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Books

The man who gave the world (but not London) the glass skyscraper

Detlef Mertins's book on the architect Mies, who designed New York's Seagram Building, is suitably monumental

15 February 2014

9:00 AM

15 February 2014

9:00 AM

Mies Detlef Mertins

Phaidon, pp.544, £100, ISBN: 9780714839622

Modern Architecture, capitalised thus, is now securely and uncontroversially compartmentalised into art history, its bombast muted, its hard-edge revolutions blurred by debased familiarity. You have been to Catford? You have seen a heroic vision compromised.

Modern Architecture is no more threatening than abstract art, although the Swiss-French Le Corbusier retains a heady whiff of the opprobrium which attaches to bogeymen.

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