Alison and Peter Smithson

About this book

"Striving to adapt the progressive ideas of the pre-war Modern Movement to the specific human needs of post-war reconstruction, Alison and Peter Smithson were among the most influential and controversial architects of the latter half of the twentieth century. As younger members of CIAM and as founding members of Team 10, they were at the heart of the debate on the future course of modern architecture, and by their polemics and designs laid the foundations for the New Brutalism and the 1960's Pop Art Movement. Alison and Peter Smithsons' reputation for controversy rather overshadowed the work at the heart of their architectural philosophy and practice: their designs for houses and their preoccupation with 'dwelling'. Although great admirers of Le Corbusier, they rejected his idea of the dwelling as a 'machine for living'. To the Smithsons, a house was a particular place, which should be suited to its location and able to meet the ordinary requirements of life and to accommodate its inhabitants' individual patterns of use. This book examines the evolution of their approach to the everyday 'art of inhabitation'. It does so by extensively documenting most of their designs for individual dwellings, especially their optimistic House of the Future of 1956 and the series of renovations of and additions to the fairy tale-like 'Hexenhaus' in Germany from the late 1980s onward. Included are essays by Beatriz Colomina, Dirk van den Heuvel and Max Risselada, plus a selections of texts by Alison and Peter Smithson"--Bookjacket.