The Architecture of Europe: the 19th and 20th Centuries

The richness and diversity of European architecture over the past two centuries is captured in this comprehensive survey with almost two hundred illustrations of building types in twenty-three countries, including Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The book's breadth of geography and time give it a special place among treatments of the general subject. It illustrates how the nineteenth century, although primarily eclectic, produced a number of architectural successes—Haussmann's grandiose reshaping of Paris, Engel's classical Helsinki, the Gothic revivalism of the rebuilt Palace of Westminster. Doreen Yarwood shows that Art Nouveau was the first movement to break with this eclecticism, but that it nonetheless drew its inspiration from the past. She illustrates how the modern movement, developed in some countries between the wars, used concrete, steel, and glass for strength and simplicity. Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and others used this approach to great effect; in the 1950s it became a mass movement. The 1970s brought calls for an architecture reunited with its environment, leading to the safety of classicism or light-hearted eclecticism. Ms. Yarwood's lucid text and generous illustrations provide a vivid and indispensable record.