The Details of Modern Architecture, Volume 1

by Edward R Ford

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262562010
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	11/21/2003
Series:	The MIT Press , #1
Pages:	451
Product dimensions:	11.00(w) x 11.06(h) x 0.78(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Edward R. Ford is a practicing architect in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
1	Introduction	1
2	H. H. Richardson, Ralph Adams Cram, and the Gothic Revival	15
3	McKim, Mead & White and Classical Rationalism	53
4	Edwin Lutyens and the Language of Classicism	97
5	The Arts and Crafts Movement: The Greene Brothers and Their English Contemporaries	123
6	Frank Lloyd Wright in Oak Park	161
7	Otto Wagner and Adolf Loos: Viennese Rationalism	203
8	Le Corbusier: The Classic Villas	233
9	Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Steel Frame	261
10	Residential Construction in America: Rudolf Schindler, Walter Gropius, and Marcel Breuer	289
11	Frank Lloyd Wright: The Usonian Period	321
12	Conclusion	351
	Notes	357
	Bibliography	361
	Index	364

What People are Saying About This

Robert Maxwell

Mr. Ford is to be congratulated for having pursued God into the details. These details fascinate, not because they're of practical use—many of them are—but because they embody fantasy as surely as the brushwork of a master painter.

Klaus Herdeg

This is a highly unorthodox book on detailing in architecture….This book belongs in the hands of every student of architecture—literally and figuratively.

Kenneth Frampton

Until now no account of the evolution of modern architecture has been willing to scrutinize the precise manner in which the canonical works have been built. Lucidly written and drawn, this critical study examines the 'gap' that invariably arises between the means of construction and the ends of form. Despite the underlying late modern polemic this is an indispensable work for all those involved with the tectonics of the discipline.

Endorsement

This is a highly unorthodox book on detailing in architecture….This book belongs in the hands of every student of architecture—literally and figuratively.

—Klaus Herdeg, Professor of Architecture, Columbia University

From the Publisher

Mr. Ford is to be congratulated for having pursued God into the details. These details fascinate, not because they're of practical use—many of them are—but because they embody fantasy as surely as the brushwork of a master painter.

— Robert Maxwell , Professor of Architecture, Princeton University

Until now no account of the evolution of modern architecture has been willing to scrutinize the precise manner in which the canonical works have been built. Lucidly written and drawn, this critical study examines the 'gap' that invariably arises between the means of construction and the ends of form. Despite the underlying late modern polemic this is an indispensable work for all those involved with the tectonics of the discipline.

— Kenneth Frampton , Professor of Architecture, Columbia University

This is a highly unorthodox book on detailing in architecture…. This book belongs in the hands of every student of architecture—literally and figuratively.

— Klaus Herdeg , Professor of Architecture, Columbia University

Editorial Reviews

An exceptional book.—Witold Rybczynski, New York Review of Books—

From the Publisher

An exceptional book.

—Witold Rybczynski, New York Review of Books

Reviews

An exceptional book.

New York Review of Books - Witold Rybczynski