The Word on Modernism:

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With its elegant graphics and entertaining text, Mary and Russel Wright’s Guide to Easier Living reflects the American popularisation of modernist architecture and design in the post-war period. The consumer boom of the 1950s was about to begin and Wright, an industrial designer, went on to produce a range of stylish and practical domestic products including the American Modern range of ceramics. This book was part of the Home Science School extension library.

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‘Mary and Russel Wright, Guide to Easier Living, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951. Private Collection

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The Modern House in America documents the growth of modernist architecture in North America from the mid-1930s to 1940. It shows the influence of the emigré European designers who settled there as well as regional forms. The timber houses of the San Francisco ‘Bay Area’ architects such as Hugh Stubbins (1912–) and William Wurster (1895–1973) were widely studied in New Zealand in the post-war period.

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James and Katherine Morrow Ford, The Modern House in America. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1945. Leith St, Bliss VAW +F

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It has often been observed that the modern New Zealand ‘Group’ house of the 1950s and 60s owes much to Californian architecture of the period. The abundance of exposed timber and new construction techniques such as post and beam coupled with large expanses of glass characterised modern building on both sides of the Pacific. This catalogue for an exhibition of houses around the San Francisco area was presented to the Library by Dr. H. D. Skinner of the Otago Museum.

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Domestic Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Region. San Francisco Museum of Art, 16th September to 30 October 1949. Leith St, Bliss VAW +S

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Built in USA: Post-war Architecture was published by the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art as a catalogue to a major exhibition of modernist architecture held in 1952. Essentially Henry-Russell Hitchcock (1903–1987) and Philip Johnson (1906–2005), the Department of Architecture and Design introduced modernist architecture into American art museums. Hitchcock and Johnson’s earlier exhibition The International Style (1932) gave its name to the period of consolidation of modernism in the 1930s.

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Built in USA: Post-war Architecture. Edited by Henry-Russell Hitchcock. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952. Private Collection