Paris: An Architectural History

Featuring 250 illustrations (most in color), this superb architectural history argues that Paris's organic beauty stems from a continuous classical building tradition that has survived the onslaught of functionalist modernism. According to Sutcliffe, a professor of economic and social history at the University of Leicester, England, even Art Nouveau was rejected by the Parisians. It was found inimical to a design tradition that extended from Louis XIV to the Second Empire's modernization program led by architect/planner Georges-Eugene Haussmann to the present. The ``machine age'' architecture prominent in the 1960s and '70s, as Sutcliffe shows, has been challenged by a new generation of architects emphasizing human scale, tradition and a closer aesthetic relationship between a building and its site. (Oct.)