Theory and Design in the First Machine Age

“This is still a very important book today. Reyner Banham revised what we understand as modern architecture. The first designers, critics and historians saw modern architecture mostly in terms of how industrial technology had transformed structure and space. Banham focused instead on the imaging of these new technologies, which led him to stress expressionist and futurist architecture far more than the first generation of readers of modern architecture. His revision was also an attempt to periodise modern design. The book was written in the context of the Independent Group in London – the group that launched the idea of pop art. From that moment Banham had enough distance from the modern movement of the 1920s and 1930s to reassess it.” Read more...

The best books on Pop Art

Hal Foster, Art Historians, Critics & Curator

“Banham is one of the people who taught me how to write, to the extent that I have learnt, of course. He was a professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London but he also did this kind of funky journalism in New Society and The Listener, when they did funky journalism. He was very involved in the Pop movement – he was one of the organisers of the 1956 exhibition This Is Tomorrow. He was in love with America and Americana and he showed me that you can be an academic and have an intellect but you can still write about cars. He legitimised the study of pop culture. He undermined the assumptions of the Modernist Movement, the assumption being that there is only one true direction of history. “ Read more...

The best books on Pop Modern

Stephen Bayley, Art Historians, Critics & Curator