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Mid-Century: The Latest Architecture and News

From Festivals to Schools, Cathedrals, and Bomb Sites: The Story of Mid-Century Modernism in Britain

The term “mid-century modern” conjures up images of a sharp-suited Don Draper, slender teak cabinets, and suave chairs from Scandinavia. That is, at least, one perspective of the design movement and a view more of 1950s-era Manhattan offices than anything else. But in Britain, mid-century modernism manifested as something slightly different, coming in the form of schools, cathedrals, housing, and an era-defining festival, all eloquently described and illustrated by the prolific architectural historian Elain Harwood in Mid-Century Britain: Modern Architecture 1938-1963.

I never met a straight line I didn’t like.

This is a book about a modern architectural movement that bubbled up in a small, conservative city at the bottom of the world.

Frank Bros.: The Store That Modernized Modern

In January 2017, the University Art Museum will open the exhibition Frank Bros.: The Store That Modernized Modern. Long Beach retailer, Frank Bros. Furniture was the primary U.S. source for the most coveted mid-century design at the height of the modernist era, furnishing nearly half of the Case Study Houses for Arts & Architecture Magazine. The store emphasized the principles of aesthetics and functionality in furniture design, and blurred the boundaries between art, design, and commerce with their exhibitions, innovative graphic design, marketing, and public relations.

Photography: Mid-Century Modern Churches by Fabrice Fouillet

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© Fabrice Fouillet

As Europe recovered from the death and destruction of World War II, countries got back to the business of rebuilding their communities and, of course, their churches. The need to make sense of the madness of the War was palpable - as was the need to express this modern-day spirituality in a form that broke from the past and embraced this new world.

The result was a bevy of European churches that - although often misunderstood by practitioners - represent some of our best-preserved examples of Modernist architecture. Photographer Fabrice Fouillet made it his mission to photograph these beauties in a series he calls "Corpus Christi." You can see the images - as well as Fouillet's description of the work - after the break...

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