From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City (Hardcover)

by Nathan Glazer (Author) "When we "build for the public"-our government buildings, our courthouses, our schools and colleges and universities, and we can extend the list to other public..." (more)
Key Phrases: architectural determinism, federal architecture, federal triangle, New York, East Harlem, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"... today's leading architects learned the wrong lessons from modernism's mistakes, and need to re-engage with the life of cities." -- Christopher Shea, The Boston Globe

"...Intelligence fairly radiates from the page, and his prose is a pleasure to read - clear, supple and frequently droll." -- Kevin Baker, New York Times Book Review

"Glazer compares the lively street life of the East Harlem of his childhood with the desolation of what eventually followed." -- Fred Siegel, City Journal

"Glazer is an inspiration to anyone who appreciates the value of cities and the people who live in them." -- John Norquist, Cities on a Hill

"It is a great question, and Glazer's analysis elegantly weaves aesthetics, political science, and intellectual history together to answer it." -- Edward Glaeser, The New York Sun

Review
The greatest pleasure of From a Cause to a Style lies simply in listening to Glazer think as he walks us about his native New York, with occasional diversions to other locals like Boston or the Washington Mall. His intelligence fairly radiates from the page, and his prose is a pleasure to read--clear, supple and frequently droll.
(Kevin Baker New York Times Book Review )

A new, wonderful collection of essays. . . . Mr. Glazer's analysis elegantly weaves aesthetics, political science, and intellectual history together. . . . [This] superb book explores an important aesthetic movement, but it is also a warning against delegating public control over construction to artistic elites. . . . Mr. Glazer has made his case well.
(Edward Glaeser New York Sun )

Glazer credits the modernist generation for their interest 'in good sanitary housing, in green space, in access to air and light, in more living space'--in creating a livable city. They often failed to see how their plans would intersect with, or crash into, reality, but at least they were engaged.
(Christopher Shea Boston Globe )

In From a Cause to a Style, sociologist Nathan Glazer laments the loss of the idealism and zeal that designers possessed in the post-war period.
(John Norquist Cities on a Hill )

Where urban architecture is concerned, seldom has there been so perceptive a watcher as Nathan Glazer. . . . A wise and humane book, From a Cause to a Style exudes the authority that comes from a lifetime's mature consideration of its subject.
(Michael J. Lewis Commentary )

From a Cause to a Style collects [Glazer's] intriguing--and accessible--essays on urban architecture and public space.
(Fred Siegel City Journal )

Nathan Glazer, the eminent American sociologist, discusses the conflict between Prince Charles and [modernist] architects in his remarkable new book, From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City.
(Robert Fulford National Post )

Nathan Glazer isn't afraid of a little controversy. In From a Cause to a Style he deftly argues that the modernist architectural movement was a civic disaster. Modernism began as a call for functional buildings and essential public spaces shorn of unnecessary ornament, but wound up as 'soulless, bureaucratic and inhuman.' Glazer challenges the next generation of architects, planners and designers to learn from history's mistakes.
(TBJ Home )

Glazer...has many useful and intelligent thoughts to offer.... [H]ere is literacy of a high order, writing which by force of style alone nearly convinces.
(David Dunster Architectural Review )

Written in an appealing and clear style, this book is a most necessary reading for anyone interested in both a deep and broad understanding of modernism, and the controversial forms it takes in the city.
(Julia Nevarez Architectural Science Review )

What is good? What is true? What is beautiful? From a Cause to a Style clears at least some of the intellectual space needed for a larger reconsideration of these questions. It deserves a wide reading.
(Phillip Bess Society )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 310 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691129576
• ISBN-13: 978-0691129570
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #733,576 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars From Ideology to Ikea, May 26, 2009

By	Matthew Milliner (Princeton, NJ) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

(A version of this review first appeared in the March 2009 issue of The Christian Century.)

The divorce of contemporary architecture from human need is explored at length by Harvard sociologist Nathan Glazer in this perfectly titled book. In 11 essays unified by a clear message, Glazer recounts how Modernism went from a world-saving mission to one among several furniture options on an IKEA showroom floor. The book's power comes from Glazer's position as a high-profile urban consultant for the past 50 years. He has been a witness to the literal demolition of Modernism's accomplishments.

A commonly cited end point for Modernism is 1972, when World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki's Pruitt-Igoe apartments in St. Louis, despite being the subject of a prestigious architectural award, were intentionally destroyed. Glazer was on the committee that made the decision. "I had shared that optimism and modernist faith," he declares. But Glazer is a Modernist who has been mugged by reality.

Glazer provides some frightening examples of how Modernism's faith in the future burned all bridges to the past. Lewis Mumford, the most prominent American urban theorist of the mid-20th century, even considered the Lincoln Memorial a part of the old order that needed to be overturned. Monuments in general, for Mumford, "are all the hollow echoes of an expiring breath ... which either curb and confine the works of the living, like the New York Public Library, or are completely irrelevant to our beliefs and demands."

Such radicalism was justified as necessary to defend the ordinary citizen. Modernism, explains Glazer, "represented a rebellion against historicism, ornament, overblown form, pandering to the great and rich and newly rich as against serving the needs of a society's common people." Hence brownstones were bulldozed to make way for the modern housing developments that would, in the words of CIAM, "teach people how to live." Such projects gave us what urban dwellers today call "The Projects." "We know better now," sheepishly admits one of the many Modernists quoted by Glazer.

While Modernism today may be a lost cause, it has yet to be replaced by anything else. Contemporary architecture is not the next in a succession of styles, but "the merest skirmishes around a common norm that has effaced all historical styles. And a norm that leaves most of us discontented."

Glazer identifies the fissure underlying abstract architectural discussion today, a discussion lost for some time in the smoke and mirrors of postmodernism. Those who seek to follow a contemporary architectural discussion are rightfully puzzled by the opacity and baffled to hear architects say, for example, that they are now "beyond building." Glazer, however, provides a cogent explanation for the bewildering intellectual atmosphere: "Architecture in recent years has turned away from the pragmatic social and behavioral sciences to the wilder reaches of critical theory because its early efforts to design better housing turned into a failure."

Critical theory is the study, inspired mostly by thinkers in the Marxist tradition, of how social meaning is generated and maintained by social elites. Critical theorists examine texts-and buildings--for how they uphold traditional meanings and, presumably, repressive social orders.

From a Cause to a Style is not a wholesale condemnation, and the book's elegant, judicious tone keeps it from ever descending into a harrumph. Modernism may be an ideal style for certain kinds of buildings or monuments. Glazer concedes, for example, that the very modern Vietnam Memorial is a success. But the limits of the style are evident. Modern simplicity makes for wonderful factories, claims another of Glazer's repentant Modernists. However, "let a religious belief or a social ideal replace cubic foot costs or radiation losses, and nothing happened. There is not a single modern church in the entire country that is comparable to a first-rate cafeteria."

According to Glazer, critical theory is now the ruling mindset of architecture. As a result, Glazer has little hope that an architecture of beauty is on the horizon. "Starchitects" such as Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind produce beautiful forms - but they seem more interested in generating buzz than in creating humane models for urban life. Furthermore, because postmodern architecture lacks the narrative force to fully overturn the anathema on ornament, Modernism has reasserted itself.

Not only would it embarrass architects to design decorative detail or call for it; they wouldn't know how to do it, and there would be no craftspeople to provide it. The workers who once carved and sculpted the decorated surfaces of buildings in the late 19th and early 20th century simply don't exist.

Glazer's solution is a sober one. We should cultivate appreciation for the accomplishments of the now unrepeatable past. If ever there was a charge to jealously defend premodern churches, Glazer provides it: "We can preserve the buildings of the past. We can't build them again."

4.0 out of 5 stars Why McMansions are so popular, October 25, 2007

By	Jamie Cannon "fast reader" (St. Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nathan Glazer's book, "From A Cause To A Style" is a must read if you want to know where modern architecture has gone, especially in the residential field. In very clear terms and with excellent examples, the reader learns to some degree just how dumbed down we have become regarding architecture and the arts. The Star architects now do museums and entertainment palaces. They do not do housing like they used to primarily because the public has rejected what they did. Glazer sets this all down with both clarity and precision and if you would understand why the developer demolished the perfectly adequate house next door and built a house capable of becoming a fancy servants quarters for the Queen of England, this is whare you find that out. Every architect should own and read this book.