Who Built That? Modern Houses by Didier Cornille, Princeton Architectural Press, 84 pages, $19.95
Ten of the most important house designs of the 20th century are featured in this delightful little book.
Each presentation begins with information about the architect and is followed with descriptions and illustrations of the home.
Cornille keeps the text light, and the drawings are charming in their simplicity, but at the same time
all provide a fascinating look at the layers, which make up these buildings.
Gerrit Rietveld, Frank Lloyd Wright, Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry are all recognized for their contributions to home design along with numerous others. With his simple approach, Cornille has made this a book for all ages.
Manhattan Classic by Geoffrey Lynch, Princeton Architectural Press, 224 pages, $63.
Billed as private mansions in the sky, pre-war luxury apartments in New York set a standard that surpassed the existing options.
Designed to lure the wealthy into multi-storey living, these buildings featured expansive rooms, marble floors, oak paneling, brass fittings and more.
With an eye as keen on detail as the craftsmen who created them, author Geoffrey Lynch examines these buildings with unbridled enthusiasm. Providing not just a look inside these fabulous apartments, Lynch includes design details, interesting architectural highlights, and a wealth of history.
Featuring colour photographs, descriptions and floor plans, 84 residences are presented from eight different Manhattan areas.
Frank Lloyd Wright on the West Coast by Mark Anthony Wilson, Gibbs Smith Publisher, 224 pages, $62.
Frank Lloyd Wright changed western architecture.
His approach of blending his structures with the natural environment and using local materials in their construction created a school of thought that is still followed.
Over a career that spanned 66 years he designed more than 1,100 projects. During his lifetime 532 of them were built, and while the majority of them were constructed in the eastern states, there are a number of West Coast buildings that have largely been ignored by historians.
Mark Anthony Wilson, working with photographer Joel Puliatti, has corrected that oversight with this stunning collection of buildings that stretch from southern California up to Seattle. Of the 36 structures that were built between 1909 and 1959, 34 remain intact and largely unchanged.
Wilson presents these buildings in chronological order and provides extensive details about their design, construction, and the original owners and their interaction with Wright. The Walker House at Carmel is one that Wright referred to as his little masterpiece because of its perfect execution of his organic design that blended the building and its site so well. At 1,200 square feet it is small by Wright's normal standards but its beauty is unchanged in the 70 years since it was built.
Each one of these unique buildings is a testament to Wright's genius and vision.
By Terry Peters
