International Style

Rating:
Summary: CLEAR TEXT & FASCINATING IMAGES
Review: A vivid portrayal of a certain consciousness manifesting itself into films (Lang's Metropolis), paintings, and above all, stunning buildings throughout the world. Mr. Khan delivers this story in clear text and fascinating images.
Having visited many modernist buildings while living and working in many cities abroad, I feel fortunate to have this book activate my memories into a deeper understanding.
The hard cover stays in my collection while the paperback makes many a smart gift.

Rating:
Summary: Modern Architecture's Official History
Review: Almost 70 years after Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson invented the so-called "International Style" to describe the varied avant-garde architecture of Europe and the United States, authors like Hasan-Uddin Khan still regard the term as truth instead of the fiction that it is. This book claims that the architects included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1932 exhibition were working with a "global" approach and "international" outlook, disregarding historical evidence that shows a variety of different social, functional, and formal interests were being pursued by different architects in different locales. The author's approach is reductive and essentializing; he treats architectural history as a series of "isms," and deliberately excludes architects who do not fall under conventional definitions of "modern" architects.

Though he begins the narrative by claiming the international style as "marked by an optimistic belief that the new technologies of industrialization . . . would produce a qualitatively better world," and he describes Hitchcock and Johnson's definition as being based entirely on formal descriptions of the buildings, the author fails to question this transition from the progressive social and functional concerns of the 1920s to a reactionary definition that erased all social meaning and goals of the architects in question. The author also fails to question the arbitrariness of Hitchcock and Johnson's selections.

The photographs are excellent; it makes a nice coffee-table book.

Rating:
Summary: Modern Architecture's Official History
Review: Almost 70 years after Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson invented the so-called "International Style" to describe the varied avant-garde architecture of Europe and the United States, authors like Hasan-Uddin Khan still regard the term as truth instead of the fiction that it is. This book claims that the architects included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1932 exhibition were working with a "global" approach and "international" outlook, disregarding historical evidence that shows a variety of different social, functional, and formal interests were being pursued by different architects in different locales. The author's approach is reductive and essentializing; he treats architectural history as a series of "isms," and deliberately excludes architects who do not fall under conventional definitions of "modern" architects.

Though he begins the narrative by claiming the international style as "marked by an optimistic belief that the new technologies of industrialization . . . would produce a qualitatively better world," and he describes Hitchcock and Johnson's definition as being based entirely on formal descriptions of the buildings, the author fails to question this transition from the progressive social and functional concerns of the 1920s to a reactionary definition that erased all social meaning and goals of the architects in question. The author also fails to question the arbitrariness of Hitchcock and Johnson's selections.

The photographs are excellent; it makes a nice coffee-table book.

Rating:
Summary: Discovering the International Style
Review: ARCHITECTURE IS A VISUAL MEDIUM! This book lets you see it for yourself!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, finding the text helpful and the photographs really clear and explanatory. The book is aimed at an interested general reader or to the student of architecture, and discusses the subject with enough reference to antecedents to give a grounding, but also lets the subject "speak". The author gently guides the reader by well-chosen example, rather than by telling him or her what to think.

Although many of the early buildings presented are well-known, they are also very well-presented, and the (mostly color) photographs are really stunning. Going further, the attention that Hasan-Uddin Khan pays to building examples from the Third World should be of keen interest to students of those areas -- it could be the subject of a further book in itself.

The comprehensible layout of the chapters and topics aids the reader in following the development of this style of architecture, and the photo captions often give new information, not just a repetition of the text. Last but not least, the brilliant Bauhaus palette of colors used in the endpapers, chapter divisions and dust jacket serve to enhance the reader's pleasure. This is not an expensive book -- very good value -- and would be a useful and enjoyable addition to anyone's library.