German façade design

German architecture prior to the modern period has received less systemic, analytical study than that of Italy, France, and Britain. Scholarly discussion of broad traditions or continuities within Germanic or Central European facade design is even sparser. Baroque era studies of the region mostly devote themselves to isolated architects, monuments, or movements. Modernism's advent decisively changed this: Germanic architecture enjoyed sudden ascendancy. Yet, even so, study specifically of that region's facades still lagged - nothing compares to the dozens of treatments of Le Corbusier's facade systems, for example, and how these juxtapose with French neoclassical or Italian Renaissance methods. Given the paucity of multi-period studies, one can be forgiven for believing Germany's effervescence of radical, modern works seems unprecedented. This book takes up these multiple quandaries. It identifies and documents a previously unrecognized compositional tradition - characterized here as the 'screen facade' - and posits it as a counter-narrative critiquing the essentialist, 'authentic' canon currently dominant in Western architectural history.0By crossing evenly over the dividing line between the historical and modern periods, it offers valuable insights on indigenous roots underlying some aspects of Germany's invigorating early 20th-century architectural developments. The book chronologically examines 400 years of closely related facades, concentrated in Germany but also found in Austria, the Czech Republic, German-speaking Switzerland, and nearby areas of Central Europe. While nearly 75 buildings are mentioned and illustrated, a dozen are given extensive analysis and the book focuses on the works of three architects - Schinkel, Behrens and Mies.