Much of modernist architecture was inspired by the emergence of
internationalism: the political movement that aimed to achieve world
peace, justice and unity through global collaboration. Mark Crinson
here shows how the ideals behind the Tower of Babel - built, as the
story goes, by people of one language and with one utopian goal - were
effectively adapted by internationalist architecture style and practice in
the modern period. Focusing particularly on the points of convergence
between modernist and internationalist trends in the 1920s, and again
in the immediate post-war years, he underlines how such architecture
utilised a cooperative community of builders and a common language of
forms.
The 'International Style' was one manifestation of this new way of
thinking, but Crinson shows how the aims of modernist architecture
frequently engaged with the substance of an internationalist mindset in
addition to sharing surface similarities. Bringing together the visionaries
of internationalist projects - including Le Corbusier, Bruno Taut, Berthold
Lubetkin, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe - Crinson interweaves
ideas of evolution, ecology, utopia, regionalism, socialism, free trade,
and anti-colonialism to reveal the possibilities heralded by modernist
architecture. Furthermore, he re-connects pivotal figures in architecture
with a cast of polymath internationalists such as Patrick Geddes, Julian
Huxley, Rabindranath Tagore, Mulk Raj Anand and H. G. Wells, to provide
a richly detailed socio-cultural framework. PUBLIARQ.COM
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