Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673–1968

Modern Architectural Theory is the first book to provide a comprehensive survey of architectural theorem, primarily in Europe and the United States, during three centuries of development. In this synthetic overview, Harry Mallgrave contextualizes architectural discourse within its social and political atmosphere. 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. He also examines the compelling currents of French rationalist and British empirical thought, the radical reformation of theory during the Enlightenment, the intellectual ambition and historicist debates of the nineteenth century, and the distinctive varieties of modern theory in the twentieth century up to the profound social upheaval of the 1960s. Modern Architectural Theory challenges many assumptions about architectural modernism and uncovers many new dimensions of the debates about modernism.

• First book to provide a comprehensive survey of modern architectural theory • Challenges many assumptions about architectural modernism and uncovers new dimensions of current debates • Explores the intellectual origins of modern architectural theory

1. Prelude; 2. The enlightenment and neoclassicism; 3. British theory in the eighteenth century; 4. Neoclassicism and historicism; 5. The rise of German theory; 6. Competing directions at mid-century; 7. Historicism in the United States; 8. The arts and crafts movement; 9. Excusus on a few of the conceptual foundations of twentieth-century German modernism; 10. Modernism 1889–1914; 11. European Modernism, 1917–1933; 12. American modernism, 1917–1933; 13. Depression, war, and aftermath, 1934–1958; 14. European critiques of modern theory 1959–1967; 15. American critiques of modern theory, 1959–1967; 16. Conclusion.