Traces the evolution of American architecture from the late nineteenth century to the present day, arguing that America's unique blend of cultures, sensibilities, and aspirations has shaped architectural development and examining how changes in style, from early skyscrapers, to Art Deco in the 1920s, to today's modernist trends, reflect the social and political issues of their time. Original.

This text is a wide-ranging analysis of national museums in Europe, the US and Asia from 18th-century origins to late-20th-century controversies.

Product Description: Book by Princeton Architectural Press

Politics and culture are at once semi-autonomous and intertwined. Nowhere is this more revealingly illustrated than in urban design, a field that encompasses architecture and social life, traditions and modernization. Here aesthetic goals and political intentions meet, sometimes in collaboration, sometimes in conflict. Here the formal qualities of art confront the complexities of history. When urban design policies are implemented, they reveal underlying aesthetic, cultural, and political dilemmas with startling clarity.Gwendolyn Wright focuses on three French colonies—Indochina, Morocco, and Madagascar—that were the most discussed, most often photographed, and most admired showpieces of the French empire in the early twentieth century. She explores how urban policy and design fit into the French colonial policy of "association," a strategy that accepted, even encouraged, cultural differences while it promoted modern urban improvements that would foster economic development for Western investors. Wright shows how these colonial cities evolved, tracing the distinctive nature of each locale under French imperialism. She also relates these cities to the larger category of French architecture and urbanism, showing how consistently the French tried to resolve certain stylistic and policy problems they faced at home and abroad.With the advice of architects and sociologists, art historians and geographers, colonial administrators sought to exert greater control over such matters as family life and working conditions, industrial growth and cultural memory. The issues Wright confronts—the potent implications of traditional norms, cultural continuity, modernization, and radical urban experiments—still challenge us today.

Examines the rich diversity of American architecture--from the frame houses of New England to condominiums in the Sunbelt--as they reflect the political, social, and economic ideologies of their times