Rebuilding Babel : modern architecture and internationalism / Mark Crinson.

Author
Crinson, Mark [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • London ; New York : I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2017.
  • ©2017
Description
xiii, 306 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Availability

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Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Architecture Library - Stacks NA680 .C75 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    Much of modernist architecture was inspired by the emergence of internationalism: the ethics and politics of world peace, justice and unity through global collaboration. Mark Crinson here shows how the ideals represented by the Tower of Babel - built, so the story goes, by people united by one language - were effectively adapted by internationalist architecture, its styles and practices, in the modern period. Focusing particularly on the points of convergence between modernist and internationalist trends in the 1920s, and again in the immediate post-war years, he underlines how such architecture utilised the themes of a cooperative community of builders and a common language of forms.The 'International Style' was one manifestation of this new way of thinking, but Crinson shows how the aims of modernist architecture frequently engaged with the substance of an internationalist mindset in addition to sharing surface similarities. Bringing together the visionaries of internationalist projects - including Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, Berthold Lubetkin, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe - Crinson interweaves ideas of evolution, ecology, utopia, regionalism, socialism, free trade, and anti-colonialism to reveal the possibilities heralded by modernist architecture.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Contents
    • The Architectonic of Community
    • World Knowing
    • Otlet, Geddes, Neurath
    • Well-Ventilated Utopias
    • Le Corbusier, CIAM and European Modernism in the 1920s
    • Echo Chamber
    • The International Style and its Deviations
    • Outwards
    • Lewis Mumford, Regionalism and Internationalism
    • Another World
    • Post-War CIAM, India and the Marg Circle
    • Epilogue: After the tower.
    ISBN
    • 9781784537128 ((hardback))
    • 1784537128 ((hardback))
    OCLC
    993073299
    Statement on language in description
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