This title explores the technical innovations that opened up the cultural and intellectual opportunities for modern architecture to happen. It shows how the invention of steel and reinforced concrete radically altered possibilities for shaping buildings, transforming what architects were able to imagine, as did new systems for air-conditioning and lighting. Focusing on a selection of modern buildings that also symbolize bigger cultural ideas, this book discusses what modern architecture was like, why it was like that, and how it was imagined. It also demonstrates how modern architecture owes much to the work of some of the historians and critics who helped to shape the field.

Introduction -- Iron and steel -- Reinforced concrete -- Brick -- Light and air.