NO PLACE LIKE UTOPIA. MODERN ARCHITECTURE AND THE COMPANY WE "KEPT"

A practicing architect as well as an architectural critic, editor, and educator, Blake's half-century association with the Museum of Modern Art and the Architectural Forum placed him in the perfect position to observe, work with, and comment on the great figures of 20th-century architecture. Now Blake ( Form Follows Fiasco , LJ 9/15/77. o.p.; The Master Builders , LJ 11/15/60) has written an insightful and illuminating memoir of his life, including his observations on the development and--as he sees it--the selling out of the International Style. Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Eero Saarinen, Robert Venturi, and Philip Johnson are just some of the major figures discussed with honesty and intelligence. Along the way, Blake analyzes why the International Style, rooted in the European Socialism of the early 20th century, came to be embraced by the leaders of American Capitalism. Though proud of his own Socialist slant, Blake condemns communism's crimes against both humanity and aesthetics as harshly as he condemns capitalism's battering of humanity in that most important of areas, the built environment. Highly recommended for collections of architecture and design and for general readers interested in those fields.