TOMORROW'S SMALL HOUSE: MODELS AND PLANS
The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 5, 1945
Elizabeth B. Mock [Curator]
Elizabeth B. Mock [Curator]: TOMORROW'S SMALL HOUSE: MODELS AND PLANS. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1945. First edition [The Museum of Modern Art Bulletin, Vol. XII, No. 5, 1945]. A very good orbetter softcover booklet in printed 4-color wrappers: wrappers lightly worn and toned. Interior unmarked and very clean. Four-color photo cover-- very unusual for the Museum of Modern Art.
7.25 x 9.25 stapled softcover bulletin with 20 pages and 19 black and white photographs and floorplans. Rare MoMA Exhibition catalogue for an exhibition of architectural models sponsored by MoMA that ran from May 28 to September 30, 1945. Includes black and white images of models and floorplans by George Fred Keck, Carl Koch, Philip Johnson, Mario Corbett, Hugh Stubbins, Plan-Tech Associates, Vernon DeMars, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Also included is a transcript of a radio address delivered by FDR on the occasion of the opening of the Museums' new Building on May 8, 1939.
Modern architecture isn't just another imitative style. It is an attitude towards life, an approach which starts with living people and their needs, physical and emotional, and tries to meet them as directly as possible, with the best procurable means. Otherwise there are no rules. The results will be as various as the range of materials offered, the human problems posed, and the creative talent employed in solving them . . . The most delicate part of your job as client will be the selection of an architect. — Elizabeth Mock
A very important record of how the mandarins at the Museum of Modern Art would prefer to see American housing trends go after the end of World War II. A very desirable book that pinpoints the move away from the streamline and moderne styles of the thirties through the International Style onward into the future. Highly recommended.
Terence Riley noted that the early tastemakers at MoMA understood their job was to separate “the wheat from the chaff.” Few people rose to that challenge with more vigor than Philip Johnson, the young head of the Department of Architecture and Design. Alfred Barr’s insistence on including Architecture and Design as a fully functioning department within MoMA was a radical curatorial departure, which seems only obvious today.
Philip Johnson, Alfred H. Barr, Jr. and Henry-Russell Hitchcock codified their observations about modern architecture in the 1932 landmark Museum of Modern Art show "The International Style: Architecture Since 1922." The show was profoundly influential and is seen as the introduction of modern architecture and architects Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe to the American public. The exhibition was also notable for a controversy: architect Frank Lloyd Wright withdrew his entries in pique that he was not more prominently featured.
As critic Pater Blake has stated, the importance of this show in shaping American architecture in the century "cannot be overstated." In the book accompanying the show, coauthored with Hitchcock, Johnson argued that the new modern style maintained three formal principles: 1. an emphasis on architectural volume over mass (planes rather than solidity) 2. a rejection of symmetry and 3. rejection of applied decoration. The definition of the movement as a "style" with distinct formal characteristics has been seen by some critics as downplaying the social and political bent that many of the European practitioners shared.