The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design traces the twin origins of Art Nouveau and the International Style from the extraordinary inventive surge at the turn of the nineteenth century, establishing the intellectual lineage of twentieth-century architecture and the applied arts.
About This Book
At the hinge of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, architecture and design fractured into two distinct trajectories: the organic exuberance of Art Nouveau and the reductive clarity that would become the International Style. Nikolaus Pevsner — one of the defining voices in architectural history — maps the ideological and formal origins of both movements with characteristic precision. This is not a survey of styles but an argument about causality: how specific ideas, makers, and moments produced the conditions for modern design. Now updated with colour illustrations throughout and a new foreword by architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, this classic text remains essential reading for anyone serious about the history of the built environment.
Key Features
- 232 pages of colour-illustrated architectural and design history
- Foreword by Kenneth Frampton, distinguished architectural historian
- Published by Thames & Hudson, ISBN 9780500297698
What You'll Discover
- How the competing impulses of ornament and abstraction at the turn of the century gave rise to two fundamentally different visions of modernity
- The specific intellectual and formal sources Pevsner identifies as generative for twentieth-century architecture and the applied arts
- The relationship between Art Nouveau and the International Style — not as opposites but as divergent responses to the same historical pressures
- Kenneth Frampton's reappraisal of Pevsner's thesis, contextualising this foundational text within contemporary architectural historiography
About the Author
Nikolaus Pevsner was one of the most influential architectural historians of the twentieth century, known for bringing systematic scholarly clarity to the history of architecture and design. His writing consistently sought to explain modern architecture not as a rupture but as the outcome of traceable intellectual and formal developments.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 232
- Dimensions: 208 x 151 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780500297698
- Publisher: Thames & Hudson
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architecture and design historians, students of modernism, practitioners seeking grounding in the ideological origins of the International Style, and collectors of canonical architectural texts.