Bringing to light the debt twentieth-century modernist architects owe to the vernacular building traditions of the Mediterranean region, this book considers architectural practice and discourse from the 1920s to the 1980s. The essays here situate Mediterranean modernism in relation to concepts such as regionalism, nationalism, internationalism, critical regionalism, and postmodernism - an alternative history of the modern architecture and urbanism of a critical period in the twentieth century.

Bringing to light the debt twentieth-century modernist architects owe to the vernacular building traditions of the Mediterranean region, this book considers architectural practice and discourse from the 1920s to the 1980s. The essays here situate Mediterranean modernism in relation to concepts such as regionalism, nationalism, internationalism, critical regionalism, and postmodernism - an alternative history of the modern architecture and urbanism of a critical period in the twentieth century.

Today, Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is known chiefly for his furniture designs. He is famous also for his erotic polaroid photography of the 1960s, which has been subject of many exhibitions and has lost nothing of its great appeal to the fashion world today. Much less attention has so far been given to Mollino's architecture, and a comprehensive critical study of his work in this field has been lacking. Yet his built work, although relatively small, constitutes a seminal contribution to modernism that is uniquely marked by a strong relationship with Surrealism. Based on years of research and drawing on rich archival material as well as on Mollino's own writings, this new book is the overdue tribute to an extraordinary personality in 20th-century architecture. It features an exemplary selection of his key designs, both built and unrealised, lavishly illustrated with images and reproductions of previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents. Rounded out with scholarly essays by expert authors, this is a long-awaited addition to the library of architecture lovers, professionals, and scholars.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s writings and lectures are relatively modest in quantity compared with the number of his remarkable buildings that have transformed cities throughout the globe. These writings, like his architecture, have continued to generate interest among different generations of students and scholars. This anthology contains all of his writings and lectures, both well-known and never republished. Succinct and speculative, these writings concerning architecture and education – mostly translated from German to English – reveal Mies as an arch­itect who constructed his texts with the same disciplined restraint with which he designed buildings.

"...the structure of G. E. Kidder Smith Builds, which traces his career first through books and then with exhibitions, means the book is more bibliographical than biographical... it illuminates many aspects of his life not widely known." — Archidose George Everard Kidder Smith (1913–1997) was a multidimensional figure within the wide-ranging field of North American architectural professionals in the second half of the twentieth century. Although he trained as an architect, he chose not to practice within the conventional strictures of an architecture office. Instead, Kidder Smith “designed,� researched, wrote, and photographed a remarkably diverse collection of books about architecture and the built environment. His work and life were deeply interwoven and punctuated by travel related to the research, writing, and promotion of books that sought to reveal the genius loci of the countries whose built environments he admired and wished to share with a broader audience. From the early 1940s to the late 1950s his interest in architecture led him to describe visually the architectural and historical identity of many European countries. After his far-flung travels over the decades, with his wife Dorothea, Kidder Smith focused on his own country and produced a series of ambitious books focused on the United States. Kidder Smith’s vision and narrative betray the gaze of the traveller, the scholar, and the architect.