The other tradition of modern architecture

This re-edition of an essential work by Colin St John Wilson, architect of the British Library and one of the most eminent voices in architectural theory and practice of the last 50 years, is here made available to a new readership. As important now as it was when first published, Professor Wilson sets out to examine the underlying themes of Modern Architecture, assessing their impact, influence, and continuing development. Rather than positioning Modernism as an historical moment, now left in the past, he argues for a continuing tradition, an "uncompleted project," sustained against the rigidifying orthodoxy of C.I.A.M. by a "resistance movement" carried by the largely independent work of Alvar Aalto, Hans Scharoun, Frank Lloyd Wright and Sigurd Lewerentz. Drawing upon philosophy, history, art and architectural theory, the work of the Modern masters is explored both in theory and by means of comparative analyses of specific buildings in a text that takes in an extraordinary range of reference with erudition, insight and originality.