A Guide to Modern Architecture: Reyner Banham. Architectural Press, 42/-.
Picture-books on architecture are generally meant for students of architecture or for maiden aunts, are either too expert or inexpert. Here is a guide which is explicitly directed at the intelligent lay public, written by an expert in the subject for experts in other subjects. This is something which needed doing, and Banham has tackled the project with his usual zest. The result is a personal selection of some 40 key examples of modern buildings, described and assessed with the aid of 93 photographs and 10 diagrams, and a short text. Some of the photographs are below par (pp. 55, 78, 109) and some are rather small; but although lusher volumes have been seen, this book makes a compact and informed handbook, which many architects will probably be sending to their clients instead of Christmas cards this year.
Every other expert will want to quarrel with the author in his choice of his 40 main examples. They are arranged in no chronological order, although there are occasional sequences of like buildings. They range from early to late and from the plain to the exotic, and there is a fair sprinkling of handy examples from the home front. Classics include the Penguin Pool, the Bauhaus, the Marseilles block—but also, less familiarly, the Schröder House. Exotics include the Zaanstraat flats, Amsterdam, by de Klerk, a fancy house in Illinois by Bruce Goff, the slick Girasole flats in Rome by Luigi Moretti, Kurashiki Town Hall by Kenzo Tange, and a secretive church at Imatra by Alvar Aalto. In every case the accompanying text goes beyond a merely factual description, but deals briefly, and sometimes feverishly, with historical context, style, function, construction and social relevance. Critics have complained that the book is a hotch-potch, and certainly the casual leafer-through will be puzzled by the jumps. Moreover the need to cover several aspects within the range of these brief notes has resulted in a good deal of telescoping and a gossipy tone which sometimes becomes too playmatey for a lay public, however intelligent . . .