Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making of Postwar Identities ed. by Vladimir Kulić, et al

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS but was soon eclipsed by its ambitious neighbor. Parts of its architectural fabric seem frozen in time, a result of its long-stagnant economy. Highlights include the nineteenth-century business district known as the Strand and the nearby East End Historic District, a large neighborhood ofVictorian-era homes. Buildings of Texas encompasses more than a thousand architectural landmarks, but it may be most valuable for the authors' thoughtful analysis, which places these works in their historical and cultural context. The text is well written and provides an accessible introduction to the subject for the neophyte, while offering new insights for the knowledgeable reader. The authors have made subjective choices, but any omissions are understandable considering the breadth of the topic. Moorhead's photographs are excellent, and the reader would benefit from more of them. Although there are many illustrations, this book tilts in favor of the text. That may seem strange for an architectural guidebook, but it is further evidence that this work is intended as a serious desk reference, not just a travel guide. Such quibbles aside, Buildings of Texas is a welcome contribution to the literature and belongs on the shelfofanyone interested in Texas architecture. STEPHENJAMES University ofHouston Houston, Texas ENDNOTES 1. John Bainbridge, The Super-Americans (Garden Ciry, NY: Doubleday, 1961), 9. 2. Jay C. Henry, Architecture in Texas, 1895 - 1945 (Ausrin: Universiry ofTexas Press, 1993). ARRIS 66 § Volume 25 § 2014 Vladimir Kulic, Timothy Parker, and Monica Penick, eds. Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making ofPostwar Identities. Austin: University ofTexas Press, 2014, 336 pp., 88 blackand -white illustrations, hardcover, ISBN 978-0-29275725 -7. In the twentieth century, the scholarship of modernism has its own history of confronting a continually contested subject. We are reminded at every turn that what makes modern architecture modern is unequivocally not the canonical constructs that dominated its history. In fact, as Archigram argued in Archigram No. 8 (1968), "modernism is a contradictory idea, inasmuch as the word 'modern' implies something that is bang up to date and still in formation, whereas the suffix 'ism' implies the opposite, a doctrine, a codified method, a style." However, how do we properly historicize an already politically charged "modernism" that is contested within the discourses of canonical histories? How do we approach the role of the now-circumscribed canonical interpretations that form part of modern architecture's own history? Against this backdrop, Sanctioning Modernism: Architecture and the Making ofPostwar Identities, edited by Vladimir Kulic, Timothy Parker, and Monica Penick, sets up a framework and conceptualizes various new nuances and appropriations of modernism, including its canonical constructions. Essays by architectural historians call into question the very possibility of writing a canonical history of modern architecture, recovering modern identities in and through architecture, and carefully laying out how these implications span the globe in the design ofthe modern home, churches, and state institutions. While the architectural story flows throughout, the contributors show how architecture is the link (and narrator), exploring developments behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, Romania, and socialist Yugoslavia to document a modernism that crossed geographical, social, and political boundaries. It also constructs a more distinct, broader, more interdisciplinary, perhaps an even more twenty-first-century image of modern architecture portraying a design culture that extends beyond the autonomous project and singularity and merits a deeper exploration of its political, religious, and domestic consequences. As a matter of fact, the book not only sanctions modernism-"sanctioning" is used in its most positive meaning as an authoritative consent, rather than negatively to identify forced or disciplinary restrictions-but also sanctions the way we look at it. Arguably, it properly historicizes political and geographical modernism and launches new dialogues and new lines of critical inquiry. Moreover, it conceptualizes the role of various political entities, finding a productive link at a deeper thematic and methodological level, demonstrating how distinct institutions, practices, ideologies and discourses BOOK REVIEWS sanctioned-or were sanctioned by-modern architecture after the Second World War. Perhaps, the authors present "modernism," in its most fulfilled way. In fact, the contributors to this anthology "sanction" this perception and illustrate a more complex, nuanced picture of diversity within modernist architectural culture. In this effort, they are...