"Symbolic essence" and other writings on modern architecture and American culture
By: William H. Jordy ; edited by Mardges Bacon for the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
Contributors: Bacon, Mardges.; Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New Haven
Language: eng
Number of pages: 315
Subjects: Architecture -- United States -- 20th century; Art, American -- 20th century; United States -- Civilization -- 20th century
Description: "Historian and architectural critic William H. Jordy (1917-1997) significantly shaped the way we understand the character and meaning of modern architecture and American culture. This collection of his thought-provoking essays encompasses Jordy's entire career and includes his signature essay, "The Symbolic Essence of Modern Architecture of the Twenties and Its Continuing Influence." The collection also contains critical writings on works by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, and Robert Venturi, as well as less well-known pieces and one previously unpublished text."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
"A Buell Center/Columbia Book of Architecture."
Table of contents: title: Part I. American history and visual culture. Two temperaments in history: scientific and literary (1951); title: American architecture between World's Fairs: Richardson, Sullivan, and McKim (1983); title: Four approaches to regionalism in the visual arts of the 1930s (1977); title: The Tennessee Valley Authority: lessons for the present and future (1993); title: Fiasco at Willow Run (1943); title: Part II. The arc of European modernism. The symbolic essence of modern European architecture of the twenties and its continuing influence (1963); title: The international style in the 1930s (1965); title: <"I am alone": Le Corbusier, bathrooms, and airplanes (1983); title: William Lescaze reconsidered (1984); title: The aftermath of the Bauhaus in America: Gropius, Mies, and Breuer (1968); title: Part III. The historian as critic: formal perspectives on American architecture after 1945. Seagram assessed (1958); title: Medical research building for the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1961); title: Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas; Library, Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire (1974); title: Robert Venturi and the decorated shed (1985); title: Bank of China tower (1991).