Process
It has been so long since the last time working on “Friends with an Old Book”, that I had to go through my old posts, to refresh my memory of Charles Antoin Jombert’s work. Since the full title means something along the lines of “Modern architecture: Building good architecture for all kinds of people”, I chose the following words to conduct my research on Alice:
Modern architecture
People
It must be said, that these words are so unspecific, the results on Alice may not be connected at all to my book. Yet I gave it a try.
Book1
“Form and function: A source book for the history of Architecture and Design 1890-1939” by Tim & Charlotte Benton
This book may have been written over a hundred years after “architecture moderne” was published, yet it was one quote that struck my eye. It said: “Do we really have to assure people for the hundredth time that modern architecture has nothing to do with Bolshevism?”
Modernity and new technologies and design principles tend to be countered with skepticism by a large audience. I wonder if the modern architecture Charles Antoine Jombert was describing in his book was also frowned upon. It is also astonishing, how the definition and look of “modern” changed over a hundred years.
Book2
“Modern Architecture: Being the Kahn Lectures for 1930” by Frank Lloyd Wright
I did not know that Wright published a book with literally the same title as the one that was assigned to me prior to this exercise. It leaves me wondering: Was Charles Antoine Jombert to the people of the 17th and 18th centuries the same as Frank Lloyd Wright is still to us to this day? I doubt that there are many similarities in the form of the architecture between the two, yet they were looking for the same solution to the respective problems of their societies.