Architecture since 1400

2013
Author:

Kathleen James-Chakraborty

A sweeping global history of the built environment over six centuries, highlighting the social context in which buildings are commissioned, designed, and constructed

Lavishly illustrated, Architecture since 1400 presents key moments and innovations in architectural modernity around the globe. Making clear that visionary architecture has never been the exclusive domain of the West and recognizing the diversity of those responsible for commissioning, designing, and constructing buildings, this book provides a sweeping, cross-cultural history of the built environment over six centuries.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty’s Architecture since 1400 deserves the widest possible readership. This is a brilliantly conceived and beautifully written book that presents an original analysis of notable buildings around the world.

Dolores Hayden, Yale University

The first global history of architecture to give equal attention to Western and non-Western structures and built landscapes, Architecture since 1400 is unprecedented in its range, approach, and insight. From Tenochtitlan’s Great Pyramid in Mexico City and the Duomo in Florence to Levittown’s suburban tract housing and the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, its coverage includes the world’s most celebrated structures and spaces along with many examples of more humble vernacular buildings. Lavishly illustrated with more than 300 photographs, plans, and interiors, this book presents key moments and innovations in architectural modernity around the globe.

Deftly integrating architectural and social history, Kathleen James-Chakraborty pays particular attention to the motivations of client and architect in the design and construction of environments both sacred and secular: palaces and places of worship as well as such characteristically modern structures as the skyscraper, the department store, and the cinema. She also focuses on the role of patrons and addresses to an unparalleled degree the impact of women in commissioning, creating, and inhabiting the built environment, with Gertrude Jekyll, Lina Bo Bardi, and Zaha Hadid taking their place beside Brunelleschi, Sinan, and Le Corbusier.

Making clear that visionary architecture has never been the exclusive domain of the West and recognizing the diversity of those responsible for commissioning, designing, and constructing buildings, Architecture since 1400 provides a sweeping, cross-cultural history of the built environment over six centuries.

Kathleen James-Chakraborty is professor of art history at University College Dublin. She is the author of German Architecture for a Mass Audience and Erich Mendelsohn and the Architecture of German Modernism and the editor of Bauhaus Culture: From Weimar to the Cold War (Minnesota, 2006).

Kathleen James-Chakraborty’s Architecture since 1400 deserves the widest possible readership. This is a brilliantly conceived and beautifully written book that presents an original analysis of notable buildings around the world.

Dolores Hayden, Yale University

Architecture since 1400 is a mature, impressive work—truly a global history of architecture. It is hard to imagine a more teachable book.

Nancy S. Steinhardt, University of Pennsylvania

Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Ming and Qing China
2. Tenochtitlan and Cuzco
3. Brunelleschi
4. Medici Florence
5. The Renaissance in Rome and the Veneto
6. Resisting the Renaissance
7. The Ottomans and the Safavids
8. Early Modern South Asia
9. Baroque Rome
10. Spain and Portugal in the Americas
11. Northern Baroque
12. City and Country in Britain and Ireland
13. Living on the North American Land
14. Court and Dwelling in East and Southeast Asia
15. Edo Japan
16. Neoclassicism, the Gothic Revival, and the Civic Realm
17. The Industrial Revolution
18. Paris in the Nineteenth Century
19. The Domestic Ideal
20. Empire Building
21. Chicago from the Great Fire to the Great War
22. Inventing the Avant-Garde
23. Architecture for a Mass Audience
24. Imposing Urban Order
25. The Modern Movement in the Americas
26. Africa: Villages and Cities
27. Postcolonial Modernism and Beyond
28. Postwar Japan
29. From Postmodern to Neo-modern: The United States and Europe
30. Chinese Global Cities

Illustration Credits
Index

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