Programs and Manifestos in 20th Century Architecture

The book, compiled by Ulrich Conrads, features manifesto-like texts by numerous architects who left their mark on 20th-century architecture, such as Henry Van de Velde, Adolf Loos, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruno Taut, Erich Mendelsohn, Naum Gabo, Le Corbusier, De Stijl, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, El Lissitzky, Buckminster Fuller, and Louis I. Kahn.

In her introduction for the 3rd edition, Sevinç Yavuz Glasser, who translated the book into Turkish, states:

“While Ulrich Conrads presented a panorama of the past sixty years to his readers, Central Europe was the cradle of modern architecture. Many of the programs and manifestos that spearheaded the movement, included in the book, can be said to have retained their topicality at that time, namely in 1964. Moreover, the situation was not much different in 1970 when it was published in English. The Turkish translation of the book, however, coincided with a period when, beyond modern architecture making its voice heard strongly outside Europe and the USA towards the end of the 20th Century, we faced problems such as rapid urbanization, migration, excessive population growth, environmental protection, global warming, etc.…”

In the book's foreword, Atilla Yücel describes the book as follows:

“… This compilation, encompassing architectural manifestos, action and program declarations, slogans, beliefs, and protests from a period spanning over half a century, from the early 1900s to the 1960s, is a vivid document of the emotional, belief, and intellectual atmosphere before the Modern Architecture Movement, during the ‘epic’ years of modern architecture, and after the movement…”