Contemporary: Architecture and Interiors of the 1950s

In the years after World War II, the theory-laden modern movement blossomed into popular "contemporary" design. Le Corbusier and Levitt, Brussels and L.A. reinforced concrete and Formica--all became part of a trend towards sleek, functional, pared-down design. This excellent book could have been a compendium of '50s architectural and interior memorabilia, and therefore a success with nostalgia buffs (who will also love it), but it is far more than that. Lesley Jackson has written an intelligent, entertaining book on the intersection of life and design in the postwar era. Chapters include "The Birth of the 'Contemporary' Style"; "The House"; "The Interior"; "Decoration and Fittings"; "Furniture and Furnishings"; and "Society Goes 'Contemporary.'" Its scope is broad, beginning with a beguiling, campy advertising photo showing a housewife at cocktail time, poised in her powder-blue cocktail dress, and her husband, who is reaching into a sleek, chrome-and-Formica credenza, perhaps the home of their record player. The book ends with Brasília, the capital city built between 1956 and 1960 that brought Brazil to the verge of economic collapse. In between are colorful looks at the houses and furniture of Ray and Charles Eames; the early European proponents of modernism; Frank Lloyd Wright's seminal Fallingwater; the various uses of concrete, stone, brick, and other materials for texture and color; the melding of interior and exterior space; the fun colors of prototypical Marimekko fabrics; the early idealism of designing for "the masses"; and the now almost quaint social optimism from which the pervasive culture of materialism emerged. --Peggy Moorman