Book Reviews
Abstract
I: Themes in Art, Architecture, Building History and Housing . ANDREW SAINT, The Image of the Architect. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983. xi + 180 pages, 59 illustrations, index. £10.95. This is a well written, carefully studied, and imaginatively conceived book. It contrasts European and American developments in the profession of architecture in the nineteenth century. It describes personal relationships between some of the leaders in twentieth-century avant garde architectural design, particularly those at the Bauhaus, and draws together biographical material which makes their activities more credible than hitherto. It celebrates no one school or architect, although it elucidates a number of stylistic movements and the careers of many designers. In the best sense of the word The Image of the Architect is revisionist. Its publication is timely; it appears as the reputation of Frank Lloyd Wright is emerging from partial eclipse and as Post Modernism has reintroduced stylistic liberty and the value of historically literate but independent imagination. It suggests that a new kind of architectural history and role for the historian may accompany these reassessments of design. The Image of the Architect is a series of seven discrete essays, which began as lectures at