Product Description

Harry Mallgrave's comprehensive survey of architectural theory, primarily in Europe and the United States, contextualizes architectural discourse within its social and political atmosphere over three centuries of development. He explores the philosophical and conceptual evolution of its ideas, the relation of theory to the practice of building, and, most importantly, the words of the architects themselves as they contentiously shaped their particular niche of Western civilization over time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1628763 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 522 pages

Review
"readers of this book will find that the journey Mallgrave invites us on is not only well considered and informative, but one well worth taking." - John V. Maciuika, City University of New York, Baruch College

About the Author
Harry Mallgrave is Associate Professor of History and Theory at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. His 1996 book Gottfried Semper: Architect of the Nineteenth Century was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award by the Society of Architectural Historians.

Customer Reviews

The New Gold Standard
Mallgrave has integrated and consolidated an enormous body of literature, thought and imagery on the emergence of "modern" architectural theory.

If you want to know WHY our cities and buildings look the way they do, it is because architects explored their intentions in theoretical exercises. Mallgrave offers the most compelling depiction of the changing fortunes of these intentions in this magisterial survey.

The scope and sweep of his effort is breathtaking, and the story is FINALLY being told without the pedantic hectoring of advocate-historians like Pevsner and Geidion and their minions.

Mallgrave's insight and wit are in evidence upon each an every page. This is an epochal study and worthy of a major academic award.

Mallgrave has written the first comprehensive treatment on a subject that has been explored without much nuance for nearly a century and a half. He deserves our unending gratitude.