Conversations with architects about a troubled relationship
Published by Wiley, April 2010
ISBN: 9780470997840 / Hardback / £50.00, EUR 57.50
© 2010 Wiley. Courtesy of the publisher
Architecture and Beauty provides a rare insight into the minds of 20 of today's most progressive and high profile architects, each from a radically different position and each displaying a distinctive aesthetic.
Based on a series of interviews, the book raises poignant issues regarding the notion of 'beauty' within contemporary cultural theory.
As a society we are continually re-evaluating and forecasting what is 'beautiful' within our contemporary environments and what currency beauty gives to our daily lives. However, throughout the 20th century and to the present day, many architects continue to handle words like 'beauty', 'style', 'form', 'visual language' or 'artistic authorship' with a great discomfort or even total denial. Nevertheless, good architecture, or, brilliant buildings are mostly still judged by their capacity to produce an aesthetic experience. So why are architects so suspicious of the notion of 'beauty' or aesthetic evaluation?
Not so much a behind the scenes, but more a "behind the mind", for architects, featuring interviews with Will Alsop, Peter Cook, Odile Decq, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Zvi Hecker, Mark Goulthorpe, Kolatan/MacDonald Studio, Greg Lynn, Tom Mayne, Juhani Pallasmaa, Gaetano Pesce, Eric Owen Moss, Wolf Prix and Lebbeus Woods.
The author Yael Reisner is a practicing architect. She gained her Diploma from the prestigious post-graduate program at the Architectural Association, London. She runs her own office and also teaches Architectural Design, most recently at the Bartlett-UCL, 1997-2005. She has recently completed a PhD by project at RMIT (Melbourne, Australia) that focuses on the theme of the emotional experience and beauty in contemporary architecture.
Fleur Watson is a freelance, editor and curator, based in Melbourne, Australia. She was the Editor for many years of Monument magazine, Australia’s leading architecture and design publication (2001-2008)
