Southampton through the ages

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Simon Thurley

"Whitehall Palace was the principal residence of the British monarchy from 1529 to 1698, when fire destroyed most of the complex. As such, it holds a key place in the architectural, political and social history of England. This book is the first to discuss the architecture and archaeology of this influential building.". "Simon Thurley traces the development of the Palace from its origins, using previously unpublished archaeological evidence to establish that York Place, as it was then called, was already one of the largest and most important residences in London before it became a royal palace. Thurley reconstructs the various phases of the Palace's development, showing how successive kings and queens altered the vast, sprawling mass of Whitehall to meet their individual needs. He also charts the plans of monarchs to replace the Tudor building with one that might have rivalled the great Baroque palaces of Europe, and he reveals the reasons they failed to achieve this."--BOOK JACKET.

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Arnold Lewis

Chicago in the late nineteenth century was the wonder city of the Western world, its famous Loop the laboratory in which to study innovative commercial architecture. There, Old World assumptions were overthrown by New World realities, as the past was discounted, the present glorified, and the future eagerly anticipated. Visiting Europeans saw the Loop as an urban nucleus built by contemporary realists devoted to the pursuit of profits and a new, functional aesthetic. This futuristic city stunned them, and its crass mercantile class further appalled them: the three-minute lunch, the lightning-fast contract negotiations, the dead-run pace. Visitors also saw and admired what natives took for granted: Chicago's version of the present looked like the future. They critiqued it extensively in publications in France, Germany, and Great Britain, seeking to understand the causes linking the cloud-scraping office buildings of the Loop, the surrounding bucolic neighborhoods, and the expansive classicism of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago's Jackson Park and their implications for European culture. An Early Encounter with Tomorrow is the first book-length study of European criticism of 1890s Chicago. Arnold Lewis spent over twenty years researching in libraries abroad and in the U.S. to bring us this comprehensive and unique work. It is extravagantly illustrated with over seventy photographs, drawings, paintings, and contemporary cartoons. An exhaustive bibliography, arranged by country, is appended.

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David Underwood

Oscar Niemeyer, born in 1907, is widely considered this century's leading Latin American architect, as well as one of the pioneers of modern architecture. This volume explores the major themes and sources of the most important works from all phases of Niemeyer's career, from the early collaborations of the 1930s and 1940s with Lucio Costa, the spiritual father of Brazilian modernism, to the 1989 Memorial da America Latina in Sao Paulo, a complex that reveals the maturation of Niemeyer's free-form style in the service of his utopian vision. A central theme of Niemeyer's work has been its reflection of the Brazilian jeito, a sinuous and improvisational style manifested in everything from the country's sensual, undulating landscape to its attraction to spontaneous impulses, best known through its vibrant music and dance. The jeito and the milieu of Rio de Janeiro lie at the heart of Niemeyer's free-form style, which emphasizes the inherent plasticity of the native curve over the rigid rectilinearity of the International Style in Europe. A second theme treats the influence on Niemeyer of the poetic style of Le Corbusier. Also considered are Niemeyer's attraction to surrealist biomorphic forms and his desire to express a sense of the fantastic in architecture. A final theme is Niemeyer's search for an aesthetic utopia that would resolve social dilemmas by wishing them away through architecture. Herein lies Niemeyer's strength, for as his architecture reflects the multiple dichotomies of the Brazilian experience, it projects an emotive universality that few architects have been able to achieve.

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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.