Precious Metal German Steel, Modernity, and Ecology

Precious Metal explores this quintessentially modernist material―not for the heroic structural innovations it facilitated but for a deeper understanding of the role it played in the steady change of the earth. Focusing on the formative years of the architectural steel economy and on the corporate history of German steel titans Krupp and Thyssen, Christensen investigates the ecological interrelationship of artificial and natural habitats, mediated by steel. He traces steel through six distinct phases: birth, formation, display, dispersal, construction, and return. By following the life of steel from the collection of raw minerals to the distribution and disposal of finished products, Christensen challenges the traditional narrative that steel was simply the primary material responsible for architectural modernism.
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