The Practice of Modernism, Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954-1972

摘要

John Gold's The Practice of Modernism is the second volume of what will eventually become a trilogy. The first volume The Experience of Modernism, Modern Architects and the Future City, 1928-1953, which was published by Routledge in 1997, documented the ascent of the modern movement in the interwar decades. The second book studies what happened to British modernism once it had become the object of broadrnconsensus. It has two primary themes. The first is how, under the pressure of practice, the high hopes and aspirations of the earlier generation would quickly be traded for a new pragmatism. Second, the book describes the way in which, after some initial success, the rising popular dissatisfaction with modernist projects produced a backlash against a whole generation of architects. Following this rather negative contemporary evaluation of modernism, the third volume seems set to qualify this historical picture, for its focus will be on the lasting legacy of the modern movement for architecture and town planning after 1972.