Structures of Our Time: 31 Buildings That Changed Modern Life

The 31 buildings in question are recipients of the American Institute of Architects' 25-Year Award, granted annually to a structure whose impact has stood the test of a quarter century of time. Going beyond appreciation, Shepherd's book is a search for meaning, exploring each building's conception, design process, and impact on community, users, architecture, and the culture itself.Featuring work by immortals such as Frank Lloyd Wright; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Louis Kahn; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Eero Saarinen; and Charles and Ray Eames, Structures of Our Time takes you behind the drawing boards where historic breakthroughs first occurred. Less well-known architects and structures are also examined, bringing a rare balance to the story of 20th Century architecture.The book’s 400 lush images are a mix of historic and more recent photos, some iconic and some never before published. Preliminary plans and drawings fill out the rich visual array and tell as much as the text itself. Structures of Our Time is the first in a series of Architectural Record Books.A traveling exhibition will premiere at Shepherd's book signing at the Octagon Museum in Washington, D.C. on January 10, 2002. The show will then be at the annual "Accent on Architecture" Gala at the National Building Museum in DC (organized by the American Architectural Foundation) on March 1, 2002 and be featured at the AIA Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in May, 2002. The exhibition will be available for travel to sites around the country for 6 week bookings in 2002. Venues under consideration include public libraries, AIA Chapters, and smaller museums and galleries.

Certain structures stand out in the American landscape--Rockefeller Center, Gateway Arch, and Dulles International Airport among them. Breathtakingly original, they capture our imaginations, and change the way we think and live. These buildings are among the recipients of the American Institute of Architects' 25-Year Award, granted annually to a structure whose impact has stood the test of a quarter century of time. Structures of Our Time celebrates these and all the great buildings awarded AIA's distinguished prize since 1969. Going beyond appreciation, this book is a search for meaning, exploring each building's conception, design process, and impact on community, users, architecture, and the culture itself. With participation from the architects, engineers, designers and the people who help make architecture happen, engaging new and classic photographs, fascinating images of the many sources world-wide that have made these structures possible, and commentary from critics, clients, and inhabitants, this beautifully realized book is a tribute to the pinnacle of American architecture, and a must-have for anyone interested in enduring design.

"Great buildings create ripples both in society and in the profession of architecture, and it is fitting that the winners of the AIA 25-Year Award are used to shed light on architecture's power to touch us all," Kevin Fry wrote of the museum exhibit he organized commemorating the 30th anniversary of the American Institute of Architects' 25-Year Award.

Structures of Our Time celebrates the power of architecture to touch us all with unprecedented in-depth portraits of the 31 winners of AIA's prestigious annual prize, which acknowledges a structure whose significance has stood the test of a quarter century of time.

From Fifth Avenue--shaping Rockefeller Center, the first AIA honoree in 1969, to Richard Meier's Darien, Connecticut, Smith House, created in 1965 to 1967 and winner of the year 2000 prize, this book investigates the structures that mark and define our era.

In the company of their architects and admirers, users and bystanders, clients and critics, Structures of Our Time probes innovations and influence. Each portrait of a prizewinner reveals new aspects of the meaning of structures -- from the feelings and perceptions of inhabitants to reverberations through community and culture, to architects' memories of projects' conceptions, to how the creators regard their works today.

In Structures of Our Time, you'll explore the ways architecture gives identity, shape, and pleasure to communities. You'll witness the birth of important new forms and innovations: the garden city; the corporate campus; environmental design; the glass box; the house redefined; the sublime intersection of beauty and technology.

Through this scrutiny, this book raises the central questions of architecture: What makes a building great? How do structures affect the lives around them? Beyond the physical, what in architecture endures?

Featuring work by immortals such as Frank Lloyd Wright; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill; Louis Kahn; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Eero Saarinen; and Charles and Ray Eames, Structures of Our Time takes you behind the drawing boards where historic breakthroughs first appeared. With each turn of the page, you enter more deeply into the minds of the greatest architectural thinkers of our time, exploring creations whose reach encompassed art and penetrated culture.

With beautiful graphic design, original drawings and renderings never before publicly available, and superb production values supervised by Architectural Record, this book on the most influential of buildings is certain to exert its own influence. To open this book is to make discovery after discovery. To own it is to have a lifetime of insight and inspiration always at hand.