Morality and Architecture: The Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement by David Watkin (Claredon Press 1977) explores the linkage of history and style from Pugin to Pevsner.
From Pugin to Pevsner architects and architectural writers have claimed that their chosen style of architecture is not merely a style but a truthful, rational way of building evolved inevitably in response to the needs of what society is or ought to be, so that to question its forms in certainly anti-social and probably immoral. In Viollet-le-Duc, Lethaby, Corbusier, Giedion, Herbert Read and others Dr Watkin exposes these ethical, mechanical, and populist fallacies in an analysis of the effect on architectural history of what Karl Popper described as ‘historicism’: ‘the view that the story of mankind has a plot and that if we can succeed in unravelling this plot we shall hold the key to the future’. The author claims, in this lively and forthright study, that an art-historical belief in the all-dominating Zeitgeist combined with an historicist emphasis on progress and novelty has undermined our appreciation of the imaginative genius of the individual and the importance of artistic tradition.
– David Watkin, Morality and Architecture: The Development of a Theme in Architectural History and Theory from the Gothic Revival to the Modern Movement (Claredon Press, 1977), book description
The text is in English. No images.
Our copy in stock is in good condition. The pages are clean, some underlines and the previous owner’s signature on the first flyleaf. The binding is fine. The dust jacket shows only some small traces of shelf wear and use.
