From Bauhaus to Our House | 
| Author: Tom Wolfe
Publisher: Bantam
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 64401
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.2
ISBN: 055338063X
Dewey Decimal Number: 720
EAN: 9780553380637
ASIN: 055338063X
Publication Date: October 5, 1999
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Condition: BRAND NEW
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Product Description
Walter Groppius, granddaddy of steel and glass, conceived his architectural vision in the rubble of WW I and the decadence of Weimar in the decade after. His doctrine found fertile soil in America, where it was time to adopt a clearly defined and suitable representative architecture. Tom Wolfe, author of THE PAINTED WORD and THE RIGHT STUFF, treats us to a chronicle of the trends that ultimately brought us the ubiquitous and baffling "glass box" of modern commerce. "Delightfully witty, biting history of modern architecture...scintillating high comedy of big money, manners and massive manipulation of public taste." (Publishers Weekly)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
 Less is more... less is a bore. September 1, 2008
Tom Wolfe is the greatest!!!! This is a hilarious inside view into the world of architecture.
 Informative and interesting August 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an amusing, long essay about the rise of Bauhaus architecture. Wolfe adopts a sarcastic tone and challenges the "glass box" style of architecture. I found this to be very informative and interesting.
 A mostly baseless rant April 19, 2008
There are a lot of legitimate arguments to be made against the Bauhaus and Purism, but Tom Wolfe seems too interested in writing a sprawling rant to really explore them. Only once, near the very end, did he mention that many of these buildings were not built on a human scale -- in my view, their biggest flaw. Instead, the book focuses on these issues, which seem minor in comparison:
1. Glass, steel, and concrete are bad.
2. Simplicity is bad.
3. Architects who bad together into compounds are bad.
It's hard to accurately judge this book properly, since I read it 30 years after it was written. Still, if Tom Wolfe wanted to make a case against this type of architecture, it seems like he could have set his ego aside and done a much better job.
Not the Wright Stuff July 21, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Tom Wolfe's FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE skewers the Bauhaus School and Modernism in general (characterized by the International Style of architecture), as well as Post-Modernism (essentially, another version of Modernism). It's an intelligent, satirical look at an early 20th century European architectural ideology that rose up to reject the bourgeois and design for the working class--which the International Style architects may have regarded as too benighted to know what it really wanted. Apparently, according to these architects, what the worker would want, if s/he knew better, was to live in unadorned, black-and-white, steel and concrete boxes constructed with mass produced materials. Architecture schools and art institutes in the U.S. not only enthusiastically embraced the ideology ("They do things better in Europe," said Malcolm Cowley), but also its principle European champions, giving places of honor to the likes of Walter Gropius (Harvard), Mies van der Rohe (Armour Institute), and Josef Albers (Yale). Much of this movement was constructed around drawings and theory vice actually building buildings. In this way, architecture suffered from some of the same scholastic claptrap as the other arts, indeed of academe itself. When Wolfe drolly comments, "For the ambitious architect, having a theory became as vital and natural as having a telephone" (p. 121), he could have been speaking in general of contemporary academics--which many of these architects, ensconced in their university "compounds," were.
Wolfe's targets easily lend themselves to such a treatment. The Modern architects' disdain for the opinions of both client and occupant are obnoxious. One wonders why the client (but not so much the occupant) kept, as Wolfe puts it, taking it like a man. However that may be, Wolfe's style gets a bit old after a while. You just want him to chill for a bit. People weren't all necessarily duped by Modernism. The clean lines and simplicity of forms of work by Le Corbusier constitute a refreshing break from the past, and has certain aesthetic appeal. The offense of the style is not just that it is impractical; it's that it becomes so damn derivative and so dogmatic from that point on. (Frank Lloyd Wright, who was not a member of the International Style clerisy, but was "an American original," and so fairs pretty well in Wolfe's treatment, was not necessarily very practical himself. If you're a parent, tour "Falling Water" and you'll see what I mean.)
Wolfe's venom, to be sure, is aimed at the arrogance, pretentiousness, and hypocrisy of many of the leading architects comprising the Modernist and Post-Modernist movements. In that regard, Wolfe is very much on target in his criticism, even if he does go a bit overboard. Understanding that this is a screed, and not an objective critique, the reader will be pleased to find in this little book a readable, trenchant, witty, funny, and erudite treatment of these leading trends of 20th century architecture.
Mr. Wolfe, your House needs renovating July 18, 2007
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
The good news is FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE (1981) is a quick and easy read; the bad news is it is over a quarter-century out-of-date. Wolfe gives a good overview of modern architecture which developed between the wars in Germany and the Netherlands (mostly), by men [sic] who fancied themselves champions of the worker, scoffed at bourgoisie cravings for ornament and comfort, migrated to the United States, and isolated themselves in academic compounds where they spent more time issuing manifestoes and striking poses than actually designing and building buildings. These academic architects, for all their Marxist ideology, seemed to care little for what the common worker wanted or needed. And they never embraced authentic modernist American architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright [who broke two of the compound architects' sacred rules by (a) listening to his clients, and (b) actually having clients]. Wolfe's presentation is swift and impactful and his opinions will be gratifying to anyone who is baffled or bored with modern arctitecture. I'm not sure I am ready to dismiss all 20th century architecture so completely (I love the Seagrams Building, for instance).
The book ends with a preliminary sketch and discussion of Philip Johnson's AT&T building in New York City. This building with a top that is said to emulate that of a Chippendale highboy has since been built (long enough for its original tenant to have moved out) and New Yorkers have ceased to comment on it (indicating, I suppose, either acceptance or boredom). Michael Graves, whom Wolfe criticizes for doing lots of drawing and little building, has actually taken on commissions and produced buildings that are defining post-modernism (for more about these, the reader must resort to Google). I suspect Wolfe has continued to write articles on architecture; it would be nice if he could bring these together with a Second edition of FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE.
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