Principles of Modern Architecture is not a history of modern architecture. Its aim is thereotical and it represents an attempt to explain the basic tenets of the new architecture that came into being around the turn of the century. The many misunderstandings currently in circulation make such an attempt a timely one.

Modern Architecture represents an answer to the spatiality of the open world. "Pre-modern" currents, such as art nouveau and the new building technology paved the way for Le Corbusier's concept of the "free plan" in 1926, later supplemented by Mies van der Rohe's idea of "clear construction."

Modern architecture became a "movement" with the institution of the CIAM (Congres Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) in 1928 and has remained the only true expression of the open world of pluralism and globel interaction.

In this volume Christian Norberg-Schulz investigates the basic principles of modern architecture including the "free plan" and the "open form," as well as the manifestations of modern life in the terms "house," "institution," and "city." He also discusses the problems of "regionalism" and "monumentality" (meaning), and concludes with a summing up of the endeavours of modern architecture under the heading "The New Place."

This book is a thoroughly revised edition of the author's Roots of Modern Architecture and is illustrated with his own photographs. It is a clear, concise, accessible account of what the modern movement really wanted and what it achieved by one of the world's leading architecture critics.