Alison & Peter Smithson: A Critical Anthology

by Reyner Banham, Philip Johnson, Kenneth Frampton

Adapting the modernist ideals of prewar architecture to the needs of postwar reconstruction in Britain, Alison and Peter Smithson were among the most influential and controversial architects of the latter half of the twentieth century. As younger members of CIAM (Congr�s Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) and as founding members of Team 10, they were at the heart of the debate on the future course of modern architecture; the uncompromising clarity of their Hunstanton Secondary Modern School (1949-1954), which stripped down the language of Mies van der Rohe to a rough simplicity, heralded the Smithsons' role as the leading exponents of the New Brutalism (a term they coined). As members of the Independent Group alongside Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Reyner Banham and others, they participated in the 1956 landmark show This Is Tomorrow, affiliating themselves with the burgeoning Pop art movement in Britain.
This beautifully produced and fully illustrated volume collects the most important essays published on the couple's work, from older texts by Reyner Banham, Peter Cook, Kenneth Frampton and Philip Johnson to the most recent texts by Peter Eisenmann, Christine Boyer, Beatriz Colomina and Louisa Hutton. The first publication in Poligrafa's new Critical Anthology series, it provides an essential critical context for the reception of New Brutalism in England.
Alison (1928-1993) and Peter (1923-2003) Smithson met at Durham University in England and were married in 1949. Their Hunstanton School, now a Grade II listed building, announced a new style of construction that foregrounded concrete and repetitive, angular geometries; later works declared a socialist dimension to their philosophy, particularly in the exposure of interior functions.

Genres: Anthologies

368 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

Peter Reyner Banham (1922-1988) was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age", and his 1971 book "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies" in which he categorized the Angelean experience into four ecological models (Surfurbia, Foothills, The Plains of Id, and Autopia) and explored the distinct architectural cultures of each ecology.

He was based in London, moving to the USA from 1976. He studied under Anthony Blunt, then Siegfried Giedion and Nikolaus Pevsner. Pevsner invited him to study the history of modern architecture, giving up his work Pioneers of the Modern Movement. In Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960), Banham cut across Pevsner's main theories, linking modernism to built structures where the 'functionalism' was actually subject to formal strictures. He wrote a Guide to Modern Architecture (1962, later titled Age of the Masters, a Personal View of Modern Architecture).

He had connections with the Independent Group, the This is Tomorrow show of 1956 (the birth of pop art) and the thinking of the Smithsons, and of James Stirling, on the new brutalism (which he documented in The New Brutalism, 1955). He predicted a "second age" of the machine and mass consumption. The Architecture of Well-Tempered Environment (1969) follows Giedion's Mechanization Takes Command (1948), putting the development of technologies (electricity, air conditioning) even ahead of the classic account of structures. This was the area found absorbing in the 1960s by Cedric Price, Peter Cook and the Archigram group.

Green thinking (Los Angeles, the Architecture of Four Ecologies, 1971) and then the oil shock of 1973 affected him. The 'postmodern' was for him unease, and he evolved as the conscience of post-war British architecture. He broke with the utopian and technical formality. Scenes in America Deserta (1982) and A Concrete Atlantis (1986) talk of open spaces and his anticipation of a 'modern' future.

As a Professor, Banham taught at the University of London, the State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo, and the University of California, Santa Cruz. He also was the Sheldon H. Solow Professor of the History of Architecture at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He also starred in the short documentary Reyner Banham loves Los Angeles.

Banham said that he learned to drive so he could read Los Angeles in the original.