Modernity ─ Enlightenment and Revolution - Ideal and Unforseen Consequence

The seventh book in the Architecture in Context series, this is a comprehensive survey of European architecture from the pre-dawn of the Enlightenment in early Georgian England; to the triumph of Brutalism in the seventh decade of the twentieth century; on to a sketch of major trends building up to the turn of the millennium.

Each of the three sections is preceded by a short introduction isolating the key philosophical or political theories which dominated the relevant period: in particular Enlightenment; industrialization and its social consequences; and Communism, Fascism and world catastrophe. The first section covers Anglo-Palladianism, French academic Rationalism, their Neoclassical developments and the aspiration to the Sublime. The first part of the book develops the major strand of eclecticism before progressing to Historicism in the second, the choice of style seen to be relevant to a given commission, and the impact of industrial building techniques. The third and final part begins with Design Reform in reaction to industrialism and then proceeds to Design Reform in response to the reactionaries, but they too continue to make their mark as the chronicle progresses. The epilogue covers developments from the advent of the Postmodernists and their High-Tech adversaries to the diversity of formal and technological games played out towards the end of the century.

The many great architects and designers whose work both defines and illustrates the themes of the book include visionaries like Soane, Boullee and Schinkel, entrepreneurial innovators such as the Adams brothers and Repton, engineers of the age of iron including Eiffel, Paxton and Belanger, and 20^th-century giants – Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier among numerous others.

Born in Sydney, Chistopher Tadgell studied art history at the Courtauld Institute in London and subsequently taught architectural history for almost thirty years before devoting himself full time to writing and research, travelling worldwide to examine and photograph buildings from every tradition and period. He is a Trustee of the World Monuments Fund, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities and a member of both the British and American Societies of Architectural History. HisHistory of Architecture in India is the definitive one-volume account, whilst his publications on French architecture include the standard account inBaroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration.