Exit utopia architectural provocations 1956-76

• Main Author: Macel, Otakar (Author)
• Other Authors: Schaik, Martin van
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Prestel Pub. 2005
• Subjects: Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
• Online Access: Click Here to View Status and Holdings.
• Physical Description: 319 pages : illustrations (some colour) 28 cm
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references
• ISBN: 3791329731; 9783791329734

This topical examination of a key moment in modern architecture pointedly and critically evaluates the role of the neo-avant-garde in today's world. International in scope and exhaustive in detail, the book explores important exponents of "visionary" and "utopian" architecture in the closing juncture of the modernist era, coinciding with the cultural upheavals and social transformations of the 1960s and '70s. By revisiting "New Babylon," the magnum opus of the Dutch painter Constant Nieuwenhuys, whose vision of a situationist urban environment made him one of the most influential artists of this time, this collection of essays re-examines decisive work by Yona Friedman, the Archigram group, the Italian Radicals Superstudio and Archizoom, Koolhaas/Zenghelis and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, and Léon Krier. Timely, in-depth essays and exhaustive project documentations trace the decline of avant-garde projects in architecture. The result is a significant work of architectural theory and history, which will interest anyone studying ideologies of the past and dreaming the cities of tomorrow.