On Architecture Collected Reflections on a Century of Change

by Huxtable, Ada Louise

• ISBN13: 9780802717078
• ISBN10: 0802717071
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-28
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

The architectural revolution of the twentieth century as witnessed by America's preeminent architecture critic.Known for her well-reasoned and passionately held beliefs about architecture, Ada Louise Huxtable has captivated readers across the country for decades, in the process becoming one of the best-known critics in the world. Her keen eye and vivid writing have reinforced to readers how important architecture is and why it continues to be both controversial and fascinating. In her new bookwhich gathers together the best of her writing, from one of her first pieces in theNew York Timesin 1962 on le Corbusier's Carpenter Center at Harvard, to essays in theNew York Review of Books, to more recent writing in theWall Street JournalHuxtable bears witness to some of the twentieth century's bestand worstarchitectural masters and projects.With a perspective of more than four decades, Huxtable examines the century's modernist beginnings and then turns her critic's eye to the seismic shift in style, function, and fashion that occurred midcenturyall leading to a dramatic new architecture of the twenty-first century. Much of the writing inOn Architecturehas never appeared in book form before, and Huxtable's many admirers will be delighted to once again have access to her elegant, impassioned opinions, insights, and wisdom."Looking back, I realize that my career covered an extraordinary period of change, that I was writing at a time in which architecture was changing slowly but radicallya time when everything about modernism was being incrementally questioned and rejected as we moved into a new kind of thinking and building." And while it was a quiet, nearly stealth revolution, it was a absolutely a revolution in which the past was reaccepted and reincorporated, periods and styles ignored by modernism were reexamined and reevaluated. History and theory, once considered irrelevant, became central to the practice of architecture again."Ada Louise Huxtable, formerNew York Timescritic, winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, and MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, is currently the architecture critic for theWall Street Journal. She is recognized as the founder of contemporary architectural journalism. Her books includeThe Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion,Kicked a Building Lately?and, most recently, a short biography of Frank Lloyd Wright for the Penguin Lives series. She served for many years on the juries of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the American Committee of the Japanese Praemium Imperiale. She lives in New York City and Marblehead, Mass.Known for her well-reasoned and passionately held beliefs about architecture, Ada Louise Huxtable has captivated readers across the country for decades, in the process becoming one of the best-known critics in the world. Her keen eye and vivid writing have reinforced to readers how important architecture is and why it continues to be both controversial and fascinating. In her new bookwhich gathers together the best of her writing, from one of her first pieces in theNew York Timesin 1962 on le Corbusier's Carpenter Center at Harvard, to essays in theNew York Review of Books, to more recent writing in theWall Street JournalHuxtable bears witness to some of the twentieth century's bestand worstarchitectural masters and projects.With a perspective of more than four decades, Huxtable examines the century's modernist beginnings and then turns her critic's eye to the seismic shift in style, function, and fashion that occurre

Author Biography

Ada Louise Huxtable, former New York Times critic, winner of the first Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, and MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow, is currently the architecture critic for the Wall Street Journal.  She is recognized as the founder of contemporary architectural journalism. Her books include The Unreal America: Architecture and Illusion, Kicked a Building Lately? and, most recently, a short biography of Frank Lloyd Wright for the Penguin Lives series. She served for many years on the juries of the Pritzker Architecture Prize and the American Committee of the Japanese Praemium Imperiale.  She lives in New York City and Marblehead, Mass.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Preface: The Joy of Architecture	p. 1
The Way We Were
The Sixties: Modernism: USA	p. 5
World of the Absurd	p. 8
The Seventies: Forward, Backward, Sideways	p. 11
The Eighties: Breaking the Rules	p. 15
The Nineties: The New Architecture	p. 20
The Way We Built
Twentieth-century Icons and Images
Pan Am: The Big, the Expedient, and the Deathlessly Ordinary	p. 37
CBS: Eero Saarinen's Somber Skyscraper	p. 39
The Whitney's Bold New Look	p. 42
General Motors: A Mixed Marble Bag	p. 44
Boston's New City Hall	p. 48
It's So Peaceful in the Country	p. 52
The Building You Love to Hate	p. 56
The Meier Superstyle	p. 60
Order in the Courthouse	p. 67
Libraries in London and Paris	p. 71
Washington
The New House Office Building	p. 74
From a Candy Box, a Tardy and Unpleasant Surprise	p. 77
A Look at the Kennedy Center	p. 81
Full Speed Backward	p. 84
A Bureaucratic Behemoth of a Library	p. 88
Museums
The Sixties: What Should a Museum Be?	p. 93
Misalliance on the Mall	p. 99
The Eighties: Museums: Lessons from the Sixties	p. 102
The Nineties: The Guggenheim Bilbao: Art and Architecture as One	p. 107
Hot Museums in a Cold Climate	p. 111
Museums: Making It New	p. 114
Skyscrapers
The Tall Building Artistically Reconsidered	p. 132
Skyscraper Art Rides High	p. 139
The Myth of the Invulnerable Skyscraper	p. 142
Tall, Taller, Tallest	p. 145
Modernism and Its Masters
Le Corbusier
Bold Harvard Structure	p. 153
Architect of Today's World	p. 155
The Changing "Truth" of Le Corbusier	p. 157
Flexible Enough to Endure	p. 160
Mies van der Rohe
The Soaring Towers That Gave Form to an Age	p. 166
The Making of a Master	p. 168
Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto, Finnish Master	p. 175
A Library in Oregon	p. 177
Where They Do It Right	p. 181
An Enduring Legacy	p. 184
Louis Kahn
Exeter Library: Paean to Books	p. 188
The Meaning of a Wall	p. 191
Seeking the Father, Finding the Architect	p. 194
Walter Gropius
The Future Grows Old	p. 197
Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright Mythology	p. 201
Fallingwater: A Marriage of Nature and Art	p. 203
Modernism and Its Discontents
Mutations in the Modern Movement	p. 209
Rebuilding Architecture	p. 212
Reinventing Architecture
Moving On	p. 233
Don't Call It Kookie	p. 236
The Case for Chaos	p. 239
Plastic Flowers Are Almost All Right	p. 243
The Venturi Antistyle	p. 247
Michael Graves's Personal Language	p. 249
The Austere World of Rossi	p. 253
John Hejduk-a Mystic and Poet	p. 257
Philip Johnson: Clever Tricks or True Art?	p. 261
The Man Who Loved Architecture	p. 266
Reflections on the Glass House	p. 270
Remembering Architecture's Dream Team	p. 274
Going Dutch	p. 278
Architecture: The Bold and the Beautiful-a Tale of Two Franks	p. 282
French Elegance Hits Midtown Manhattan	p. 285
To Much of a Good Thing?	p. 290
Rewriting History
Mackintosh: A Genius to Be Reckoned With	p. 294
Peacock Feathers and Pink Plastic	p. 298
Beaux Arts-the Latest Avant-Garde	p. 302
Rediscovering Chicago Architecture	p. 310
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens and the Cult of the Recent Past	p. 313
Discovering Ivan Leonidov	p. 316
The First Hundred Years: McKim, Mead & White	p. 320
Holabird and Root	p. 323
Resurrecting a Prophetic Nineteenth-century Practitioner	p. 326
Born-Again Modernism	p. 331
Modernism, in Perspective	p. 334
The Man Who Remade New York	p. 338
New York
Adding Up the Score	p. 345
King of Checkerboards	p. 347
Manhattan's Landmark Buildings Today	p. 349
Huntington Hartford's Palatial Midtown Museum	p. 352
Columbus Circle: A Project Without a Plan	p. 355
The Best Way to Preserve 2 Columbus Circle	p. 359
MoMA's Big, New, Elegantly Understated Home	p. 364
The Morgan Library's Cool New Building	p. 367
The World Trade Center
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Buildings?	p. 372
"The New York Process"-the World Trade Center Site	p. 378
The Art of the Deal: Six Dreadful Proposals Devoid of Artistry	p. 380
Rebuilding Lower Manhattan	p. 383
The Next Great City Center?	p. 389
Death of the Dream	p. 394
The Disaster That Has Followed the Tragedy	p. 397
Failures and Follies
A Vision of Rome Dies	p. 405
How We Lost Lower Manhattan	p. 408
Where Did We Go Wrong?	p. 413
A Conference on Cities	p. 417
The Great American Flag Scheme	p. 420
The Way It Never Was	p. 424
The Hudson Yards: Plenty of Glitz, Little Vision	p. 428
Taste and Style
The Melancholy Fate of Danish Modern	p. 435
Conquering Clutter	p. 439
Battling the Bulge	p. 442
Send in the Clowns	p. 445
When the Outrageous Became Mainstream	p. 448
Strictly Personal
Growing Up in a Beaux Arts World	p. 455
Personal Landmarks Along the Highway	p. 458
No Place Like Home	p. 461
Index	p. 465
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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