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The Atomium in Brussels is one of the tourist highlights of Belgium and was built specifically for the World Expo in 1958. Nearly 15,000 workers spent three years building the 2 km2 site, found on the Heysel plateau, seven kilometres northwest of Brussels. The site is best known for a giant model of a unit cell of an iron crystal (each sphere representing an atom), called the Atomium, which decades later remains one of the best known landmarks of Brussels. The 1958 Expo could be said to be a reflection of a changing society and of the economical, technical and social advances towards modernity that paved the way for the age of prosperity the Western World experienced in the sixties. The Expo...
Although the disciplines of architecture and structural engineering have both experienced their own historical development, their interaction has resulted in many fascinating and delightful structures. To take this interaction to a higher level, there is a need to stimulate the inventive and creative design of architectural structures and to persua
Established in 1918, as a new state the First Czechoslovak Republic was keen to project a distinct image. Participation in World Fairs offered the perfect opportunity-. In this comprehensive account of Czechoslovak participation in international exhibitions of the interwar period Marta Filipová looks beyond the sleek façade of the modernist pavilions to examine the intersections of architecture, art and design with commercial interests, state agendas, individual action and the public, offering a complex insight into the production and reception of national displays. The rich collection of images – mainly photographs – provides a close look at the Czechoslovak pavilions. The design, con...
An essential exploration of how Russian ideas about the United States shaped architecture and urban design from the czarist era to the fall of the U.S.S.R. Idealized representations of America, as both an aspiration and a menace, played an important role in shaping Russian architecture and urban design from the American Revolution until the fall of the Soviet Union. Jean-Louis Cohen traces the powerful concept of “Amerikanizm” and its impact on Russia’s built environment from early czarist interest in Revolutionary America, through the spectacular World’s Fairs of the 19th century, to department stores, skyscrapers, and factories built in Russia using American methods during the 20th century. Visions of America also captivated the Russian avant-garde, from El Lissitzky to Moisei Ginzburg, and Cohen explores the ongoing artistic dialogue maintained between the two countries at the mid-century and in the late Soviet era, following a period of strategic competition. This first major study of Amerikanizm in the architecture of Russia makes a timely contribution to our understanding of modern architecture and its broader geopolitics.
Unlike regionalism in architecture, which has been widely discussed in recent years, nationalism in architecture has not been so well explored and understood. However, the most powerful collective representation of a nation is through its architecture and how that architecture engages the global arena by expressing, defining and sometimes negating a sense of nation in order to participate in the international world. Bringing together case studies from Europe, North and South America, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia, this book provides a truly global exploration of the relationship between architecture and nationalism, via the themes of regionalism and representation, various nati...
Throughout the twentieth century housing displays have proven to be a singular genre of architectural and design exhibitions. By crossing geographies and adopting multiple scales of observation – from domestic space to urban visions – this volume investigates a set of unexplored events devoted to housing and dwelling, organised by technical, professional, cultural or governmental institutions from the interwar years to the Cold War. The book offers a first critical assessment of twentieth-century housing exhibits and explores the role of exhibitions in the codification of notions of domesticity, social models, policies, and architectural and urban discourse. At the intersection of housin...
International scholars from architecture, design, urban planning, and interior design here reappraise modern life in the context of practices of dwelling over the span of the postwar period. Reassessing culture and the economic and political effects on civilian life, this collection looks at what role material objects, interior spaces, and architecture played in quelling or fanning the anxieties of modernism's ordinary denizens.
Greg Castillo presents an illustrated history of the persuasive impact of model homes, appliances, and furniture in Cold War propaganda.
In the first decades of the 20th century, civil engineers were widely seen as a role model for future architects. Their role within the contemporary architecture movements, however, was hardly discussed. To this day, even fundamental questions about collaborations, rivalries, or conflicts between the two sister disciplines still await answers. This volume brings together contributions by international scholars on the cooperation between architects and civil engineers in various countries in the interwar period. By offering both insights into national peculiarities and new reflections on the general nature, character, and significance of such joint efforts, it opens exciting new perspectives on the modern building culture of Europe and beyond.
Together with the Olympics, world's fairs are one of the few regular international events of sufficient scale to showcase a spectrum of sights, wonders, learning opportunities, technological advances, and new (or renewed) urban districts, and to present them all to a mass audience. Meet Me at the Fair: A World's Fair Reader breaks new ground in scholarship on world's fairs by incorporating a number of short new texts that investigate world's fairs in their multiple aspects: political, urban/architectural, anthropological/ sociological, technological, commercial, popular, and representational. Contributors come from eight different countries and represent affiliations in academia, museums and libraries, professional and architectural firms, non-profit organizations, and government regulatory agencies. In taking the measure of both the material artifacts and the larger cultural production of world's fairs, the volume presents its own phantasmagoria of disciplinary perspectives, historical periods, geographical locales, media, and messages, mirroring the microcosmic form of the world's fair itself.