Product Description

How did the great architects of this century reconcile their vision of architecture with the realities of building? This is a crucial question that every student of architecture must confront. The Details of Modern Architecture the first comprehensive analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in the development of architecture, provides not one answer but many. The more than 500 illustrations are a major contribution in their own right. Providing a valuable collective resource, they present the details of notable architectural works drawn in similar styles and formats, allowing comparisons between works of different scales, periods, and styles. Covering the period 1890-1932, Ford focuses on various recognized masters, explaining the detailing and construction techniques that distort, camouflage, or enhance a building. He looks at the source of each architect's ideas, the translation of those ideas into practice, and the success or failure of the technical execution. Ford examines Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House and Fallingwater Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, and buildings by McKim, Mead & White, Lutyens, Mies van der Rohe, and Schindler from a point of view that acknowledges the importance of tradition, precedent, style, and ideology in architectural construction. He discusses critical details from a technical and contextual standpoint, considering how they perform how they add to or detract from the building as a whole, and how some have persisted and been adapted through time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338261 in Books
• Published on: 1990-08-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 382 pages

About the Author
Edward R. Ford is a practicing architect in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Knowing from inside,,,
It is an excellent way to know how the masters made their buildings.

The book is full of drawings showing every detail.

Excellent BOOK!

Scholarly text and incredibly detailed drawings
A review of famous modern architects' buildings, starting with H.H. Richardson and ending with Wright's Usonian houses. Shows how each's ideals regarding architectural honesty are revealed and often compromised in their buildings. The theme is really not important, as long as it provides a framework for discussion of construction methods, which is the real heart of the book. (For the sequel, another theme, the influence of industrialization, is added to the discussion.) You'll learn interesting facts: Greene & Greene's Gamble House is post and beam only where it shows; FLW's Martin house owes its distinctive style to framing with structural steel and brick piers. Combine this with the second volume, and you'll be familiar with all the important Modern buildings and architects.

Poor drawings
This book could be the greatest book in my bookshelf, but the detail drawings are so basic and naive that it's valuable almost only for the essays. I mean... I bought a book where I expected to find good and useful details, and got a book with excelent essays about construction according to the masters (from Lutyens to Morphosis). That's why I gave it 3 stars instead of the 5 the title deserved.