Author Description

This unprecedented book and accompanying compact disc tell the story of modern architecture in the words of the people who created it. Based on interviews conducted over the course of 40 years with more than 60 of the world's most prominent architects and engineers, the volume is both an invaluable oral history and a broadly appealing look at the development of the modern style, animated by the architects' own observations, opinions, anecdotes, and humor. The architects' words and the author's brief comments are accompanied by 200 black-and-white photographs of the landmarks of modern architecture, including plans, sketches, and models. Each has a brief explanatory caption that augments information in the text. Large, original candid portraits of the architects - taken at the time of the interview - add to the personal and conversational nature of the book. The Oral History of Modern Architecture opens with an introduction to the modern movement. We then hear the architects themselves as they discuss the impact of technology, social concerns, and art on modern architecture, and reveal the buildings and architects that most influenced them. Next are in-depth selections from the interviews with Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Eero Saarinen, Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, Oscar Niemeyer, Jose Luis Sert, and I.M. Pei. In the closing chapter, the architects speculate about the future of modern architecture. Biographies, a time chart, a bibliography, and a visitor's guide to more than 150 of the sites pictured and discussed complete the volume. On the compact disc, history comes alive as 16 of the most renowned modern masters express the ideas and ideals behind their works, which belong to one of the most significant movements in the history of architecture.