THE NEW MODERNIST IN WORLD ARCHITECTURE.

THE NEW MODERNIST IN WORLD ARCHITECTURE

By Patricia M. and Richard W. Snibbe. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1999. $79.95 ([pounds]63.99)

The Snibbes -- she a designer and he an architect, a former associate of Edward D. Stone -- have done a bold thing: they have produced an old-fashioned picture book of Modernism as a gesture of defiance against what they call 'a deluge of Postmodernism propaganda', which they believe to be devaluing architecture in the US. The result is touchingly nostalgic: many years have gone by since I have seen so heartfelt a championing of, for example, John Carl Warnecke & Associates' Hennepin County Government Centre in Minneapolis of 1977 -- a vast, stolid and at first sight charmless construction if ever there was one. Even the colours of the photographs here are often like those in old American magazines.

I regret that there are quite so many mistakes. But to dwell on technicalities is to miss the point. A flood of admiration for old-fashioned idealism and for simple delight in new forms and spaces is projected through double page spreads and very abrupt sentences (it took me a moment to figure out the meaning of 'Great Calder, a current addition -- at entry'), and out of some 90 projects from throughout the world, organized by building type, there is not much distinction between the wonderful and the less than wonderful. There are nevertheless some pleasant surprises: there are architects here, most noticeably ABK and Powell & Moya, who have never received the critical attention they deserve for their later work, and it had not crossed my mind that either of them would ever be held up as a model for architects in the US.

The Snibbes are naive if they think that they can counter the great pretentious racket generated around Postmodernism with this highly personal effort: but, with the necessary corrections, it would be a fun and healthy book for a beginner.