William L. Price, Arts and Crafts to Modern Design

George Thomas 2000 3.0 stars/1 review not in the library

Architect George Howe thought there were three pioneers of American architecture: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and William L. Price. Although history has borne out Howe's observation on Sullivan and Wright, Will Price still awaits discovery. Price, a disciple of Frank Furness who practiced in Philadelphia from 1833 to 1916, established the architectural character of the two of the nation's greatest resorts, Atlantic City and Miami, thus shaping the architecture of the Roaring Twenties. Although his biggest and best-known projects, the Art Deco Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City and the Chicago Freight Terminal, are both destroyed, his arts and crafts utopian community in Arden, Delaware survive to attest to the vigor of his ideas and the leadership he exerted. Price left a legacy of exquisite houses, railway stations, and commercial structures stretching from Atlantic City to Chicago and from Canada to Florida taht were widely emulated and reacall the best works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Greene & Greene. In addition, Price was accomplished writer and furniture designer whose work was regularly featured in Gustav Stickley's The Craftsman.?

Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886)

Three American Architects: Richardson, Sullivan, and Wright, 1865-1915

James F O'Gorman, James F 1991 5.0 stars/1 review not in the library

O'Gorman discusses the individual and collective achievement of the recognized trinity of American architecture: Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-86), Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). He traces the evolution of forms created during these architects' careers, emphasizing the interrelationships among them and focusing on the designs and executed buildings that demonstrate those interrelationships. O'Gorman also shows how each envisioned the building types demanded by the growth of nineteenth-century cities and suburbs—the downtown skyscraper and the single-family home.

HH Richardson: The Architect, his Peers, and Their Era

Maureeen Meister 1999 no rating 1 copy in the library

In this book leading scholars reconsider the significance of the late nineteenth-century American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, perhaps best known for his design of Boston's Trinity Church. Against the long-held view of Richardson as an isolated and proto-modernist genius, they argue for a broader understanding of his work within the context of his times. Viewed this way, Richardson becomes a more challenging figure--an architect who in many ways was shaped by and was consistent with his era, even as he dominated it.Thomas C. Hubka and Margaret Henderson Floyd examine individual Richardson buildings as vessels for his ideas. Francis R. Kowsky and James F. O'Gorman clarify our understanding of Richardson and his work in comparison to his peers Frederick Law Olmsted and Frank Furness. Jeffrey Karl Ochsner considers the legacy of Richardson's influence. In addition to shedding new light on the architect, the book shows how much Richardson scholarship has changed and matured over the course of a century.Copublished with the Oakes Ames Memorial Hall Association.

John Soane (1753-1837)

John Soane, Architect: Master of Space and Light

Margaret Richardson and Maryanne Stevens 2015 5.0 stars/2 review

Without a doubt the most brilliant architectural innovator of his day, Sir John Soane (1753–1837) displayed a remarkable ability to adapt and modernize the language of classical architecture. The range of his built designs, from the ingenuity of his own house in London’s Lincoln’s Inn Fields (now Sir John Soane’s Museum) to the opulence and originality of the Bank of England, places him on a par with other leading European neoclassicists, such as Ledoux and Schinkel. His architectural vocabulary remains infl uential to this day. Back in print, this landmark publication considers Soane’s architectural achievements as well as his life and public role. It reproduces more than 100 of Soane’s drawings and contains specially commissioned photographs of his original models and existing buildings. Contributors discuss all of the architect’s major commissions, including the Dulwich Picture Gallery, the Law Courts at Westminster, and the Bank of England.

John Soane An Accidental Romantic

Gillian Darley 2000 3.0 stars/1 review not in the library

Pierre de la Ruffinière 1982 1 copy in the library

Paul Sherman 1962 1 copy in the library

Mervyn D Kaufman 1969 1 copy in the library

Patrick F Cannon and James Caulfield 2011 5.0 stars/1 review not in library

On the eve of the twentieth century, Chicago was rapidly outgrowing its borders. Architect Louis Henry Sullivan (American, 1856-1924) answered the demand for more office space, theaters, department stores, and financial centers by pioneering what would become an essential model for city life—the skyscraper. Blending Art Nouveau complexity with geometric elegance, Sullivan's tall buildings included Chicago's Auditorium Building, the largest building in the world when it was completed in 1889. Sullivan's design was heralded as the Wonder of the Age—a title equally fitting for the architect himself. Louis Sullivan's designs stand today as leading exemplars of Chicago School architecture. Even Frank Lloyd Wright, a former assistant to Sullivan, would later refer to him as his “lieber Meister,” or “beloved master.” Sullivan brought to his practice a conviction that ornamentation should arise naturally from a building's overall design, restating, in a large or small way, themes expressed in the structure as a whole. Having spent much of his career in a late Victorian world that bristled with busy, fussy ornament for ornament's sake, Sullivan refuted the fashionable style with the now famous dictum “Form follows function.” This break from tradition is perhaps most evident in Sullivan's strides to reimagine the commercial space—from America's earliest skyscrapers to the

Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807-1880)

The Wyatts, an Architectural Dynasty

J M Robinson 1980 no rating not in the library

The first full-scale study of a family which dominated English architecture for 150 years and which counted among its members some of the most accomplished, most prolific, and most eccentric English neo-classical and gothic revival architects.

David Adler (1882-1949)

David Adler, Architect: The Elements of Style

Richard Guy Wilson and Pauline Metcalf 2002 4.0 stars/2 reviews not in library

David Adler (1882-1949) was one of the most important architects designing homes and estates in the United States during a period known as that of the "great American house". Adler's works, which range in date from 1911 to 1949, were truly American, offering an enormous range of stylistic expression on the exteriors and a simpler definition of interiors than traditional European models allowed. This volume features 17 homes and one private club designed by Adler, all of which are reproduced in colour with commissioned photographs by the firm of Hedrich Blessing.

Christopher Alexander (1936 - ) *****

The Battle for Life and the Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems

Chistopher Alexander and Hans Joachim Neis 2012 4.5 stars/8 reviews not

The purpose of all architecture, writes Christopher Alexander, is to encourage and support life-giving activity, dreams, and playfulness. But in recent decades, while our buildings are technically better--more sturdy, more waterproof, more energy efficient-- they have also became progressively more sterile, rarely providing the kind of environment in which people are emotionally nourished, genuinely happy, and deeply contented. Using the example of his building of the Eishin Campus in Japan, Christopher Alexander and his collaborators reveal an ongoing dispute between two fundamentally different ways of shaping our world. One system places emphasis on subtleties, on finesse, on the structure of adaptation that makes each tiny part fit into the larger context. The other system is concerned with efficiency, with money, power and control, stressing the more gross aspects of size, speed, and profit. This second, "business-as-usual" system, Alexander argues, is incapable of creating the kind of environment that is able to genuinely support the emotional, whole-making side of human life. To confront this sterile system, the book presents a new architecture that we--both as a world-wide civilization, and as individual people and cultures--can create, using new processes that allow us to build places of human energy and beauty. The book outlines nine ways of working, each one fully dedicated to wholeness, and able to support day-to-day activities that will make planning, design and construction possible in an entirely new way, and in more humane ways. An innovative thinker about building techniques and planning, Christopher Alexander has attracted a devoted following. Here he introduces a way of building that includes the best current practices, enriched by a range of new processes that support the houses, communities, and health of all who inhabit the Earth.

The Timeless Way of Building

Christopher Alexander 1979 4.7 stars/53 reviews 1 copy in the library

The theory of architecture implicit in our world today, Christopher Alexander believes, is bankrupt. More and more people are aware that something is deeply wrong. Yet the power of present-day ideas is so great that many feel uncomfortable, even afraid, to say openly that they dislike what is happening, because they are afraid to seem foolish, afraid perhaps that they will be laughed at. Now, at last, there is a coherent theory which describes in modern terms an architecture as ancient as human society itself. The Timeless Way of Building is the introductory volume in the Center for Environmental Structure series, Christopher Alexander presents in it a new theory of architecture, building, and planning which has at its core that age-old process by which the people of a society have always pulled the order of their world from their own being. Alexander writes, "There is one timeless way of building. It is thousands of years old, and the same today as it has always been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. And as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form as the trees and hills, and as our faces are."

Christopher Alexander: The Search for a new Paradigm in Architecture

Stephen Grabow 1983 5 stars/2 reviews not in library

Reviewer: I am a major fan of Christopher Alexander's work, and this text was very illuminating. The book is made up of Grabow's own commentary interspersed between lengthy transcriptions of Alexander's own words. In many ways this book is a study of Christopher Alexander via Thomas Kuhn and the history of science.

Pattern Theory: Introduction and Perspective on the Tracks of Christopher Alexander

Helmut Leitner 2015 5.0 stars/1 review not in the library

This book “Pattern Theory” summarizes the work of an important contemporary thinker, the architect and systems theorist Christopher Alexander, an emeritus professor at the University of Berkeley, California. In 1979 one of his books, "A Pattern Language", an 1100-page-essay on architecture and human life, became a non-fiction best seller that attracted half a million readers and continues to inspire people from many disciplines. The still broader four-volume essay "The Nature of Order" was published 2002-2004 as magnum opus. The life work of Alexander is outstanding. He develops a general theory of living systems, a systems theory based on the concepts center, wholeness and transformation by using design patterns and pattern languages as parts of the method. There is a whole new cosmos of thinking with astonishing bandwidth: Alexander suggests a new scientific paradigm that stands in opposition to the traditional causal mechanistic paradigm of natural science – and he offers a new knowledge format as a way to enable people and support their participation in design processes. Alexander's theories have already proven useful in education, organizational development, permaculture, and in software the design patterns have even become mainstream. Many disciplines are about to follow in this development. Pattern theory allows us to change our thinking, to rethink our world and to move towards a fairer society. This leads to more participation and higher sustainability. Alexander's concepts form a mental toolbox for societal change and innovation.

Geoffrey Bawa (1919-2003)

Geoffrey Bawa: The Complete Works

David Robson 2002 5.0 stars/4 reviews not in the library

Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, born 1919, fused local construction traditions with modern forms and sensibility to create harmonious and pleasurable buildings that have become legendary in the region and influential around the world. This volume is a documentation and appreciation of the man and his work. Part One contains three chapters on Bawa's early life, the history of Sri Lankan architecture and Bawa's first firm, which he eventually took over. Part Two, comprising four chapters, is the heart of the book and presents all Bawa's major works by project, through extensive texts, drawings and plans. Part Three features two chapters: a long, single chapter devoted to Bawa's two life-long projects - his house in Colombo and his estate Lunuganga - which came to encapsulate his entire oeuvre; and a postscript which sums up the work and describes its relevance to contemporary architectural practice.

Bawa: the Sri Lank Gardens

David Robson 2009 5 copies in the library

Robert R Potter 1990 5 copies in the library

Lloyd Steven Sieden 2000 4.7 stars/17 reviews 3 copies in the library

Buckminster Fuller, the brilliant and eccentric futurist philosopher best known as the inventor of the Geodesic Dome, was one of the most creative contributors to innovative thought and technology in the twentieth century. Incomparable designer, engineer, and architect, he proved that a lone genius, through sheer initiative, can have an astounding impact on the world. In this inspiring account of Fuller's life and legacy, Lloyd Steven Sieden brings new light to Fuller's belief system and recognizes his many contributions to humanity.

New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller

Chu, Hsiao-Yun; Trujillo, Roberto 2009 no rating not in the library

A serious scholarly look at the work of R. Buckminster Fuller is long overdue. While Fuller himself wrote and published many volumes, and several biographies were written about him, there is little research that contributes to a critical understanding of his work and its historical significance. The 1,300-plus linear feet of material contained in the Fuller Archive at Stanford, including papers, photographs, audio and video recordings, and models, has been recently organized and described by the Department of Special Collections, and is ready to be explored by a new generation of scholars. Fuller's work has often suffered from lopsided treatment. Some laud him as a planetary prophet whose design science work foretold sustainable architecture and nanotechnology; others dismiss him as a "delirious technician" with a talent for linguistic obfuscation. Between adulation and disdain must lie a balanced picture of Fuller's life and his work. This volume paints that picture by taking a broader historical view, discussing Fuller and his work in the context of larger social and cultural patterns. Fuller is a common thread in a critical cultural history that will show him to be both a participant in and a product of his times. By placing Fuller and his work in a historical framework, we will arrive at a much richer understanding of both this self-made polymath and his times. This fresh, contextual look at Fuller's work from leading scholars in different fields is an important step toward filling the void of serious scholarship on Fuller.

Frank Gehry (1929 -)

Frank Gehry

Valerie Bodden 2009 3 copies in the library

Frank Gehry, Architect

J Fiona Ragheb 2001 2 copies in the library

Barbara Isenberg 2009 4.8 stars/15 reviews 3 copies in the library

An unprecedented, intimate, and richly illustrated portrait of Frank Gehry, one of the world’s most influential architects. Drawing on the most candid, revealing, and entertaining conversations she has had with Gehry over the last twenty years, Barbara Isenberg provides new and fascinating insights into the man and his work. Gehry’s subjects range from his childhood—when he first built cities with wooden blocks on the floor of his grandmother’s kitchen—to his relationships with clients and his definition of a “great” client. We learn about his architectural influences (including Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright) and what he has learned from Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rauschenberg. We explore the thinking behind his designs for the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the redevelopment of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn and Grand Avenue in Los Angeles, the Gehry Collection at Tiffany’s, and ongoing projects in Toronto, Paris, Abu Dhabi, and elsewhere. And we follow as Gehry illuminates the creative process by which his ideas first take shape—for example, through early drawings for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, when the building’s trademark undulating curves were mere scribbles on a page. Sketches, models, and computer images provided by Gehry himself allow us to see how so many of his landmark buildings have come to fruition, step by step.

Victor Gruen (1903-1980)

Mall Maker: Victor Gruen, Architect of an American Dream

M. Jeffrey Hardwick 2003 4.8 stars/8 reviews not in the library

The shopping mall is both the most visible and the most contentious symbol of American prosperity. Despite their convenience, malls are routinely criticized for representing much that is wrong in America—sprawl, conspicuous consumption, the loss of regional character, and the decline of Mom and Pop stores. So ubiquitous are malls that most people would be suprised to learn that they are the brainchild of a single person, architect Victor Gruen. An immigrant from Austria who fled the Nazis in 1938, Gruen based his idea for the mall on an idealized America: the dream of concentrated shops that would benefit the businessperson as well as the consumer and that would foster a sense of shared community. Modernist Philip Johnson applauded Gruen for creating a true civic art and architecture that enriched Americans' daily lives, and for decades he received praise from luminaries such as Lewis Mumford, Winthrop Rockefeller, and Lady Bird Johnson. Yet, in the end, Gruen returned to Europe, thoroughly disillusioned with his American dream. In Mall Maker, the first biography of this visionary spirit, M. Jeffrey Hardwick relates Gruen's successes and failures—his work at the 1939 World's Fair, his makeover of New York's Fifth Avenue boutiques, his rejected plans for reworking entire communities, such as Fort Worth, Texas, and his crowning achievement, the enclosed shopping mall. Throughout Hardwick illuminates the dramatic shifts in American culture during the mid-twentieth century, notably the rise of suburbia and automobiles, the death of downtown, and the effect these changes had on American life. Gruen championed the redesign of suburbs and cities through giant shopping malls, earnestly believing that he was promoting an American ideal, the ability to build a community. Yet, as malls began covering the landscape and downtowns became more depressed, Gruen became painfully aware that his dream of overcoming social problems through architecture and commerce was slipping away. By the tumultuous year of 1968, it had disappeared.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)

Architects of fortune: Miies Van der Rohe and the Third Reich

Elaine Hochman 1989 4.3 stars/3 reviews

Few architects have received more praise during their life and more criticism after their death than Mies van der Rohe. In this meticulously researched and suspenseful book, Hochman examines a particularly difficult chapter in Mies's career: the years in Germany between 1933 and 1937 when personal and artistic freedoms were under attack by Nazi leaders. Hochman chillingly re-creates this chaotic and desperate time, documenting how Germany's leading architect was pulled into the crass political machinations of the day. The result is a fascinating tour de force, shedding new light on this period of Mies's life and providing fresh insights into his architecture.

Mies Van Der Rohe; A Critical Biography

Franz Schulze 1985 4.9 stars/7 reviews 3 copies in the library

Peter Blake 1996 1 copy in the library

Louise Chipley Slavicek 2010 2 copies in the library

In 1935, 17-year-old I.M. Pei left his family in Shanghai, China, to study architecture in the United States. Though he had intended to return home after earning his college degree, the Japanese invasion of China and the outbreak of World War II changed his plans. Following the Communist takeover of China in 1949, Pei decided to remain in America to develop his budding architectural career, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1954. Over the next half century, Pei would establish himself as one of the leading architects in the world. Best known for his dazzling glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre, Pei has designed dozens of other critically acclaimed structures, including the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Pei's latest project, completed when he was 91 years old, is the widely praised Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar.

IM Pei: Architect of Time, Place and Purpose

Jill Rubalcaba 2011 4.6 stars/18 reviews 2 copies in the library

Jill Rubalcaba tells the conflict-ridden stories behind six of Pei’s most celebrated buildings, all turning points in Pei’s distinguished career: National Center for Atmospheric Research (Boulder, CO), John F. Kennedy Presidential Library (Boston, MA), National Gallery of Art, East Building (Washington, DC), Fragrant Hill Hotel (near Forbidden City, China), Louvre (Paris, France), and the Miho Museum (Japan). Each story, illustrated with drawings, architectural plans, and photographs, follows Pei on his journey-from his search for design inspiration, through the trials of construction, to the finished project. Although Pei claims that he does not have a stylistic signature, his buildings are identified by geometric form and minimalist beauty, an integral relationship with their natural surroundings, and a profound respect for the past while exceeding the needs of those who utilize them, His architectural sensibilities and achievements have made Pei one of the premier architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Pei once explained his approach as requiring "a full understanding of the three essential elements-time, place, purpose to arrive at an ideal balance." Pei’s awards, buildings, a timeline, notes, suggested reading, and websites are also included.