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The Other Modern Movement: Architecture, 1920-1970 by Kenneth Frampton New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, $50 344 pages, 580 duotone illustrations
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Kenneth Frampton, the great historian of modernist architecture, has authored books on Tadao Ando, Charles Correa, Steven Holl, and Harry Seidler. He considers the International Style, as identified by HenryRussell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson in their highly influential 1932 MoMA exhibition, to be only part of the modern movement’s story and, with Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as its chief heroes, one “more concerned with appearance than with substance.” This new book is its antidote, with 19 additional talents who have made their own respectable contributions. Some of these are best known by single works, such as Eileen Gray’s 1929 House E-1027 in Roquebrune-CapMartin, France, and Pierre Chareau’s 1932 Maison de Verre in Paris. Many others are represented by projects that are virtually unknown (at least by this reviewer): Antonin Raymond’s 1932 Golf Club in Asaka, Japan; Evan Owen Williams’s 1939 Daily Express building in Manchester, U.K.; and Alejandro de la Sota’s 1961 Gobierno Civil in Tarragona, Spain. Frampton, a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, leads us to conclude that modernism had a broader foundation, a more varied character, and— perhaps—a more durable future than previously acknowledged, all welcome insights. Happily, he has also provided bibliographies for all 19 of his chosen architects.
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by Brian Sanderson New York: Tor Books, $40
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