The Secret Life of Buildings: An American Mythology for Modern Architecture (Graham Foundation / Mit Press Series in Contemporary Archite)

Description

American architecture is undergoing fundamental changes. Gavin Macrae-Gibson interprets this new architecture in critiques of Frank Gehry's house in Santa Monica (the representation of perception); Peter Eisenman's House El Even Odd (millenial anxiety); Cesar Pelli's Four Leaf Towers (a sensibility of silence); Michael Graves's Portland Building (a concern for the sublime); Robert Stern's Bozzi House (a discussion of scenography); Alan Greenberg's Manchester Superior Court Building (the continuity of the classical); and Robert Venturi's Gordon Wu Hall Princeton (an irony of the difficult whole). The author rejects modernist explanations of these recent architectural achievements in favor of a new poetic logic that he combines with a formal analysis to reveal the layers of meaning present in each building, including the deepest layer its secret life.