Main entry:

Sutton, Ian.

Title & Author:

Western architecture : from ancient Greece to the present / Ian Sutton.

Publication:

New York : Thames and Hudson, 1999.

Description:

384 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Series:

World of art

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (page 375) and index.
ch. 1. Prologue: Laying the foundations: Greece and Rome: The rule of the orders ; The urban setting ; Rome: the heir of Greece ; Vitruvius: a text for the future -- ch. 2. The Christian legacy of Rome: Constantine and the new Rome ; The Byzantine achievement ; The Byzantine legacy ; Western Europe: darkness before dawn -- ch. 3. Beginning again: Carolingian and Romanesque: The Carolingian Renaissance to c.1000 ; Germany: the imperial lands ; France: diversity in unity ; The Normans in Britain ; Romanesque in the south: Italy and Spain -- ch. 4. The Gothic centuries: How Gothic began ; The first Gothic century: France, 1150-1250 ; Gothic England ; How Gothic ended ; Secular and domestic -- ch. 5. The Renaissance: ancient Rome "reborn": Florence: the early Renaissance ; Rome: the high Renaissance ; The problem of mannerism ; A developing Renaissance ; The Renaissance outside Italy: Eastern and Central Europe ; England, France and Spain: problems of adaptation -- ch. 6. Baroque and anti-Baroque: Baroque in Italy: the seed-bed ; Central and Eastern Europe: the flowering ; Spain, Portugal and Latin America: the exotic harvest ; France: a special case ; Flanders and the Netherlands ; England and North America -- ch. 7. The return of classicism: Phases of classicism: from Palladio to the revolution ; Palaces, ministries and the neoclassical city ; Privileged domesticity ; Culture and commerce ; Classicism and Christianity ; Four architectural portraits -- ch. 8. "In what style shall we build?": Why neo-Gothic? ; Architecture and morality ; Revivals and survivals ; The new art ; Houses and homes -- ch. 9. After style, modernism: Iron, glass and honesty ; The doctrine of modernism ; Modernism and national character ; Alternatives to modernism ; Three nonconformists -- ch. 10. Epilogue: After modernism, style: The legacy of modernism ; Ingredients of post-modernism ; Variety and scale ; Present dilemmas.

Summary:

"The history of architecture is not just a matter of dates, architects and styles, but also the way buildings are experienced and the ideas that lie behind them. And architecture itself is both a utilitarian activity - people have to live, work and worship in buildings - and a visual art, as expressive and exciting as painting and sculpture. This book traces the way in which, over two and a half millennia, these two processes have (usually happily) co-existed. In a new, refreshingly readable telling of an old story the author shows how social and technological changes have conditioned the way buildings were conceived, from Greece and Rome through the Early Christian, Romanesque and Gothic centuries to the Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, leading to the astonishing flowering of opportunities and skills in the 19th and 20th centuries. Illustrated throughout with photographs closely linked to the text, this is a guide for the student and general reader to follow into the 21st century."--Jacket

ISBN:

0500203164 (paperback)
9780500203163 (paperback)

Subject:

Architecture History.
Architecture as Topic history
Architecture Histoire.
Architecture
Historic buildings
Europe.
North America.
Amérique du Nord.

Form/genre:

Nonfiction.
History

Added entries:

World of art.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 201588
Call No.: NA200 .S8 1999
Status: Available