The City Observed: Boston; A Guide To The Architecture Of The Hub

xxxiv, 317 pages. A Note on Architectural Terms. Illustrations. Maps. Index. Decorative front cover. The heritage of Boston from colonial times to the present is explored through individual discussions of more than 300 buildings accompanied by photographs and maps, all arranged for use in walking tours. Donlyn Lyndon is an American Third Bay Tradition architect and the Eva Li Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of California, Berkeley. Lyndon was a co-designer of Sea Ranch, California. Alice Wingwall studied art at Indiana University, architectural history and sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded an MFA and served as a graduate student instructor. She also studied in Paris at the Ecole du Louvre, the Ecole Metiers d'Art (stained glass studio), and the Atelier del Debbio for stone carving. Studied architectural history at the Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen. Subsequently she taught in the University of Oregon Honors College and started the sculpture program at Wellesley College as an Assistant Professor. Her work is included on the campus and in the permanent collections of the University of Oregon, the Oakland Art Museum, the University of California College of Environmental Design, and in private collections in Massachusetts, Indiana, Texas, Oregon and California. Her photographic work was featured in the exhibition Sight Unseen, mounted by the California Museum of Photography in Riverside and was touring various cities internationally, including Washington D.C. and Mexico City. Donlyn Lyndon, the author of this guide to Boston’s built environment, headed MIT’s Department of Architecture from 1968 to 1975, and he knows his subject. The City Observed is more than just one expert’s opinion of Boston and its buildings, though. It’s also an extremely readable introduction to the language of architecture itself, and it includes a brief, highly useful, illustrated guide to common architectural elements. But it’s in Lyndon’s assessment of Boston’s buildings that the book shines. Of course he’s an astute critic of architectural form and function, but he’s a terrifically entertaining writer, too. Lyndon’s that rare author who can keep you turning pages even as he educates you by stealth. The book is portable, and it can be great fun to pick a Boston neighborhood and walk through it with a copy of The City Observed. Buildings that might previously have escaped your notice are suddenly revealed for the fascinating structures they are. Even a building that everyone knows to be great – the Boston Public Library, for example – acquires freshness and a new magnificence when it’s surveyed with this book in hand. The author is full of surprises: a skyscraper that you’ve probably never even noticed is "unequivocally the best high rise in Boston" according to Lyndon, and he lists very good reasons for that pronouncement. He likes the widely-unloved Boston City Hall – he calls it "an astonishing building" – and he’s prepared to defend his opinion. He recounts the dramatic history of the John Hancock Tower, whose early years were plagued by a problem with its windows – a serious problem indeed for a 60-story building whose surface consists entirely of glass. The stigma of its early inability to hang onto its windows has finally faded, and the sleek rhomboid designed by Henry Cobb of I.M. Pei & Partners is now recognized as a masterpiece of skyscraper siting and design. In 2011 it won the AIA’s prestigious "25 Year Award.". First Vintage Books Edition [started]. Presumed first printing.…