The Details of Modern Architecture, Volume 1

by Edward R. Ford

How did the great architects of this century reconcile their vision of architecture with the realities of building? This is a crucial question that every student of architecture must confront. The Details of Modern Architecture , the first comprehensive analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in the development of architecture, provides not one answer but many.The more than 500 illustrations are a major contribution in their own right. Providing a valuable collective resource, they present the details of notable architectural works drawn in similar styles and formats, allowing comparisons between works of different scales, periods, and styles. Covering the period 1890-1932, Ford focuses on various recognized masters, explaining the detailing and construction techniques that distort, camouflage, or enhance a building. He looks at the source of each architect's ideas, the translation of those ideas into practice, and the success or failure of the technical execution. Ford examines Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House and Fallingwater Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, and buildings by McKim, Mead & White, Lutyens, Mies van der Rohe, and Schindler from a point of view that acknowledges the importance of tradition, precedent, style, and ideology in architectural construction. He discusses critical details from a technical and contextual standpoint, considering how they perform how they add to or detract from the building as a whole, and how some have persisted and been adapted through time.

Genres: Architecture

451 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Pablo Lopes · Rating 5 out of 5]

an extensive account of the relationship between the evolution of modern architecture and the building industry, as seen through the details developed by several practices and the way it conforms to or upends current building practices.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books are absolutely brilliant/essential reading for any detail wonk and anyone who truly wants to understand the guts and embodied tensions/contradictions in so much iconic early Modern architecture. Ford's analysis is trenchant and illuminating - can't recommend these highly enough for any serious student and/or lover of great architecture. Diagrams are generally very helpful and informative; some leave a bit to be desired/are ambiguous, but most are truly excellent. Gets one WAY beyond the set famous photos of great buildings, and reveals that, more often than not, even the great purists deviated from what they preached (and the less they did, esp. towards monolithic 'honest' systems, the more problematic and costly the buildings).