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Summary
Summary
In the first volume of Makers of Modern Architecture (2007), Martin Filler examined the emergence of that revolutionary new form of building and explored its aesthetic, social, and spiritual aspirations through illuminating studies of some of its most important practitioners, from Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright to, in our own time, Renzo Piano and Santiago Calatrava.
Now, in Makers of Modern Architecture, Volume II , Filler continues his investigations into the building art, beginning with the historical eclecticism of McKim, Mead, and White, best remembered today for New York City's demolished Pennsylvania Station. He surveys the seemingly inexhaustible flow of new books about Wright and Le Corbusier, and continues his commentaries on Piano's museum buildings with a essay focused on the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Los Angeles.
There are less well known subjects here too, from the Frankfurt urban planner Ernst May to Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome. Filler judges Edward Durell Stone--the architect of the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, the Huntington Hartford Museum in New York City, and the Kennedy Center in Washington - to have been a middling product of his times, however personally interesting he may have been. And he looks back at James Stirling, who in the 1970s and 1980s was a veritable rock star of the profession," responsible for what Filler considers some of the very few worthwhile postmodernist buildings.
The essays collected here are not entirely historical, however. Filler also focuses on some of the most recent projects to have attracted critical and popular attention both in the United States and abroad, including Rem Koolhaas's CCTV building in Beijing and Bernard Tschumi's Acropolis Museum in Athens. He argues that Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa's New Museum in New York City is one of those rare, clarifying works of architecture that makes most recent buildings of the same sort look suddenly ridiculous. He calls Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's brilliant reimagining of the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia a latter-day miracle...a virtually unimprovable setting for its art. He finds Michael Arad's September 11 Memorial at Ground Zero a sobering, disturbing, heartbreaking, and overwhelming masterpiece. And he argues that Diller Scofidio + Renfro's Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and their work revitalizing the High Line and Lincoln Center in New York make them today's shrewdest yet most sympathetic enhancers of the American metropolis
Filler remains, in these seventeen essays, a shrewd observer of the pressures on architects and their projects - money, politics, social expectations, even the weight of their own reputations. But his focus is alwayson the buildings themselves, on their sincerity and directness, on their form and their function, on their capacity to bring delight to the human landscape.
Author Notes
Martin Filler was the longtime architecture critic of House and Garden until it ceased publication in 2007. He is the co-author, with Olivier Boissiere, of The Vitra Design Museum: Frank Gehry, Architect, and the author of Makers of Modern Architecture, Volumes I and II, based on essays from The New York Review of Books. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this superb follow-up to his first volume of essays on modern building's pioneers and major designers, architecture critic Filler (formerly at House & Garden, now a contributor to the New York Review of Books, where these 19 essays first appeared) brings his expertise to bear on architects who have been neglected (Carlo Scarpa), those who have fallen out of critical favor (Edward Durell Stone), and others whose standing has been debated (Eero Saarinen), while deftly evaluating the work of contemporaries such as Bernard Tschumi and Snohetta. The recurrent theme is personality and how it plays into the art form: Rem Koolhaas's "morally neutral attitude," for instance, as embodied by his controversial CCTV building in Beijing, which Filler faults for its "unconscionable destruction" of nearby landmarks and its chilling aloofness. Similarly, he suggests that James Stirling's "abundant architectural gifts" were thwarted by his irascible disposition. A highlight of the collection is Filler's deeply moving essay in support of Michael Arad's National September 11 Memorial-an unforgettable piece of writing that cuts through the media babel that surrounded the memorial's unveiling. Always a strong believer in public buildings' "direct social implications," Filler could be called the presumptive conscience of the architect; and his contribution to both architecture criticism and general readers' understanding is invaluable. 8 pages of photos. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Choice Review
Adept at writing for both scholars and interested laypeople, architecture critic Filler shows his encyclopedic knowledge to great advantage in this collection of 19 easily digestible essays, most of which were originally written for The New York Review of Books. Sample chapters include "Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White" (chapter 1), "Renzo Piano" (chapter 12), and "Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfre" (chapter 17). Filler's refreshingly candid appraisals of the various architects' works are set within their historical context, and often are juxtaposed with a discussion of the architects' personalities, personal lives, and biographical treatment. As the introduction notes, "If there is one recurrent theme that unites all these essays it is the central role that character and personality play in the creation of architecture." Though a couple essays are about architects already covered in volume 1 (CH, Feb'08, 45-3023), Filler has made a clear effort to broaden his approach by including women architects and present-day practitioners. Included are 16 pages of color plates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-level undergraduates, general readers, and professionals/practitioners. L. M. Bliss San Diego State University
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | p. ix |
Introduction | p. xv |
1 Charles McKim, William Mead, and Stanford White | p. 1 |
2 Frank Lloyd Wright | p. 17 |
3 Le Corbusier | p. 31 |
4 The Bauhaus | p. 45 |
5 Ernst May and Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky | p. 59 |
6 Oscar Niemeyer | p. 77 |
7 Edward Durell Stone | p. 93 |
8 Eero Saarinen | p. 105 |
9 R. Buckminster Fuller | p. 121 |
10 Carlo Scarpa | p. 133 |
11 James Stirling | p. 147 |
12 Renzo Piano | p. 161 |
13 Rem Koolhaas | p. 177 |
14 Bernard Tschumi | p. 195 |
15 Tod Williams and Billie Tsien | p. 211 |
16 Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa | p. 225 |
17 Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro | p. 237 |
18 Snøhetta | p. 251 |
19 Michael Arad | p. 265 |
Illustration Credits | p. 277 |
Index | p. 279 |
Illustrations Follow Page | p. 120 |