The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design (World of Art)

An updated edition of this classic title on the origins of 20th-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts.

The turn of the nineteenth century saw an extraordinary flowering of invention in architecture and design, leading to the emergence of two contrasting styles: Art Nouveau and the International Style. Professor Nikolaus Pevsner brings clarity to this period of dynamic change by tracing the origins of twentieth-century ideas in architecture and the applied arts.

Featuring a new foreword by the distinguished architectural historian Kenneth Frampton, this classic title has now been updated with colour illustrations throughout.

Review

'No one but Pevsner could have packed so much information into so compact a work or illustrated it more effectively' - Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) was Slade Professor of Fine Art, University of Cambridge, 1949–55, and Fellow of St John's College, 1950–55. He was the first Professor of the History of Art Department at Birkbeck College, University of London, retiring in 1969. He is probably best known for The Buildings of England, completed in more than fifty volumes shortly before his death, and for his Outline of European Architecture, which has remained a standard work for over forty years. Kenneth Frampton CBE served as Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, New York, from 1972 to 2019. In 2018 he was awarded the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale. His publications include Studies in Tectonic Culture, Labour, Work and Architecture, American Masterworks, Kengo Kuma: Complete Works and A Genealogy of Modern Architecture.