Building Seagram

by Lambert, Phyllis; Bergdoll, Barry

• ISBN13: 9780300167672
• ISBN10: 0300167679
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-16
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

The Seagram Building rises up over New York's Park Avenue with perfect lines of bronze and glass. Considered one of the greatest icons of 20th-century architecture, the building was commissioned by Samuel Bronfman, founder of the Canadian distillery dynasty Seagram. Bronfman's daughter, Phyllis Lambert, was twenty-seven years old when she took over the search for an architect and chose Mies van der Rohe (18861969), a pioneering master of modern "skin and bones" architecture. Mies, who designed the building clad in bronze and amber-tinted glass along with Philip Johnson (19062005), emphasized the beauty of structure and fine materials and set the building back from the avenue, creating the building's plaza as an urban oasis. Lambert's choice established her role as a leading architectural patron and singlehandedly changed the face of American urban architecture. Building Seagramis a comprehensive personal and scholarly history of the Seagram Building and its architectural, cultural, and urban legacies. Lambert makes use of previously unpublished personal archives, company correspondence, and photographs to tell an insider's view of the debates, resolutions, and unknown dramas of the building's construction, as well as its crucial role in the history of modern art and architectural patronage.

Author Biography

Phyllis Lambert is founding director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. A licensed architect, she has contributed essays to numerous books and is the subject of the 2007 documentary film Citizen Lambert: Joan of Architecture. Barry Bergdoll is professor of architectural history in the department of art history and archaeology at Columbia University and the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.