The Modern House

Artist: F.R.S.Yorke 
Author: F.R.S.Yorke 
Publisher: The Architectural Press 
Date: 1943 
Condition: From the fourth edition, hardback, in the light blue cloth boards with white embossing, this is a nice but used copy. There is a slight crease to the bottom front corner, and some light tanning to the upper edges. Internally, apparently complete and unmarked, the owner's name in ink and dated Dec 1943 to the first flyleaf.

F.R.S.Yorke's seminal volume was first published in 1934 and was enough of a hit to have new editions published in 1935 and 1937 before this revised edition 'with additional American examples' appeared. Bought by the owner as new, it is worth remembering that in December 1943, the outcome of WWII was by no means certain, D-Day was still seven months away and there would be a lot of difficult times yet to come before anyone might realistically think about building themselves a modernist white house. Yet clearly some were.

Yorke is a key figure in the modernist architecture circles in Britain, designing in a modernist style from the earliest days, working with Marcel Breuer from 1935-37 and later establishing the important firm of Yorke Rosenberg Mardall in 1944. 

The Modern House offered a very approachable but informative which manages to appeal to both the specialist and the layman, probably the reason why it ran to several editions! Filled with plenty of illustrations of houses in countries across Europe and further afield, as well as plans and even technical cut-aways of windows and roof sections, it is a fascinating insight into the vision behind what feels like a science of living.

If you, like me, have sometimes watched episodes of Poirot and marvelled at the superb modernist locations used, the chances are at least one will have been designed by Yorke or one of his associates. All in the little grey cells, Hastings....