Modern Architecture in a Post-Modern Era

Join us for the book launch of Modern Architecture in a Post-Modern Era

This book provides a survey of contemporary development in architecture from the 1960’s onwards, charting a middle course between the ‘aesthetic’ histories that examine architecture solely in terms of its formal aspects, and the ‘ideological’ histories that subject it to a critique that often skirts the discussion of its formal aspects. Global in scope, each chapter begins with a theoretical overview of the ‘paradigm’ in question, leading to an examination of its main actors and projects. The survey concludes with a section on more recent trends, including environmental concerns that placed sustainability as one of the main objectives in architecture in parallel to an aesthetic direction that blurs the boundaries between architecture and art, relying on technological innovations to develop ever more complex forms.

Elie G. Haddad is Professor of Architecture and currently Dean of the School of Architecture and Design at the Lebanese American University. Among his recent publications are Henry van de Velde on Rational Beauty, Empathy and Ornament (2022), and The Contested Territory of Architectural Theory (2022).

David Cunningham is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture and Deputy Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster. He has published widely on architectural and urban theory as well as on aesthetics, modernism and the novel. He is also a long-standing editor of the journal Radical Philosophy.

Nadir Lahiji is the author of the forthcoming Kojin Karatani's Philosophy of Architecture (Routledge, 2024). His recent books include: Architecture in the Age of Pornography: Reading Alain Badiou (2022); Architecture, Philosophy and Pedagogy of Cinema: From Benjamin to Badiou (2021); Architecture or Revolution: Emancipatory Critique After Marx ( 2021).

Teresa Stoppani is professor of Architecture and Director of Architecture and Interior Design at Norwich University of the Arts and lectures in History and Theory Studies at the Architectural Association. Her publications include Paradigm Islands: Manhattan and Venice (2010), This Thing Called Theory (2016) and Unorthodox Ways to Think the City (2019).

We are delighted to welcome Elie and guests to the AA Bookshop to celebrate the launch of his new publication over refreshments.

The book will be sold at the special price of £35 on the evening (RRP £45)