domus Band II, 1940 - 1949

For eight decades, domus has been hailed as the world's most influential architecture and design journal. Founded in 1928 by the great Milanese architect Gio Ponti, the magazine's central agenda has always remained that of creating a privileged insight toward identifying the style of a particular age, from Art Deco, Modern Movement, Functionalism and Postwar to Pop, Postmodernism and Late Modern. Beautifully designed and comprehensively documented, page after page domus presents some of the most exciting design and architecture projects from around the world.

This volume covers the 1940s, when fascism came to a climax and World War II led to the extensive destruction of Europe. But the second half of this decade was also a time of reconstruction, democratization, and the related search for new social values. Unlike in Nazi Germany, in fascist Italy Modernism was able to advance in architecture and design - as proved impressively by the buildings and designs by Carlo Mollino, Gian Luigi Banfi, Franco Albini, and Giuseppe Terragni that are documented herein. After the war, Organic Design emerged alongside the International style. This edition reflects upon the economic, social, and cultural problems of the time, but also shows how the force of the avant-garde continued to thrive in Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia and the USA. Reports and features on modern industrial design and furniture, as well as domestic and business interiors stand side by side with articles about novel prefabricated houses and modern American residential and academic architecture.