuation and transformation in the Viennese and Chicago practices exemplified by Frank Lloyd Wright and the American school. Lionel March (Los Angeles, CA) is a practicing architect and an avid follower of the Modernist tradition in architecture. He also teaches at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA.

Sir Kenneth Clark wrote in the Architectural Review, that the first result of this book was "to dispose, once and for all, of the hedonist, or purely aesthetic, theory of Renaissance architecture, ' and this defines Wittkower's intention in a nutshell.

The first book to reevaluate the evocative and polarizing work of one of midcentury America’s most significant architects Born to Japanese immigrant parents in Seattle, Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986) became one of the towering figures of midcentury architecture, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine in 1963. His self-proclaimed humanist designs merged the modern materials and functional considerations of postwar American architecture with traditional elements such as arches and colonnades. Yamasaki’s celebrated and iconic projects of the 1950s and ’60s, including the Lambert–St. Louis Airport and the U.S. Science Pavilion in Seattle, garnered popular acclaim. Despite this initial success, Yamasaki’s reputation began to decline in the 1970s with the mixed critical reception of the World Trade Center in New York, one of the most publicized projects in the world at the time, and the spectacular failure of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe Apartments, which came to symbolize the flaws of midcentury urban renewal policy. And as architecture moved in a more critical direction influenced by postmodern theory, Yamasaki seemed increasingly old-fashioned. In the first book to examine Yamasaki’s life and career, Dale Allen Gyure draws on a wealth of previously unpublished archival material, and nearly 200 images, to contextualize his work against the framework of midcentury modernism and explore his initial successes, his personal struggles—including with racism—and the tension his work ultimately found in the divide between popular and critical taste.

Published to accompany exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 19/2 19/5 1998.

This is the first comprehensive study of the reception of classical architecture in different regions of the world. Exploring the impact of colonialism, trade, slavery, religious missions, political ideology and intellectual/artistic exchange, the authors demonstrate how classical principles and ideas were disseminated and received across the globe. By addressing a number of contentious or unresolved issues highlighted in some historical surveys of architecture, the chapters presented in this volume question long-held assumptions about the notion of a universally accepted ‘classical tradition’ and its broadly Euro-centric perspective. Featuring thirty-two chapters written by international scholars from China, Europe, Turkey, North America, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand, the book is divided into four sections: 1) Transmission and re-conceptualisation of classical architecture; 2) Classical influence through colonialism, political ideology and religious conversion; 3) Historiographical surveys of geographical regions; and 4) Visual and textual discourses. This fourfold arrangement of chapters provides a coherent structure to accommodate different perspectives of classical reception across the world, and their geographical, ethnographic, ideological, symbolic, social and cultural contexts. Essays cover a wide geography and include studies in Italy, France, England, Scotland, the Nordic countries, Greece, Austria, Portugal, Romania, Germany, Poland, India, Singapore, China, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand and Australia. Other essays in the volume focus on thematic issues or topics pertaining to classical architecture, such as ornament, spolia, humanism, nature, moderation, decorum, heresy and taste. An essential reference guide, The Routledge Handbook on the Reception of Classical Architecture makes a major contribution to the study of architectural history in a new global context.

"The Architecture of Humanism" by Geoffrey Scott, an English architect, is an important and inspiring book. Written by a scholar of profound and comprehensive historical knowledge, thoroughly trained in philosophic thought, the work is not an involved and tedious presentation of an esthetic theory, but rather a most clear and fascinating study of architectural taste during the past half-millennium.That the book is solely an attempt to justify Baroque architecture, as some of Mr. Scott's critics have assumed, is a grave misconception of the author's purpose. That he presents the later phases of the Renaissance with freshness, if not from an entirely new point of view, is true; but he goes much further in attempting to lay the foundations for a more logical criticism and appreciation of all architecture; herein lies the chief merit of the work.Beginning with a quotation from Sir Henry Wotton's adaptation of Vitruvius, that "Well-building hath three conditions: Commodity, Firmness, and Delight," he deduces the fact that the criticism of architecture has wavered between these three values, not always distinguishing very clearly between them. It is with the third value, "Delight," that the author attempts chiefly to deal."The science, and the history," he says, "are studies of which the method is in no dispute. But for the art of architecture, in the strict sense, no agreement exists." And further, "Hardly ever, save in matters of mere technique, has architecture been studied sincerely for itself. Thus the simplest estimates of architecture are formed through a distorting atmosphere of unclear thought. Axioms holding true in provinces other than that of art, and arising historically in these, have successively been extended by a series of false analogies into the province of architecture, and these axioms, unanalyzed and mutually inconsistent, confuse our actual experience at the source. To trace the full measure of that confusion, and if possible to correct it, is therefore the first object of this book."