The Bohemian-born Swiss architectural historian Sigfried Giedion, subject of Reto Geiser's Giedion and America, is best known as the author of Space, Time and Architecture, an influential, yet exclusive, account of the history of modern architecture first published in 1941. Trained by art historian Heinrich Wölfflin in Munich during the 1920s, Giedion played a key role in the formation of the modern movement, defining and promoting it in dialogue with colleagues such as Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and László Moholy-Nagy. From 1941 to 1962, his book sold 65,000 copies (86)—far from best-seller counts, but a substantial number for a book on architectural history.
Geiser's important biographical and historiographic study of Giedion is based, in part, on research the author conducted for his 2010 doctoral thesis at ETH Zurich, “Giedion in Between: A Study of Cultural Transfer and Transatlantic Exchange 1938–1968.”1Giedion and America is rigorously researched and...
University of California Press