FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“An excellent introduction to the architectural wonders awaiting anyone traveling to the cities of central Europe.”
Peter Jelavich, Johns Hopkins University

When Buildings Speak
Architecture as Language in the Habsburg Empire and its Aftermath, 1867û1933

Anthony Alofsin

How can a building speak? Look, through Anthony Alofsin’s eyes, at Budapest’s Royal Postal Savings Bank: its technologically advanced construction says modern no less clearly than the spoken word, while its references to Hungarian folk culture proclaim its historical roots. Revealing how such visual languages can express the conflicted identities of entire nations, Alofsin leads readers, in this long-awaited new work, on a lavishly illustrated tour of overlooked architectural brilliance.

Featuring more than 150 color photographs specially commissioned to highlight the neglected yet rich architecture of Central Europe—from national theaters and crematoria to apartment buildings and warehouses—this study calls on viewers to read buildings in two ways. By interpreting their formal elements in tandem with their individual contexts, readers can understand how people in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states expressed their cultural and political autonomy by tapping into the limitless possibilities of art and architectural styles.

Contending that these styles—these languages—made for an architectural era far more varied than the canonical focus on the International Style suggests, Alofsin remaps the built landscape for scholar and traveler alike, not only opening our eyes, but also showing us a new way to use them.

Anthony Alofsin is the Roland Gommel Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture and professor of art and art history at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910û1922, published by the University of Chicago Press, and The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard. He is also editor of Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and Beyond.

 

Anthony Alofsin is available for interviews. For more information, please contact Megan Marz at 773-702-7490 or mmarz@press.uchicago.edu