From Bauhaus to Our House,   ISBN:9780553380637

Customer Rating: 

Nearly thirty years ago, Tom Wolfe put the architectural world in a tizzy when he published this essay attacking modern architecture.

Now, I'm not a big fan of glass & steel & concrete office buildings, but Wolfe is absolutely virulent on the subject. And therein lies the rub. He detests Bauhaus-inspired work so much that he has no perspective. He is guilty of the same pretentiousness and arrogance of which he accuses the architects whom he dislikes.

There is a great deal to be said against architects who prefer form over function, theory over practice. But any legitimate criticism is lost in this diatribe. Saying over and over again "it's ugly and I don't like the architects' politics" is not particularly persuasive.

Customer Rating: 

If you're an architecture student, this is the missing book. If you're just interested in architecture and how our built world ended up the way it has, this might go far toward showing you the almost accidental series of events which lead us to the 'Glass Box'.

This is satire at its very best.

Customer Rating: 

Tom Wolfe is the greatest!!!! This is a hilarious inside view into the world of architecture.

Customer Rating: 

This is an amusing, long essay about the rise of Bauhaus architecture. Wolfe adopts a sarcastic tone and challenges the "glass box" style of architecture. I found this to be very informative and interesting.

Customer Rating: 

There are a lot of legitimate arguments to be made against the Bauhaus and Purism, but Tom Wolfe seems too interested in writing a sprawling rant to really explore them. Only once, near the very end, did he mention that many of these buildings were not built on a human scale -- in my view, their biggest flaw. Instead, the book focuses on these issues, which seem minor in comparison:

1. Glass, steel, and concrete are bad.
2. Simplicity is bad.
3. Architects who bad together into compounds are bad.

It's hard to accurately judge this book properly, since I read it 30 years after it was written. Still, if Tom Wolfe wanted to make a case against this type of architecture, it seems like he could have set his ego aside and done a much better job.