Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change [Paperback]

Alan Colquhoun (Author), Kenneth Frampton (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 28, 1985 | Series: Oppositions Books

Winner of the 1985 Architectural Critics Award for the best book published on architectural criticism over the past three years.

Since the early 1950s, Alan Colquhoun's criticism and theory have acted as a conscience to a generation of architects. His rigor and conceptual clarity have consistently stimulated debate and have served as an impetus for the pursuit of new directions in both theory and practice. This collection of 17 of his essays marks a watershed in the development of architectural thinking over the past three decades, comprising a virtual "theory of Modernism" in architecture.

In his earliest essays, Colquhoun concentrated on themes that for him comprised the modernist attitude in architecture - language, typology, and the structure of form. His stance since then has consistently been to try to relate these issues to current practice and to analyze the nature of architectural expression in relation to culture.

An Oppositions Book.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Alan Colquhoun is a practicing architect and Professor of Architecture at Princeton University. His previous collection of essays received the 1985 Architectural Critics Award.

Product Details

• Paperback: 223 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (August 28, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262530635
• ISBN-13: 978-0262530637
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #254,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cerebral guide to architecture, December 10, 2001

By 

Darth Vader (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essays in Architectural Criticism: Modern Architecture and Historical Change (Paperback)

This book is a wonderful introduction to architectural criticism, more lively than Colin Rowe's "The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays" and Reyner Banham's "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age." Colquhoun applies all sorts of funky terminology borrowed from and in some cases anticipating literary theory (e.g., a term like "bricolage," which is bandied about by Homi Bhabha, is used in this book, published in the mid 80s, to describe Michael Graves's work). While Colquhoun's arguments are not always so easy to understand in general, whenever he discusses specific buildings, it's clear to see what he's driving at. The book investigates some of the classics of modern architecture, but also discusses buildings that aren't well described in the standard books, e.g. the Centraal Beheer building in Alpendoorn, Netherlands. Also, Colquhoun is a committed modernist; all the buildings covered here are descended from the modern movement. There is very little speculation or "what-ifness" here (one of the irritating aspects, to me, of postmodernist Robert Venturi's "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture"), just close, theoretically informed analysis (using a Continental theoretical vocabulary and dispensing, as the Introduction states, of Banham's "positivism") of the buildings in question. Along with Banham's "Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies" (much more delightful than "Machine Age"), Colquhoun's "Essays" is my favorite book of architectural criticism.