WORLD ARCHITECTURE - INTERNATIONAL STYLE

TASCHEN 25 - Special edition!An aesthetic founded on the sheer thrill ofpushing to the limits of technical and economic viability "Modern architecture is not a new branch of an old tree - it is analtogether new shoot rising beside the old roots." Thus Walter Gropius,one of the pioneers of modern architecture, on the radical departures ofthe 20th century. In the 1930s, the term International Style came into useto describe a new form of architecture evolved from Bauhaus and itsconviction that "form follows function". Until the 1980s, InternationalStyle set the standard in modern building, with its logical formal idiomand rational solutions to construction problems. Combining steel, glass and concrete, it established an aesthetic foundedon the sheer thrill of pushing to the limits of technical and economicviability. Hence the exhilarating skylines of metropolises worldwide - butalso the desolate anonymity of modern suburban environments. This book traces the exciting evolution of a style while examining theindividual and regional forms it took, and analyses the ideals andrealities of architectural visions of utopia.