The Elusive Modernist setzt sich mit der Geschichte der Moderne auseinander und zwar basierend auf dem Vermächtnis eines ihrer Protagonisten, Gabriel Guevrekian (ca. 1900–1970). Der in Istanbul geborene Guevrekian wuchs in Teheran auf und zog als junger Erwachsener nach Wien, um an der Kunstgewerbeschule Architektur zu studieren. Später arbeitete er mit Oskar Strnad, Josef Hoffmann, Adolf Loos, Henri Sauvage und Robert Mallet-Stevens, und zu seinen bekanntesten Entwürfen gehören der kubistische Garten für die Villa Noailles in Frankreich und zwei Häuser für die Wiener Werkbund-Ausstellung. Mit nicht einmal dreißig Jahren galt Guevrekian als eine der bedeutendsten Persönlichkeiten der europäischen Avantgarde in Paris. Im Laufe der 1930er-Jahre verbrachte er einige Jahre im Iran, wo er öffentliche Bauten entwarf; nach Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs lehrte er zunächst in Europa und schließlich in Amerika. Seine ganz unterschiedlichen Unternehmungen, sowie die Häuser und Nationalitäten, die er in Asien, Europa und Amerika besaß, führten zu einer Reihe sehr verschieden ausgeprägter Persönlichkeiten. Er füllte durch seine eigene, sehr unmittelbare Auseinandersetzung jede Disziplin mit Bedeutung aus, machte jede Stadt zum Zentrum und jede Ära epochal.

For 60 years, Fletcher Steele practised landscape architecture as a fine art, designing nearly 700 gardens. Often brilliant, always original, Steele's work is considered by many as a link between 19th century beaux arts formalism & modern landscape design.

Twenty-two essays that provide a forum for assessing the tenets, accomplishments and limits of modernism in landscape architecture and for formulating ideas about possible directions for the future of the discipline These twenty-two essays provide a rich forum for assessing the tenets, accomplishments, and limits of modernism in landscape architecture and for formulating ideas about possible directions for the future of the discipline. During the 1930s Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, and JamesRose began to integrate modernist architectural ideas into their work and to design a landscape more in accord with the life and sensibilities of their time. Together with Thomas Church, whose gardens provided the setting for California living, they laid the foundations for a modern American landscape design. This first critical assessment of modem landscape architecture brings together seminal articles from the 1930s and 1940s by Eckbo, Kiley, Rose, Fletcher Steele, and Christopher Tunnard, and includes contributions by contemporary writers and designers such as Peirce Lewis, Catherine Howett, John Dixon Hunt, Peter Walker, and Martha Schwartz who examine the historical and cultural framework within which modern landscape designers have worked. There are also essays by Lance Neckar, Reuben Rainey, Gregg Bleam, Michael Laurie, and Marc Treib that discuss the designs and legacy of the Americans Tunnard, Eckbo, Church, Kiley, and Robert Irwin. Dorothée Imbert takes up Pierre-Emile Legrain and French modernist gardens of the 1920s, and Thorbjörn Andersson reviews experiments with stylized naturalism developed by Erik Glemme and others in the Stockholm park system.

The first history of the Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne traces the development and promotion of its influential concept of the "Functional City."

The modernist garden, which flourished in France between the 1910s and the 1930s, vividly mirrored the geometries and cubist aesthetics familiar to the decorative and fine arts of the period. Created by architects and artists, these gardens were often conceived as tableaux in which plants played a role only as pigment or texture. This handsomely illustrated book by Dorothée Imbert presents for the first time - in word and image - a comprehensive study of these arresting architectonic gardens.

A richly illustrated history of a single building, the celebrated and yet enigmatic penthouse of the wealthy playboy Charles de Beistegui, designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret in late 1920s Paris. What does it take to build not only a house but a machine for amusement? In Machine à Amuser, Wim van den Bergh chronicles the genesis of the famous penthouse of French-born Mexican millionaire bachelor Charles de Beistegui. The penthouse was planned and constructed by Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret and built on a rooftop site on the Champs-Élysées between 1929–1932. Retracing the evolution of this icon of modern architecture from the initial competition between Gabriel Guevrekian, André Lurçat, and Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret up to the executed version, van den Bergh tells the story of a client’s ambition to build a house devoted to entertaining on one of the most well-heeled streets of Paris. Machine à Amuser also examines the cultural milieu of artists and patrons that surrounded Beistegui and which ultimately determined the apartment’s conception and use, including its rococo and surrealist-inspired interior decor. Drawing on a panoply of archival material, van den Bergh narrates the tensions that arose between client and architects as each vied for creative control of the project. As the book shows, while Le Corbusier, with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret, remained the official architects of the penthouse, its famed interior was ultimately designed by the client, Charles de Beistegui. An account of a single building beloved by architects and architectural historians, Machine à Amuser tells a story that has never been told before. Van den Bergh redresses this lacuna in rich detail, revealing the history of the Beistegui penthouse, the evolution of the project, and its eventual erasure from the roofscapes of Paris.

A beautifully illustrated consideration of the life and career of modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo.