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Vers une architecture
360 pages
A fiery, visionary manifesto that demands we tear down the ornate past and build a sleek, functional future.
What it feels like
Reading this foundational modernist manifesto feels like standing in a wind tunnel of revolutionary ideas. The prose is sharp, aphoristic, and relentlessly forward-looking, stripping away the ornate clutter of the past to reveal the sleek, functional beauty of the machine age. It is less a traditional textbook than a passionate, polemical sermon on aesthetics, urging the reader to see airplanes, ocean liners, and grain silos as the true temples of the modern era. The mood is urgent and utopian, driven by a brisk, declarative rhythm that demands attention. It will thrill designers, historians, and anyone captivated by the raw, uncompromising energy of early twentieth-century modernism, offering an exhilarating glimpse into the mind of a visionary who wanted to redesign the world.
- Mood
- urgent
- intellectual
- revolutionary
- austere
- Tone
- polemical
- visionary
- authoritative
- passionate
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the machine aesthetic · functional beauty · breaking with tradition · utopian design · mass production
- The writing
- Aphoristic, declarative, and highly rhetorical, punctuated by bold manifestos and striking visual juxtapositions.
- The arc
- Moves from a frustration with stagnant historical styles to an exhilarating, utopian vision of a mechanized future.
- Who it's for
- Designers, historians, and anyone fascinated by uncompromising modernist manifestos and the intersection of art and engineering.
About the book
Reprint of the 1946 ed.
Translation of Vers une architecture.
"The present ed. has been made an exact facsimile (slightly reduced in page size) of the original English edition, translated from the French by Mr. Frederick Etchells and published by John Rodker in 1927"--Pref. (to the 1946 ed.)
Description from Open Library.
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