I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture

Carter Wiseman 2001 5 copies in the library

"I.M. Pei: A Profile in American Architecture" is the first full-length study of the life and work of his extraordinary artist. Illustrated from the rich archives of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the book charts Pei's progress from his birth in China in 1917 through every milestone in his career to his preeminent position today. The author, noted architecture critic Carter Wiseman, has supplemented extensive and meticulous research with many hours of conversation with Pei, his family, and his associates. He focuses his text on twelve buildings of special relevance to Pei's career, and, whether discussing the Kennedy Library, the Louvre, or the Meyerson Symphony Center, he carefully considers the projects architectural, sociological, and personal dimensions. One sees how Pei's artistic vision has emerged, how he has deftly met the demands of each new situation and client, and how his charismatic personality has affected events.

George B Post (1837-1913)

George B. Post: Picturesque Designer and Determined Realist

Sarah Bradford Landau 1998 not in the library

Architect George B. Post, one of the preeminent American architects of his time, is known not only for the exceptional quality of his many buildings but also for his contributions to both the technology and the practice of architecture. Acknowledged in his lifetime as the "father of the tall building in New York," Post designed a great number of buildings in a variety of types (hospitals, banks, city and country houses, in addition to commercial skyscrapers); his command of the latest developments in technology, planning, and style was evident throughout his long career; and his multifaceted practice continues to serve as a model for the profession. This volume, the first monograph published on Post (1837-1913), offers a chronological presentation of his career, starting with his studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and in the atelier of Richard Morris Hunt. Once in practice for himself, he received commissions for commercial and institution projects, including the Equitable Building in New York, the first office building to use elevators. At the same time he designed tall, Post also developed the engineering expertise to "design wide": structures with large open interiors, such as the Troy Savings Bank-Music Hall in Troy, New York. Two of his early skyscrapers, the twenty-story World (Pulitzer) Building and the twenty-six story St. Paul Building, were the tallest buildings in New York when they were built. His large open spaces culminated in the thirty-acre Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, called "the largest structure on earth." Other major projects included the New York Stock Exchange and the Produce Exchange in New York, a new campus plan and five building for the City College of New York in upper Manhattan, and the majestic Wisconsin State Capitol.

Eero Saarinen (1910-1961)

Eero Saarinen

Jayne Merkel 2005 1 copy in the library

For more than half a century people have marveled at the sweeping forms of the Trans World Airlines terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, lined up to enter the St. Louis Gateway Arch, and admired the mid-century modern lines of Knoll's Womb and Tulip chairs. Yet few outside the architecture profession can name the designer of these wide-ranging projects: the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961). Saarinen made the cover of TIME magazine in 1956, heralded as a key practitioner of postwar modernism. He counted among his clients several of the world's most powerful corporations and educational institutions (among them General Motors, IBM, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and pioneered the development of new materials and building technologies. Yet in the decades following his death, interest in his work waned and much of his archive became difficult to access This highly anticipated monograph is the first major publication on Eero Saarinen since the early 1960s and fills a significant gap in Saarinen scholarship. Written in an accessible, journalistic style, it will be of interest to architects and students as well as general readers interested in the significant figures of twentieth-century modernism

Eero Saarinen: an Architecture of Multiplicity

Antonion Roman 2003 2 copies in the library

Eero Saarinen was one of the great masters of American twentieth-century architecture, and the only whose career and work has not been documented in a comprehensive monograph-until now. Saarinen's buildings are famous worldwide: the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the TWA terminal in JFK Airport, Dulles Airport, outside Washington D.C., the CBS Building in New York, the General Motors Technical Center in Michigan, the US Embassy in London, and many other landmarks. Equally celebrated are his furniture designs, including the Tulip Table and Womb Chair. While Saarinen's exuberant, even expressionistic, forms were lightning rods for many critics, his unique personal style is now much admired, making him a key figure for many designers practicing today. Saarinen's was a career of innovation. His airport terminals combined the poetry of sculpture with daring structural feats and organizational genius; his pioneering industrial complexes for GM, IBM, and Bell Labs brought rational modernism to corporate America; and his furniture and residential buildings conveyed an optimistic, humane vision for the future. This lavishly illustrated monograph spans Saarinen's entire career, including his drawings, models, most important built works, and furniture.

Eero Saarinen, Shaping the Future

Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, ed 2006 5.0 stars/4 reviews not in the library

From the swooping concrete vaults of the TWA Terminal at JFK Airport to the 630-foot-tall Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the iconic designs of Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) captured the aspirations and values of mid-20th-century America. Potent expressions of national power, these and other Saarinen-designed structures—including the GM Technical Center, Dulles International Airport, and John Deere headquarters—helped create the international image of the United States in the decades following World War II. Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future offers a new and wide-ranging look at the entire scope of Saarinen’s career. This is the first book on Saarinen to incorporate significant research and materials from the newly available archives of his office, and includes the most complete portfolio of Saarinen's projects to date—a chronological survey of more than 100 built and unbuilt works, previously unpublished photographs, plans, and working drawings. Lavishly illustrated, this major study shows how Saarinen gave his structures an expressive dimension and helped introduce modern architecture to the mainstream of American practice. In his search for a richer and more varied modern architecture, Saarinen became one of the most prolific and controversial practitioners of his time.

Saarinen’s Quest, A Memoir

Richard Knight 2008 not in the library

An unprecedented glimpse behind the scenes at the practice of Eero Saarinen, one of the greats of mid-century American architecture. Covers 1957 to 1961, the period when Saarinen was working on iconic projects like Dulles International Airpot Terminal, the former TWA Terminal at Kennedy Airport and the St. Louis Arch. Richard Knight, Saarinen's "house photographer", documents in black and white photographs and a personal memoir the excitement of being part of this unparalleled creative team. Timed to coincide with a touring Saarinen retrospective (beginning at the Cranbrook Institute in fall 2007 and traveling to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, St. Louis, New York, and New Haven), the book includes a forward on Saarinen's artistic vision and office culture by Cesar Pelli, who began his career in the architect's office, and an afterword by architectural historian Pierluigi Serraino on the significance of large-scale model-making in Saarinen's work.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography

Meryle Secrest 1998 4.1 stars/18 reviews 8 copies in the library

Eric Peter Nash 1996 4 copies in the library

Neil Levine 1996 3 copies in the library

Presenting concise overviews of artists and movements that are uniquely American, these volumes distill the essence of their subjects with authoritative texts and lavish illustrations. This volume is a spirited introduction to the designs of an architectural master, showcasing his public and private work.

Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life

Ada Louise Huxtable 2008 4.3 stars/24 reviews 1 copy in the library

Renowned architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable?s biography Frank Lloyd Wright looks at the architect and the man, from his tumultuous personal life to his long career as a master builder. Along the way she introduces Wright?s masterpieces? from the tranquil Fallingwater to Taliesin, rebuilt after tragedy and murder?not only exploring the mind of the man who drew the blueprints but also delving into the very heart of the medium, which he changed forever.

Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders

William R Drennan 2008 4.0 stars/76 reviews 6 copies in the library

The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence.

The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship

Roger Friedland and Harold Zellman 2007 4.4 stars/49 reviews not in library

Frank Lloyd Wright was renowned during his life not only as an architectural genius but also as a subject of controversy—from his radical design innovations to his turbulent private life, including a notorious mass murder that occurred at his Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914. But the estate also gave rise to one of the most fascinating and provocative experiments in American cultural history: the Taliesin Fellowship, an extraordinary architectural colony where Wright trained hundreds of devoted apprentices and where all of his late masterpieces—Fallingwater, Johnson Wax, the Guggenheim Museum—were born. Drawing on hundreds of new and unpublished interviews and countless unseen documents from the Wright archives, The Fellowship is an unforgettable story of genius and ego, sex and violence, mysticism and utopianism. Epic in scope yet intimate in its detail, it is a stunning true account of how an idealistic community devolved into a kind of fiefdom where young apprentices were both inspired and manipulated, often at a staggering personal cost, by the architect and his imperious wife, Olgivanna Hinzenberg, along with her spiritual master, the legendary Greek-Armenian mystic Georgi Gurdjieff. A magisterial work of biography, it will forever change how we think about Frank Lloyd Wright and his world.

Frank Lloyd Wright and His Manner of Thought

Jerome Klinkowitz 2014 4.0 stars/1 review not in the library