The Yale Art + Architecture Building (Building Block Series) - Hardcover

Stoller, Ezra

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9781568981857: The Yale Art + Architecture Building (Building Block Series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568981856 ISBN 13: 9781568981857

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999

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The Building Blocks series presents icons of modern architecture as interpreted by the most significant architectural photographers of our time. The first four volumes feature the work of Ezra Stoller, whose photography has defined the way postwar architecture has been viewed by architects, historians, and the public at large. The buildings inaugurating this series-Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal, Wallace Harrison's United Nations complex, Le Corbusier's Chapel at Ronchamp, and Paul Rudolph's Yale Art and Architecture Building-all have bold sculptural presences ideally suited to Stoller's unique vision. Each cloth-bound book in the series contains at least 80 pages of rich duotone images. Taken just after the completion of each project, these photographs provide a unique historical record of the buildings in use, documenting the people, fashions, and furnishings of the period. Through Stoller's photographs, we see these buildings the way the architects wanted us to know them. In the preface to each volume Stoller tells of his personal relationship with the architect of each project and recounts his experience photographing it. Brief introductions reveal the unique history of each building; also included are newly drawn plans.

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Review:

The Art + Architecture Building at Yale University is Paul Rudolph's undoubted masterpiece, and it was highly influential in its time. The structure is solid, muscular, spatially complex, and strongly textured, built in a period when simplicity, lightness, smoothness, and transparency ruled the day, and it emboldened other architects to explore similar avenues of expression. Rudolph's career peaked quickly, but he and his remarkable building for Yale are clearly undervalued. Rudolph's building is just one of the modernist icons that preeminent architectural photographer Ezra Stoller documented in a career that spanned more than half a century. Now retired, Stoller has been reassembling his work for permanent (rather than periodical) publication. The Yale Art + Architecture Building is one of a series published by Princeton Architectural Press that presents individual buildings in depth in a small-size volume. The photographs are not only stunning, they have particular documentary value in that Stoller shot them when the buildings were new--in this case, 36 years ago.

The series has been designed for relative affordability, and its subjects are well chosen. Each volume includes a very brief preface by Stoller setting out his relationship to the building and a fairly short critical, historical, analytical essay. Buttressed by about a dozen endnotes, the essays occupy a middle ground between informal and scholarly writing. They are followed by 50 to 60 duotone photos and a few plan drawings. This is an expert look at an extraordinary building and well worth readers' serious attention. --John Pastier

About the Author:

Ezra Stoller is one of the preeminent architectural photographers in the world and the founder of the renowned Esto architectural photography studio.

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