American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture

Through the dual lenses of architectural and social history, this learned study probes the aesthetics of revolutionary postwar building designs stoked by mass media, advertising, consumerism, and society's confidence in the power of institutions to improve lives. Friedman (American art, Wellesley Coll.) analyzes the midcentury's rekindled obsession with glamour, defined as magical, sensual, and theatrical, in chapters on Philip Johnson, Richard Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House, Eero Saarinen's corporate architecture, Morris Lapidus's Miami Beach hotels, and, somewhat surprisingly, Frank Lloyd Wright's Temple Beth Sholom in Elkins Park, PA. References to equally representative designers, such as Marcel Breuer, Edward Stone, and Charles and Ray Eames, appear throughout the text. Friedman is an informed and fulsome guide to the era, articulating and placing its aesthetics within the contexts of earlier and later styles. Teeming with photos and reproductions of period magazine and corporate ads, this attractive work is printed on quality paper.