JOHANNESBURG STYLE - ARCHITECTURE & SOCIETY 1880'S-1960'S IN SOUTH AFRICA

1993. Hard cover with dust cover, A4 size, 335 pages. Very good condition. Over 1 kg. Just as we have come to talk about distinctive styles of urban architecture in Europe and North America - such as Chicago Style - so Clive Chipkin argues that Johannesburg has evolved a recognisable style or procession of styles that are as interesting and deserving of serious consideration as those of other major cities of the world. Like Chicago, too, Johannesburg was the progeny of nineteenth-century industrial society, and its history is the story of its development as an industrial metropolis tied to the world market. In this lively and engaging work, Clive Chipkin sets the architecture of Johannesburg firmly against its historical context and surveys the development of the city's fabric and cultural style up to the 1960s. There are chapters on Victorian architecture - the first in the procession of building styles; on Edwardian architecture - which characterised the mining town of the early twentieth century that was fast growing into a little New York in the mid-1930s, with stunted skyscrapers to emulate their Manhattan paradigms. Further sections deal with the Modern Movement, Township Johannesburg, and Johannesburg's architecture after the Second World War.