Description
Thematically focused analysis of modern architecture throughout Texas with gorgeous photographs illustrating works by famous and lesser-known architects.
In the mid-twentieth century, dramatic social and political change coincided with the ascendance and evolution of architectural modernism in Texas. Between the 1930s and 1980s, a state known for cowboys and cotton fields rapidly urbanized and became a hub of global trade and a heavyweight in national politics. Relentless ambition and a strong sense of place combined to make Texans particularly receptive to modern architecture's implication of newness, forward-looking attitude, and capacity to reinterpret historical forms in novel ways. As money and people poured in, architects and their clients used modern buildings to define themselves and the state.
Illustrated with stunning photographs by architect Ben Koush, Home, Heat, Money, God analyzes buildings in big cities and small towns by world-famous architects, Texas titans, and lesser-known designers. Architectural historian Kathryn O'Rourke describes the forces that influenced architects as they addressed basic needs--such as staying cool in a warming climate and living in up-to-date housing--and responded to a culture driven by potent religiosity, by the countervailing pressures of pluralism and homogenization, and by the myth of Texan exceptionalism.
Product Details
| Publisher | University of Texas Press |
| Publish Date | May 07, 2024 |
| Pages | 280 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781477328927 |
| Dimensions | 9.8 X 7.0 X 1.4 inches | 3.1 pounds |
About the Author
Kathryn E. O'Rourke is an architectural historian and professor of art history at Trinity University. She is the author of Modern Architecture in Mexico City and editor of O'Neil Ford on Architecture.
Ben Koush is an architect and historian. He has written for Architects' Newspaper, Cite Magazine, Texas Architect, and HoustonMod.org.
Reviews
Smart, broadly readable, and beautifully produced...Koush's photographs pull off a hard trick, capturing essential qualities of each building's presence while mostly avoiding canonical framings...The book is particularly endearing in bringing to light the obscure...O'Rourke is able to clarify how most of the architecture supports a primary sociocultural narrative: that a happy unity in modernity favors an existing social and political power hierarchy. In so doing, O'Rourke brings to light many suppressed Texas narratives: of funding priorities that favored the powerful; of neighborhoods cleared and demolished; of local, racial, and social histories and identities suppressed.-- "Places Journal" (12/1/2024 12:00:00 AM)
Ben's photos provide an entrée into a different awareness of [Texas]--of cities and small towns, of neighborhoods and open highways, the worlds that locals and transients and tourists live and pass through...It's a truly beautiful book--gorgeously printed, filled with stunning images of interesting buildings--with a fascinating text that provides deeper knowledge of the social and cultural forces shaping architecture there from the 1930s to the 1980s.-- "Sighs & Whispers Newsletter" (7/17/2024 12:00:00 AM)
An expansive new book...tracks the cultural reach and style innovations of a state coming into its own...O'Rourke's detailed history...and Koush's photographs...weave together disparate threads of Texas design, with an eye toward materials, energy, climate and justice...Home, Heat, Money, God is both fittingly wide and surprisingly deep.-- "Bloomberg CityLab" (5/18/2024 12:00:00 AM)
I have a substantial library on the subject...and not one of those books might be considered definitive. Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture gets about as close as any. A chunky, colorful pleasure, it is the work of historian Kathryn E. O'Rourke, who provides the text, and the architect and critic Ben Koush, who supplies the photographs. . . . Many of the projects examined here will be familiar, but what makes the book so enjoyable (and an essential component of its argument) are those that are less so. Koush and O'Rourke have an admirable taste not just for the state's conventionally "important" architecture but also for the vernacular and idiosyncratic.-- "The Dallas Morning News" (5/6/2024 12:00:00 AM)
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