Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete

by Siegfried Giedion, J. Duncan Berry (Translation)

This classic of twentieth-century architectural literature, now available in English for the first time, presents Sigfried Giedion's provocative vision of architecture in the industrial era and his response to technological advances in the production of key building materials.

Giedion shows how iron and reinforced concrete allowed the construction of buildings of unprecedented size and openness in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Focusing on the radical possibilities of skeletal support structures, he celebrates innovative uses of these materials in buildings from the Eiffel Tower and the Crystal Palace to glass-canopied railroad stations, department stores, and exhibition halls.

With this volume, first published in 1928, Giedion became a leading advocate of modern architecture. He was the first to exalt Le Corbusier as the champion of the new style, at the expense of a considerable body of Germanic theory and practice, and his arguments strongly influenced the direction of architecture for the next four decades. Later, although diluting his criticism of architectual thought in previous periods, Giedion incorporated much of this text into Space, Time, and Architecture, his best-known work.

Genres: Architecture

248 pages, Hardcover

First published July 11, 1994

Reviews

[Duncan Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey, that looks familiar!

Wait, I was the translator!

[Miguel Alonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first iron bridges to the Eiffel tower, from the first concrete warehouses to the French Avant Garde, Giedion summarises the evolution of construction in the XIXth century.

Two names shine above all, Henri Labrouste, who managed to make iron an architectural material, and Le Corbusier, who did the same with ferroconcrete.

As Giedion says, "what Lloyd Wright did by fusing rooms horizontally, Le Corbusier does vertically"