Assistant Professor Scott Colman recently published Ludwig Hilberseimer: Reanimating Architecture and the City (Bloomsbury, 2023), part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series. The first synthetic account in English of German-American architect, art critic, and urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885–1967), the book contextualizes and brings to light works that, until now, have been subject only to fragmentary or highly specialized interpretations. Colman examines Hilberseimer’s significant contributions to the fields of architecture and urbanism, reassesses his work and writings, and situates him more fully in the history and historiography of modern architecture.
Hilberseimer was a notable figure in architectural circles in Weimar Germany, an important educator at the Bauhaus and subsequently at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and a key collaborator of acclaimed architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Colman’s book investigates the reasons for the relative obscurity of his legacy and offers a fresh perspective on Hilberseimer’s influence on modern and contemporary architecture and urbanism.
“Colman’s scholarship reminds us to assess and reassess our basic tenets about the history and legacy of modern architecture,” stated Igor Marjanović, William Ward Watkin Dean of the Rice University School of Architecture. “This book unpacks the complexity of global modernisms, revealing the ways in which Hilberseimer’s ideas about urbanism cut across the fields of art, architecture, and theory and echo through his time into our own.”
Ludwig Hilberseimer: Reanimating Architecture and the City is available for purchase on the Bloomsbury website.