New Forms
Architecture in the 1990s
In the 1990s architecture has evolved considerably despite economic constraints. The new architecture has been guided by the rapid progress of computer assisted design and a newly rediscovered affinity for the arts. Indeed, many architects - from France's Dominique Perrault, creator of the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France, to Japan's Tadao Ando - explain their work in terms of references to minimalism or land art. At the same time art itself has veered towards installations and works which approach architecture. These influences have enriched and diversified contemporary architecture in the developed world.
The Author:
Philip Jodidio (born 1954) studied art history and economics at Harvard and has been editor-in-chief of the French art magazine "Connaissance des Arts" in Paris since 1980. He has written numerous books and articles on contemporary architecture.
These two volumes address topics in the earliest and latest periods covered in the publisher's ambitious and almost global (Africa is regrettably not included) 40-volume "World Architecture" series. While Wildung's volume is a fundamental analysis of the ancient Egyptian building arts, Jodidio's book is more of a journalistic review of contemporary trends. After an introductory chapter that presents an architectural vocabulary, Wildung, curator of the Egyptian Museum, Berlin, surveys his topic chronologically from the early dynastic through the Roman periods. Serviceably translated from the German, his prose eschews academic language. Perhaps of the greatest value are the color photographs and the numerous plans and sections. Two indexes cover personal names and monuments, arranged by locality. By contrast, American Jodidio (Richard Meier, Taschen, 1995) arranges his book by building type and offers an innovative chapter on the intersection of art and architecture. Jodidio's introduction provides an overview of the period and useful definitions of postmodernism and deconstructivism. The selection criteria are unclear, however, with practitioners such as Josef Paul Kleihues and Michael Graves curiously absent. The text is a general discussion of design trends rather than an analysis of building form and content. Unfortunately, the index includes personal names only, though the biographies are helpful. In neither volume does the text refer to the illustrations. Nevertheless, the high quality of the graphic material makes these very sound investments for all architecture collections.?Paul Glassman, Pratt Inst. Lib., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
