Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This comprehensive examination of eighteenth and nineteenth-century architecture explores its extreme diversity within the context of tremendous social, economic and political upheaval. Bergdolls offers a penetrating analysis of the very ways issues of style functioned to make architecture one of the most vitally experimental of art forms in a period of sweeping political, social, and economic change. Never before had the functional requirements and expressive capacities of architecture been tested so thoroughly and with such diversity of invention. Bergdoll traces this experimentation in a broad range of contexts, focusing in particular on the relation of architectural design to new theories of history, new categories of scientific inquiry, and the broadening audience for architecture in this period of transformation. Unlike traditional surveys with long lists of buildings and architects, the themes are elucidated by in-depth coverage of key buildings which in turn are situated in both their local and European context.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• Part I Progress, Enlightenment, Experiment
• Chapter 1 Neoclassicism: Science, Archaeology, and the Doctrin of Progress
• Chapter 2 What is ENlightenment? The City and the Public, 1750-89
• Chapter 3 Experimental Architecture: Landscape Gardens and Reform Institution
• Part II Revolutions
• Chapter 4 Revolutionary Architecture
• Part III Nationalism, Historicism, Technology
• Chapter 5 Nationalism and Stylistic Debates in Architecture
• Chapter 6 Historicism and New Building Types
• Chapter 7 New Technology and Architectural Form, 1851-90
• Chapter 8 The City Transformed, 1848-90
• Chapter 9 The Crisis of Historicism, 1870-93
• Notes
• Timeline
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Picture Credits
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This is the book readers will wish they had when first studying later 18th- and 19th-century architecture. And fortunate are those who are able to start with it. Up-to-date in its breadth, approach, and bibliography, with excellent as well as unusual illustrations in black and white and color, it is so well written and organized that it makes sense of a complex period concerned with history, style, structure, and technology. Bergdoll (Columbia Univ.) divides the book into parts; the first, "Progress, Enlightenment, Experiment," covers neoclassicism, science, archaeology; the enlightenment, the city, experimental architecture, and landscape gardens. This part includes, e.g., a first-rate summary of the works of Robert Adam, and excellent coverage of landscape gardens throughout Europe and the works of Boullee and Ledoux. Part 2 concerns the early 19th century (Legrand, de Wailly, Soane, Gilly, and Nash). The third part covers the rest of the century, with chapters on nationalism and stylistic debates, historicism and new building types, new technology and architectural form, the city transformed 1848-90, and the crisis of historicism 1870-93. Excellent notes; good bibliography with comments; time line; glossary. Probably intended for beginners, but readers at any level will benefit from it. A superb book, highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. T. J. McCormick emeritus, Wheaton College (MA)

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Barry Bergdoll is Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York. Author and editor of numerous works on 19th century architecture, particularly in France and Germany, his publications include: Le Panthéon: Symbole des Revolutions (Paris, 1989), Léon Vaudoyer: Historicism in the Age of Industry (MIT, 1994), Karl Freidrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia (Rizzoli, 1994) and Mastering McKim's Plan (Columbia University Press, 1997). Bergdoll has served as curator or curatorial consultant at the Musée d'Orsay, Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and has served as exhibitions editor of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians