Muthesius, Stefan, author.

The postwar university : utopianist campus and college / Stefan Muthesius.

New Haven ; London : Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, [2000]

340 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

A great expansion of universities in most of Western Europe and North America began in the late 1950s and continued to the early 1970s. In this comprehensive book, architectural historian Stefan Muthesius examines the post-war educational building boom and the rhetoric that surrounded it. He focuses on the period's widely shared utopianist beliefs that good plan ... more »ning and distinguished architecture could bring forth not only academically mature but also socially adjusted citizens. The book describes the diverse approaches to the creation of new campuses in the United States, England, Canada, West Germany, and France, as each country dealt with the agendas of its own educators, sociologists, politicians, campus planners, and architects. Muthesius explores the full range of responses to the utopian dreams, from the initial boundless enthusiasm for the new university as an ideal and total environment, to the rejection by rebellious students for whom utopian plans smacked of paternalism, to the public's dislike of extravagant architecture and modernist buildings. As university planners today address the need (or lack of it) for new buildings, this book offers a timely reconsideration of architectural achievement in a period of intense institutionality.
"This book examines the period of stupendous new university building from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, in the USA and Canada, in France as well as in West Germany, with the 'English Seven' - Sussex, York, Essex, East Anglia, Lancaster, Kent and Warwick - taking centre stage." "There was a widely shared belief that good planning and distinguished architecture could bring forth not only academically mature, but also socially adjusted citizens. University presidents, vice chancellors and rectors passionately believed that they were providing innovative architecture of the highest quality, while the designers held that their planning not only served function and beauty, but could guarantee the new universities as ideal, as total environments. The optimal university should combine the bigness of the efficient Modernist campus with the intimacy of the old small college." "But this book is less concerned with a single utopian dream than with the complex stories of a great number of utopianist realities. It deals with the efforts as much as with the results, investigating the creation of institutions by charting the interaction of the diverse agendas of designers, educationalists, sociologists and politicians, tied, as they were, into each country's own traditions."--Jacket

0300087179 (cloth ; alk. paper)
9780300087178 (cloth ; alk. paper)

College facilities Planning Cross-cultural studies.
College buildings Planning Cross-cultural studies.
Campus planning Cross-cultural studies.
Universities and colleges History 20th century.
Visionary architecture Cross-cultural studies.
Équipements universitaires Planification Études transculturelles.
Constructions universitaires Planification Études transculturelles.
Campus Planification Études transculturelles.
Universités Histoire 20e siècle.
Architecture visionnaire Études transculturelles.
81.35 educational buildings.
Visionary architecture
Campus planning
College buildings Planning
College facilities Planning
Universities and colleges
Hoger onderwijs.
Campussen.
Universiteitsgebouwen.
Planlegging.
Universiteter.
Bygninger.
Arkitektur.
Constructions universitaires 20e siècle.
Constructions scolaires.
Universitetsbygninger 1950- Historie.

Cross-cultural studies.
History

Location: Library main 215602
Call No.: NA6600 .M9 2000
Status: Available