Architecture in the United States

By Dell Upton

Book Overview

American architecture is astonishingly varied. From Native American sites in New Mexico and Arizona, and the ancient earthworks of the Mississippi Valley, to the most fashionable contemporary buildings of Chicago and New York, the United States boasts three thousand years of architectural history. It is characterized by the diversity of its builders and consumers who include Native American men and women, African, Asian, and European immigrants, as well as renowned professional architects and urban planners.
Leading historian Dell Upton's revolutionizing interpretation examines American architecture in relation to five themes: community, nature, technology, money, and art. In giving particular attention to indigenous, folk, ethnic, and popular architectures like Chaco Canyon, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Native American houses, as well as to the great monuments of traditional histories such as Jefferson's Monticello and Wright's Fallingwater, Architecture in the United States reveals the dazzling richness of America's human landscape.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019284217X
• ISBN13: 9780192842176
• Release Date: June 1998
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.6" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A New Look at American Buildings and Americans

This book will be a classic. It is not so much a history of American architecture as it is a sociology, and not so much a sociology as it is a subtle and invigorating study of the social relations and social dynamics of American buildings and the people who make and use them. The book's views can be startling---see the comments on Jefferson's Monticello, on Buckminster Fuller, on Richard Meier's Getty Center in Los Angeles. It is beautifully written and the photographs are often dazzling. It even tackles the American suburb and shopping malls. Its views of the development of architecture as a profession and the status of architecture in the history of art are provocative and incisive. Highly recommended.