Arcadia Public Library

No understanding of the modern movement in architecture is possible without knowledge of its master builder, Mies van der Rohe. Together with documentation of his life, this film shows all his major buildings, as well as rare film footage of Mies explaining his philosophy. Phyllis Lambert relates her choice of Mies as the architect for the Seagram building. Mies's achievements and continuing influence are debated by architects Robert A.M. Stern, Robert...

Charles Gwathmey has held steadfast to the spirit of modernism in his architecture from the day he successfully built his parents' home in 1967 based on the theories of Le Corbusier and American individualism. Avoiding the nostalgia of fashionable postmodernism throughout the eighties, Gwathmey partnered with Robert Siegel, and their firm continues to create innovative houses, corporate, institutional and university buildings across America. This...

"From 1946 to 1973, Whitney Rowland Smith and his partner, Wayne Williams, designed more than 800 projects, from residential, commercial, and public buildings to housing tracts, multi-use complexes, and parks and master plans for cities. Working in the wake of the first generation of avant-garde architects in Southern California and riding the postwar building boom, their firm, Smith and Williams, developed a pragmatic modernism that, through remarkable...