Modern Forms, an on-going project, explores my particular interest in modern architecture around the world, from former Soviet bloc housing to American roadside buildings.
At once a reference work and a personal exploration of modernist architecture, this collection of photographs covers structures built between 1920 and 1989 in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Australia. These images range from iconic buildings, such as the Gateway Arch in Saint Louis and the Ukrainian Institute of Scientific Research and Development in Kiev, to little known structures such as the Balneological Hospital in Druskininkai, Lithuania or Oscar Niemeyer’s unfinished International Fair Grounds in Tripoli.
This body of work, counting several hundred photographs reveals how modernist architecture is the embodiment of political and social ideologies, especially in public institutions such as banks, churches, libraries and government buildings. While many of the buildings in this archive often go unrecognized, their forms are prominent in the landscape of modern civilization.
Modern Forms is conceived as a free journey into architecture, whose criterion of classification is neither the style, function or architect of the buildings presented, but their design. The photographs are presented as a continuous flow of shapes, each structure leading smoothly to the next.
Modern Forms (2016)
Published by Prestel Publishing, London
Edited by Elias Redstone and Alona Pardo
Designed by Magdalena Ponagajbo
224 pages