Reyner Banham Livres

The catalogue for a 1987 traveling exhibition of work by Misrach; his third book. Photographs by Richard Misrach; essay by Reyner Banham. 106 pages; 58 full-page color plates + 9 text illustrations + 1 map; 12 x 9 inches. Biography, bibliography, exhibition history.

Reyner Banham examined the built environment of Los Angeles in a way no architectural historian before him had done, looking with fresh eyes at its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as its more traditional modes of residential and commercial building. His construct of "four ecologies" examined the ways Angelenos relate to the beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills. Banham delighted in this mobile city and identified it as an exemplar of the posturban future.

Adapting the modernist ideals of prewar architecture to the needs of postwar reconstruction in Britain, Alison and Peter Smithson were among the most influential and controversial architects of the latter half of the twentieth century. As younger members of CIAM (Congr�s Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) and as founding members of Team 10, they were at the heart of the debate on the future course of modern architecture; the uncompromising clarity of their Hunstanton Secondary Modern School (1949-1954), which stripped down the language of Mies van der Rohe to a rough simplicity, heralded the Smithsons' role as the leading exponents of the New Brutalism (a term they coined). As members of the Independent Group alongside Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Reyner Banham and others, they participated in the 1956 landmark show This Is Tomorrow, affiliating themselves with the burgeoning Pop art movement in Britain. This beautifully produced and fully illustrated volume collects the most important essays published on the couple's work, from older texts by Reyner Banham, Peter Cook, Kenneth Frampton and Philip Johnson to the most recent texts by Peter Eisenmann, Christine Boyer, Beatriz Colomina and Louisa Hutton. The first publication in Poligrafa's new Critical Anthology series, it provides an essential critical context for the reception of New Brutalism in England. Alison (1928-1993) and Peter (1923-2003) Smithson met at Durham University in England and were married in 1949. Their Hunstanton School, now a Grade II listed building, announced a new style of construction that foregrounded concrete and repetitive, angular geometries; later works declared a socialist dimension to their philosophy, particularly in the exposure of interior functions.

Banham, historyk i krytyk architektury współczesnej oraz kultury popularnej, którego teksty wpłynęły na pokolenie architektów i historyków architektury nowoczesnej, stawia czoła wyzwaniu związanym z osłabieniem architektury nowoczesnej w latach 50. XX wieku, aby ocalić ją w latach 60. W tej książce kwestionuje pozycję historiografii architektury nowoczesnej w latach 1930-1960, odnosząc się do idei zerwania z tradycją akademicką oraz liniowej ciągłości idei ruchu arts and crafts i inżynierii XIX wieku w architekturze XX wieku.

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