Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art - Hardcover

Silber, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1593720270 ISBN 13: 9781593720278

Publisher: Quantuck Lane Press, 2007

Synopsis

Have you ever wondered why the Guggenheim is always covered in scaffolding? Why the slashes on the exterior of Libeskind's Jewish Museum, supposed to represent Jewish life in prewar Berlin, reappear, for no reason, on his Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto? Or why Gehry's design for an MIT lab for sensitive research has glass walls? Not to mention why, for $44.2 per square foot, it doesn't keep out the rain? You're not alone.
In Architecture of the Absurd, John Silber dares to peek behind the curtain of "genius" architects and expose their willful disdain for their clients, their budgets, and the people who live or work inside their creations.
In his twenty-five years as President of Boston University, Dr. Silber oversaw a building program totaling more than 13 million square feet. Here he constructs an unflinching case, beautifully illustrated, against the worst trends in contemporary architecture. He challenges architects to derive creative satisfaction from meeting the practical needs of clients and the public. He urges the directors of our universities, symphony orchestras, museums, and corporations to stop financing inefficient, overpriced architecture, and calls on clients and the public to tell the emperors of our skylines that their pretensions cannot hide the naked absurdity of their designs.

About this title

About the Author:

John Silber was President of Boston University from 1971 to 1996 and Chancellor from 1996 to 2003.

Review:

"This is a brief but delightful tour of contemporary architecture with a guide who is famous for his candor. He divides our best-known building designers into the architects, who keep in mind the users of a building, and the artistes, who keep in mind the cover of Architectural Review. Being John Silber, he names names and shows you the artists' buildings, travesty by travesty. This book will gall some of them. Even more so will it embarrass the guileless souls who have fallen under the spell of the artists' metaphorical lyricism 'explaining' their own work- and paid millions for such pretty words." Tom Wolfe"

About this edition

• Publisher: Quantuck Lane Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1593720270
• ISBN 13: 9781593720278
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 97