Paul Overy

This volume is a survey that illuminates the works of Mondrian and the architecture and designs of Oud, Wils, Huszar and Rietveld, all of whom aimed to create an objective art concerned with universal values, expressed in primary geometric forms and pure colors. De Stijl ("The Style"--Also known as neoplasticism) was the name given to the work of the architects, designers and artists associated with the magazine of the same title edited by Theo van Doesburg and founded in Holland in 1917. De Stijl was international in its outlook: in contact with the Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists, it helped create the ideology and formal language of modernism.

"In this groundbreaking book, Paul Overy takes a fresh look at the geometric forms and sparkling surfaces of the new architecture. He explores the preoccupations of the period with air and sunshine, space, health, hygiene and whiteness, and how, together with the Utopian notions of 'the clean machine' and the model factory, these concerns became fundamental to the development of new architectural and design practices. Individual buildings, including both little-known and more familiar examples in Europe and the United States by architects such as Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Jan Duiker, Berthold Lubetkin and Richard Neutra, are examined within the context of class and social control, luxury and austerity, race and colonialism." "Illustrated with many unusual photographs, including those that capture the buildings in their early state, Light, Air and Openness is an original and refreshing reinterpretation of the modern movement in architecture and design."--BOOK JACKET.