Gordon Bunshaft and SOM Building Corporate Modernism Nicholas Adams
- Price: £50.00
- Pre-order
Share this page:
- Format:
- Hardback
- Publication date:
- 08 Oct 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780300227475
- Imprint:
- Yale University Press
- Dimensions:
- 296 pages: 292 x 229mm
- Illustrations:
- 45 color + 159 b-w illus.
Categories:
A nuanced portrait of the 20th-century architect whose work defined the built aesthetic of corporate America
Gordon Bunshaft’s (1909–1990) landmark 1952 design for Lever House reshaped the Manhattan skyline and elevated the reputation of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the firm where he would spend more than 40 years as a partner. Although this enigmatic architect left behind few records, his legacy endures in the corporate headquarters, museums, and libraries that were built in his distinctive modernist style. Bunshaft’s career was marked by shifts in material. Glass and steel structures of the 1950s, such as New York’s Chase Manhattan Bank, gave way to revolutionary designs in concrete, such as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the doughnut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Bunshaft’s collaborations with artists, including Isamu Noguchi, Jean Dubuffet, and Henry Moore, were of paramount importance throughout his career.
Nicholas Adams explores the contested line between Bunshaft’s ambition for acclaim as a singular artistic genius and the collaborative structure of SOM’s architectural partnership. Bunshaft received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988 and remains the only SOM partner to have achieved this distinction. Adams counters Bunshaft’s maxim that “the building speaks for itself” with necessary critical context about this modernist moment at a time when the future of Bunshaft’s iconic works is very much in question.
Gordon Bunshaft’s (1909–1990) landmark 1952 design for Lever House reshaped the Manhattan skyline and elevated the reputation of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the firm where he would spend more than 40 years as a partner. Although this enigmatic architect left behind few records, his legacy endures in the corporate headquarters, museums, and libraries that were built in his distinctive modernist style. Bunshaft’s career was marked by shifts in material. Glass and steel structures of the 1950s, such as New York’s Chase Manhattan Bank, gave way to revolutionary designs in concrete, such as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the doughnut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Bunshaft’s collaborations with artists, including Isamu Noguchi, Jean Dubuffet, and Henry Moore, were of paramount importance throughout his career.
Nicholas Adams explores the contested line between Bunshaft’s ambition for acclaim as a singular artistic genius and the collaborative structure of SOM’s architectural partnership. Bunshaft received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988 and remains the only SOM partner to have achieved this distinction. Adams counters Bunshaft’s maxim that “the building speaks for itself” with necessary critical context about this modernist moment at a time when the future of Bunshaft’s iconic works is very much in question.
Nicholas Adams is professor emeritus of architectural history at Vassar College.
“Adams offers a genuinely new portrait of Gordon Bunshaft and fresh observations about American corporate architecture and practice at midcentury.”—Mary McLeod, Columbia University
-
Christopher Wren
Vaughan Hart£45.00 -
Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect
Cloe Pitiot£45.00 -
Thomas Jefferson, Architect
Lloyd DeWitt£35.00 -
Souto de Moura
Francesco Dal Co£40.00 -
Ernest Gimson
Annette Carruthers£50.00 -
Henry van de Velde
Katherine M. Kuenzli£50.00 -
Wright and New York
Anthony Alofsin£25.00 -
Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture
Diane Ghirardo£50.00 -
Lina Bo Bardi
Zeuler R. M. de A. Lima£30.00 -
Pierre Koenig - A View from the Archive
Neil Jackson£45.00 -
Le Corbusier
Daničle Pauly£35.00 -
Mathias Goeritz
Jennifer Josten£50.00 -
Minoru Yamasaki
Dale Allen Gyure£50.00 -
Robbrecht en Daem
Maarten Van den Driessche£50.00 -
The Guggenheim
Francesco Dal Co£20.00 -
Centre Pompidou
Francesco Dal Co£20.00 -
Charles Percier
Jean-Philippe Garric£50.00 -
Frank Lloyd Wright and San Francisco
Paul V. Turner£45.00 -
Roberto Burle Marx
Jens Hoffmann£40.00