Oscar Niemeyer and Brazilian free-form modernism

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Wolfgang Wagener

"Raphael Soriano (1904-1988) was one of the early Case Study architects working in California in the mid-twentieth century, and a talented advocate of the new building materials and construction techniques developed just before and after World War II. Born in Rhodes, Soriano arrived in Los Angeles in 1924 at the age of 20. After graduating from the University of Southern California, he worked in the offices of Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and for Los Angeles County before starting his own practice in Los Angeles in 1935. His characteristic floating roofs, tranparent exterior walls, and open plan responded to the postwar demand for family-friendly, middle-class housing and an indoor-outdoor lifestyle well suited to the Southern California climate. In 1953, Soriano relocated to Tiburon, near San Francisco, where he designed housing for the maverick developer Joseph Eichler, as well as innovative aluminum structures." "Independent-minded and often irascible, Soriano's architectural contribution has been largely overlooked to date. Though he designed 150 buildings and built more than 50 during his career, only a dozen projects remain standing. This book is the first published monograph on Soriano, with a thoroughly researched account of the architect's life and oeuvre, and an essay on the historical and cultural factors influencing the development of postwar housing in Southern California. It includes an examination of 30 key Soriano buildings and a listing of Complete Works that documents, for the first time, every known project in Soriano's archive, with bibliographic references. In addition to previously unpublished original plans and drawings, this volume features approximately 125 photographs by renowned architectural photographer Julius Shulman, who was a close friend of Soriano and documented his work over a period of 40 years."--BOOK JACKET.

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Witold Rybczynski

"Before Andrea Palladio began designing his simple, gracious, perfectly proportioned villas, architectural genius was reserved for temples and palaces. Palladio elevated the architecture of the private house into an art form, and he not only designed and built, he wrote. His late-sixteenth-century architectural treatises were read and studied by great thinkers as diverse as Thomas Jefferson and Inigo Jones, profoundly influencing the design of Monticello, the tidewater plantation houses of Virginia, and the White House. All across America today, Palladio's influence is evident in ample porches and columned porticoes, in grand ceiling heights and front-door pediments.". "In The Perfect House, Witold Rybczynski, whose books on domestic and landscape architecture have transformed our understanding of parks and buildings, looks at Palladio's famous villas, not with the eye of an art historian but with the eye of an architect. He wanted to know why a handful of houses in an obscure corner of the Venetian Republic should have made their presence felt hundreds of years later and halfway across the globe."--BOOK JACKET.

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H. Paul Varley

A survey of the history of cultural life in Japan from the earliest times to the present. Beginning with the first glimmerings of civilised life in the remote past, the author traces the development through the ages of religion, thought, literature, theatre, the visual arts, and other forms of culture and art. He also provides a discussion of Japan in the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the cultural consequences of Japan's defeat in World War II, the postwar development of arts and literature, and Japanese adaptation of Western forms and technology in architecture and films.

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Sven A. Kirsten

After World War II, US soldiers stationed in the South Pacific returned home with tales of trees loaded with exotic fruits, sleepy lagoons, white-sand beaches, and gorgeous people wearing grass and feathers as they danced half-naked during all-night orgies of food and music. The American imagination seized on this exotic version of island culture, and it exerted a massive influence on Fashion, pop music, eating and drinking, and even architecture. Everything from bars to bowling alleys adopted elements of Polynesian design. Tikis, the carved wooden and stone statues from across the Pacific, found their way into every hotel lounge and suburban living room. But as the fad was reaching it's peak, the big generation gap of the late 60s put a sudden end to Polynesian escapism as the children of the Tiki revellers decided to seek their own Nirvana in sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. The 90s have seen a revitalised interest in this kitsch anomaly of post-war America -- lounge bars and the sound of "exotica" are back in. This enlightening and hilarious guide casts the reader as an "urban archaeologist" exploring the lost remnants of Tiki culture across the States -- discovering relics from this forgotten civilisation in thrift stores, yard sales, and used book and record emporia. A combination of nostalgia and fascinating pop cultural study, this volume is a long overdue investigation into the cult of the Tiki.