International Style
Modernist Architecture from 1925 to 1965

"Modern architecture is not a new branch of an old tree - it is an altogether new shoot rising beside the old roots." Thus Walter Gropius, one of the pioneers of modern architecture, on the radical departures of the 20th century. In the 1930s, the term International Style came into use to describe a new form of architecture evolved from Bauhaus and its conviction that "form follows function". Until the 1980s, International Style set the standard in modern building, with its logical formal idiom and rational solutions to construction problems. Combining steel, glass and concrete, it established an aesthetic founded on the sheer thrill of pushing to the limits of technical and economic viability. Hence the exhil-arating skylines of metropolises worldwide - but also the desolate anonymity of modern suburban environments. This book traces the exciting evolution of a style while examining the individual and regional forms it took, and analyses the ideals and realities of architectural visions of utopia.

The Author:
Hasan-Uddin Khan studied at the Architectural Association in London and subsequently worked as a freelance architect in London and Karachi. From 1977 to 1994 he supervised the Aga Khan's building projects, and was editor of the periodical "Mimar. Architecture in Development" from 1981 until 1992. Since 1994 he has been Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.