American Masterworks: Houses of the Twentieth & Twenty-first Centuries - Hardcover

Frampton, Kenneth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0847831469 ISBN 13: 9780847831463

Publisher: Rizzoli, 2008

Synopsis

This beautiful, authoritative book celebrates great American residential design. Its wide-ranging content highlights the most important works by the influential architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Presented are approximately forty-five icons of modern architecture, including the Greene brothers’ arts-and-crafts Gamble House; Michael Graves’ neoclassical villa; Richard Neutra’s California Modern Kaufmann House; and three Frank Lloyd Wright masterpieces: Fallingwater, and the Storer and Sturges houses, as well as masterpieces by Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, and Peter Eisenman. First published in 1995, this expanded and updated edition includes twelve important additions to the canon. Works by a new generation of influential architects include Zoka Zola’s award-winning Pfanner House; Michael Bell’s Binocular House; and Peter Bohlin’s Ledge House. It is the ultimate compendium of great American house design.

About this title

About the Author:

Kenneth Frampton has authored numerous books including such Rizzoli titles as Richard Meier, Architect Vol. 3 and the three-volume Modern Architecture series, among others. He is the Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University. David Larkin is an editor and designer, whose previous Rizzoli books include Farmhouse, Barn, American Home, and The Treehouse Book.

From Booklist:

Frampton, professor of architecture at Columbia University, has teamed up with designer David Larkin to produce a fresh, knowledgeable, and visually exciting survey of the modern house in America--the modern house, that is, as a work of art. The 34 featured houses, presented in superb color photographs, truly are gems: cool, angular, pristine, and aristocratic. One of Frampton's criteria for selection stipulated that each house "possess a certain level of complexity and poetic depth." And indeed these houses do, although their complexity becomes all but invisible as we move forward in time. Frampton begins with the Greene and Greene Gamble House, built in Pasadena in 1908, a beautifully realized synthesis of Japanese aesthetics and the American arts and crafts movement. The Japanese influence is prevalent throughout the book, while the warmth of the craft movement quickly fades. The houses become increasingly grid oriented and more open to natural light and the surrounding landscape, so it's no surprise that most are found in California. The masters include Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson (the famous Glass House), Craig Ellwood, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Michael Graves, and Frank Gehry. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Rizzoli
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0847831469
• ISBN 13: 9780847831463
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Larkin David