By William J.R. Curtis (revised and updated). Phaidon, April 2015, 512 pages, $150. In the preface to his classic Le Corbusier: Ideas and Forms, published in 1986 and for the quarter century since the most thoughtful and complete analysis of the architect, William J.R. Curtis compared his subject's impact to that of Freud, Joyce, and Picasso. But why stop there? If the pronouncement-making passion of the early Corbusier makes him another Freud (explaining away the darkness, an answer for everything), then the later Corbusier—the architect of post-rational dreamscapes like La Tourette and Ronchamp —is another Karl Jung. There simply is
Edited by Nicholas Dagan Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and Lawrence J. Vale. Cornell University Press, April 2015, 296 pages, $70 (hardcover), $23 (paper). Nothing led to the disillusion with modern architecture during the postmodern era more than the critique of public housing. It was not, after all, Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1966) that really ushered in the new style. That book was too complex and subtle. Charles Jencks's more colorful and bombastic The Language of Postmodern Architecture (1977) was much more influential, and it began with a view of the destruction of Pruitt-Igoe. With one facile fell swoop,
Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks, edited by Donald Albrecht and Andrew S. Dolkart. Photographic portfolios by Iwan Baan. The Monacelli Press, 2015, 208 pages, $50. Filled with Iwan Baan's people-centric photographs of New York City's five boroughs and his famous helicopter aerials, Saving Place celebrates the 50th anniversary of the New York City Landmarks Law. “Much of what we love about New York today we owe to the law and its administering body,” writes Robert A.M. Stern in the introduction. With archival photographs, too, the book narrates the preservation movement, from its origins to its later
Edited by Okwui Enwezor and Zoë Ryan in consultation with Peter Allison; Yale University Press , April 2015, 296 pages, $55. Wrapped in golden tracery, this nearly 300-page book showcases the sophistication and craftsmanship of the London-based architect David Adjaye. The book's material is drawn from an exhibition organized by the Art Institute of Chicago (where it's on view until January 3, 2016) and the Haus der Kunst in Munich (through May 31). The introduction, written by curators Zoë Ryan and Okwui Enwezor, defines two essential threads in Adjaye's work: a strong sense of artistry, materiality, and craft, as well
Edited by Neil Spiller and Nic Clear. Thames & Hudson, November 2014, 352 pages, $50 (hardcover). This is actually three books in one. As a collection of 40 essays by 35 different authors, it is, first, an advertisement for the University of Greenwich's Department of Architecture and Landscape in its new location at the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site outside of London and its assumed new relevance. It is, alternatively, a platform for schools of architecture that indulge “radicality,” “innovation,” and visions of the “future.” And, finally, it is a history of various schools offering alternative (read: anti-institutional) modes of
By Luis E. Carranza and Fernando Luiz Lara with a foreword by Jorge Francisco Liernur. University of Texas Press, January 2015, 424 pages, $81 (hardcover) $45 (paperback). Whose Continent Is It Anyway? Eurocentrism Is Hard to Break. Except for a handful of anthologies and books focusing on specific architects or events, Latin America has received little attention in English-language histories of architecture. The Museum of Modern Art, though, mounted three exhibitions (and published accompanying books) on the region in the 20th century—Brazil Builds in 1943, Latin American Architecture Since 1945 in 1955, and The Architecture of Luis Barragán in 1976—and
Edited by Rosemarie Haag Bletter and Joan Ockman, with Nancy Eklund Later. Yale University Press, February 2015, 348 pages, $80. Thirty years after the legendary show Modern Architecture: An International Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), its curators, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, launched a series of symposia assessing the development of this new architecture. Whereas the MoMA show was accompanied by a book, the symposia had to wait almost 50 years for the proceedings to be published. It is like opening a time capsule—and a compelling one. The three Modern Architecture Symposia (MAS) took place at Columbia
By Jari Jetsonen and Sirkkaliisa Jetsonen. Princeton Architectural Press, October 2014, 224 pages, $50 (hardcover). Father and Son, Together and Apart This beautifully illustrated book covers most of the houses designed by Eliel Saarinen, with his partners and members of his family, and by his son, Eero, both with Eliel and with associates of his own. It is important because most writing about Eero pays far too little attention to the influence of his father or to the collaborative nature of both their practices. The authors, a photographer and an architect, know about cooperative family ventures, since they are married
By Deyan Sudjic. Rizzoli ex libris, February 2015, 488 pages, $25. This book begins, somewhat unpromisingly, with the author's disavowing the format he has chosen. About eight years ago, around the time he became the director of London's Design Museum, Deyan Sudjic agreed to write two books—The Language of Things (published in 2008), and this one, initially conceived as a “massive 250,000-word conventional dictionary of design.” The task seemed daunting, and Sudjic had not made much progress when his publisher relieved him of the problem—in the age of Wikipedia, people had stopped buying dictionaries. He could keep his advance, but
By David Ross Scheer. Routledge, August 2014, 258 pages, $40. In The Death of Drawing, David Ross Scheer, an architect and teacher specializing in digital technologies, lays out the contemporary practices of design that have pushed aside architectural drawing as the dominant means of architectural expression. The author crafts his sentences precisely, illustrating ideas that explain concepts clearly. If one wants to know what is going on in the profession and schools of architecture, this book is a must read. As a professor of architecture who teaches drawing, I was fascinated by this contemporary analysis of the act of creating.
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