Alan Powers

This unique visual history documents in pictures the most exciting and dynamic period of architecture: from the early 20th century to the present day, covering all the key movements, styles and architects, together with many lesser known but important names and buildings. Through archival and full-colour photography, plans and architectural drawings, the book illustrates the changing nature of architecture and its expansion during this period from the early developments of concrete and the steel frame, through national styles of architecture and the eruption of Modernism to the influence of science and engineering in the post-war period, the provocative arguments of Postmodernism in the 1980s, right up to today's superstars and global brands.

Bauhaus Goes West is a story of cultural exchange - between the Bauhaus emigres in the years following the school's closure in 1933 and the countries to which they moved, focusing in particular on Britain. Taking as its starting point the cultural connections between the UK and Germany in the early part of the 20th century, the book offers a timely re-evaluation of the school's influence on and relationship with modern art and design in Britain, concluding with the school's American legacy. Following the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, teachers and students found new opportunities in Britain and the United States. Among them were Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who simultaneously spent time in London before moving to America, an episode often overlooked but freshly explored here in the context of the interaction between German Modernism and British-based design reform from 1900. Other Bauhaus-trained artists - women as well as men - stayed in the UK and made important contributions into the 1960s. In America, Mies van der Rohe and Josef and Anni Albers had significant late careers, but, over time, the Bauhaus became a shorthand for Modernism's failure. Now, the centenary of the school's founding provides a key opportunity to reconsider how its values emerged and were contested both during its lifetime and beyond.