The Sources of Modern Architecture and Design [antikvár]

Introduction Where lie the sources of the twentieth century ? Sources bespeak a stream, then a river, and finally, in our particular case, the ocean of the International Style of the 1930s. Do Prometheus and the unknown inventor of the wheel stand by the source as the genii/otitis? No; because there are breaks, and our civilization is not connected with that distant past by a continuous flow. But even if we admit that civilizations 'rise and fall, crumble, are extended. Are renewed, destroyed', even if we keep within Western civilization, are the sources of the twentieth century then the invention of clocks with wheels and weights and of printing with movable type? They are; for without printing and clocking-in there could be no twentieth century. Mass communication and mass production are among the things distinguishing ours from all preceding centuries. However, it is only the quantitative exploitation which belongs exclusively to us, not the invention itself. And that is indeed a phenomenon to rank high in force among the sources of the twentieth century and therefore of modern art. The twentieth century is the century of the masses : mass education, mass entertainment, mass transport, universities with twenty thousand students, comprehensive schools for two thousand children, hospitals with two thousand beds, stadia with a hundred thousand seats. That is one aspect; the other is speed of locomotion, every citizen being an express-train driver on his own, and some pilots travelling faster than sound. Both are only expressions of the technological fanaticism of the age, and technology is only an application of science. Science, technology, mass locomotion, mass production and consumption, mass communication - in the field of the visual arts which is our field in this book, that means the predominance of architecture and design over the beaux-arts, it means the