The five titles I have chosen are a mixed bag, but then so are the more than twenty books I have written over the last four decades, covering architecture, furniture, tools, urbanism, real estate, history, and biography. Yet when I look at my library, much reduced since our last downsizing
Anthony Alofsin— When you think about Frank Lloyd Wright, you think of him as the architect of the prairies and Chicago, but there’s another story—Wright and New York—that reveals a person and a life we’ve never known. Between 1925 and 1932 the city turned him around, moving him from personal
On a winter day in 1953, a mysterious man in a sheepskin coat stood out to Harriet Pattison, then a theater student at Yale. She would later learn he was the architect Louis Kahn. This chance encounter served as preamble to a 15-year romance, with Pattison becoming the architect’s closest
Jonathan Bloom– While writing my book Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, I came across a citation about a 16th-century annotated plan of the royal palace in Marrakesh. It had been inserted into a manuscript in the Escorial written in 1585 by the Trinitarian friar
Why would anyone write a book about the architect Gordon Bunshaft? The consensus is that he was a rude and unpleasant man and, though he was responsible for the design of prominent buildings (Beinecke Library, for one), there’s a chorus of disdain in the background saying that as the chief
Some of the most outstanding examples of world architecture, such as the Mosque of Córdoba, the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo and the Alhambra Palace in Granada, belong to the Western Islamic tradition. This architectural style flourished for over a thousand years along the southern and western shores
Nicholas Adams– At times, writing about the architect Gordon Bunshaft (1909–1990), former chief designer for the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), was like writing about a sulky teenager. Architects, of course, have lots of ways of talking. Philip Johnson was garrulous––people liked to say that he talked a
In this conversation with eminent architectural critic Witold Rybczynski, we discuss some fascinating and truly unique architecture and urban development projects in one the most beautiful cities in the U.S., Charleston, South Carolina. YaleUniversity · Charleston Fancy Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Soundcloud
The Taj Mahal is deserving of its role as one of the most famous and recognizable buildings in the world; Professor Chanchal Dadlani explains why subsequent architecture, from the later years of the Mughal Empire, deserve our attention, as well. YaleUniversity · Mughal Architecture Including—and Beyond—the Taj Mahal Subscribe:Apple Podcasts
A conversation with Zeuler Lima about the extraordinary Brazilian architect, designer, illustrator, writer, editor, and curator Lina Bo Bardi. Lima’s book, Lina Bo Bardi, is newly out in paperback. YaleUniversity · Lina Bo Bardi Subscribe:Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Soundcloud