Vernacular Modernism - by Maiken Umbach & Bernd Hüppauf (Paperback)

About the Book

Vernacular Modernism advocates a rethinking of the importance of the vernacular as part of the modernist discourse of place, from art to literature, from architectural to social practice.

Book Synopsis

Vernacular Modernism challenges the common perception of modern architecture as the example of an internationalism which eradicates local traditions and transforms the globe into a faceless urban sprawl. The essays trace the vernacular in some of modernity's most paradigmatic sites--both real and imagined. They engage in a search for an idiom that mediates between place and space, the vernacular and the abstract in architecture, from its early phase and Hermann Muthesius via LeCorbusier's high modernism, to the contemporary movement of a "critical regionalism."

From the Back Cover

"The volume's broad geographic scope and inventive exploration of diverse vernacular expressions will convince readers that modernization and modernism were far more open-ended and heterogeneous than previously acknowledged."--H-Net Reviews
"This collection of essays imaginatively and with great insight discusses the various vernaculars within modernist architectural practice, thereby altering our understanding of modernism's relationship to the past, its uses of memory, and its embeddedness in historically and geographically specific contexts." --Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University

Review Quotes

"The volume's broad geographic scope and inventive exploration of diverse vernacular expressions will convince readers that modernization and modernism were far more open-ended and heterogeneous than previously acknowledged."--H-Net Reviews

About the Author

Maiken Umbach teaches modern European history at the University of Manchester (UK). She is the author of Federalism and Enlightenment in Germany, 1740-1806 (2000) and German Federalism: Past, Present, Future (2002). Bernd Huppauf is Professor of German at New York University. Among his numerous publications in German and English are Globalization and the Future of German (2004), Skepsis und literarische Einbildungskraft (2003), War, Violence, and the Modern Condition (1997).