Untapped – Modernist Town, U.S.A.
An enterprising publisher could have a lot of fun (though not necessarily make a lot of money) producing an illustrated map of America and calling it A Tour of Small-Town Modernism. Page by page, this hand-dandy travel guide would lead the archi-tourist through some of the lesser-known hotbeds of 20th-century design, carrying them from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Sarasota, Florida, to Boulder, Colorado. The itineraries could vary, and everyone could pick their own. But there’s one place where all roads would simply have to lead.
…
More recently, however, the town has come to recognize its architectural heritage as a major asset, celebrated annually with Exhibit Columbus, a summertime exhibition-cum-open house that puts the community’s built environment front and center. Seen as an extension of that booster-ish endeavor, American Modern is a terrific handbook, and the photographic portfolios—shot by the formidable Iwan Baan—that bookend the lengthy essayistic passages place an emphasis on the everyday-ness of the featured buildings, showing them in the course of their quotidian operations.