What is modern architecture ? When did it begin ? It certainly concerns us all. Whether as architects, contractors, clients or users of the finished product, we are all of us involved in the constantly changing aspects of our own surroundings.

Professor Benevolo shows that modern architecture was born of the technical, social and cultural changes connected with the Industrial Revolution, and that it began in earnest with the emergence of the European city. He describes the basic line of thought and action in modern architecture, which began with Owen and the Utopians of the first half of the nineteenth century, passed through Ruskin and Morris and avant-garde European experiments, to the work of American builders and of Wright. ‘This line of thought became generally acclaimed in the years immediately following 1918 through the work of Gropius and the Weimar school, and ultimately gave rise to a unified ‘modern movement’ in architecture, with a potential for developments far greater than those promised by its original premises.

In Volume One of this history, Professor Benevolo describes the component parts of modern architectural thought up to 1914, and examines their origins.
Volume Two is concerned with the modern movement itself, and with the work of architects such as Mies van der Rohe, Aalto and Jacobsen, who, it is shown, have begun an experiment in architecture in which we are all involved and upon which our way of life depends.

This is a translation of the third edition of a major work by a distinguished teacher and a practising architect.