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Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius

2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jdh/epl015

1741-7279

TW Mowl,

Architecture and Art History Studies

Nikolaus Pevsner, Yale University Press, 2005, revised and expanded edition with an Introduction by Richard Weston. 192 pp., 50 illus., 100 col. pls. £19.95 cloth. ISBN: 0 300 10571 1. Whatever Yale University Press decides to publish, it illustrates with an awesome professionalism. One of these days, perhaps, Yale will get round to a solemn comparative study of the Kama Sutra and Aretino's Postures, but for now we have this lavish fourth edition of Pevsner's controversial Pioneers of Modern Design to add to earlier editions of 1936, 1949 and 1960. Was Yale's aim to remind us of the potency of the book between 1936 and 1956 when all the disastrously uninspired, Pevsnerian rebuilding of Britain's war-damaged cities went on, notably at Plymouth, Swansea, Coventry and Liverpool? Or has it been published to expose, by a series of richly illustrated additional essays by the editor, Richard Weston, one after each of Pevsner's original seven chapters of the 1949 edition, the many flaws in his arguments?