Road Trip Reading: Making Architecture the Journey

Sam Lubell, author of Mid-Century Modern Architecture Travel Guide: East Coast USA has shared a brief excerpt of his work with Arch Daily—which is too good not to share.

Greater Refuge Temple, Costas Machlouzarides, 1968, New York, New York, USA. Image © Darren Bradley

“Few experiences are as wedged into our psyches as the Great American Road Trip—a rite of passage chronicled by luminaries from Alexis de Tocqueville to Jack Kerouac. The Great American Mid-Century Modern Architecture Road Trip? Not famous. But that’s one of the many reasons it’s so appealing. Discovery, in this global, digital age, when few corners are mysterious, has become a rare commodity. And discovery on the East Coast of America—in the context of one of the finest collections of Modern design in the world—is that much sweeter.”

– Sam Lubell Mid-Century Modern Architecture Travel Guide: East Coast USA 

TWA Flight Center, Eero Saarinen, 1962, Queens, New York, USA. Image © Darren Bradley

“Photographer Darren Bradley and I hit the road for several trips to make this endeavor possible. Along the way, from the icons of the architectural canon to the superlative surprises, we took in the beauty and technical prowess of these structures, gaining a clearer understanding of what makes great architecture. This architectural adventure proved for us—and will for you—an unambiguously inspiring experience. Mid-Century Modern architecture of course delivers a nostalgic journey into the past. But it also brings us into a time that valued the future above all else. Americans were thrilled by what was ahead of them and eager to right the wrongs of the past. Through politics, science, medicine, engineering, and, yes, architecture, they would build a better world free of its prior scourges. They would rethink space, light, materials, experience, meaning, everything.”

– Sam Lubell, from Mid-Century Modern Architecture Travel Guide: East Coast USA 

To read more of the except, click here.

Decatur High School, Bothwell and Nash, 1965, Decatur, Georgia, USA. Image © Darren Bradley

Mid-Century Modern Architecture Travel Guide: East Coast USA