audiobook Ippograve;lito (Ad Altiora) (Italian Edition) by Eurigrave;pide in Arts-Photography

Review

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. A Terrific Read!By PlancentricFrank Gehry is todays most famous American architect; now comparable to that other Frank -- Frank Lloyd Wright. So it is high time there was an authoritative Gehry chronicle. As a biography the new Goldberger book is as important and insightful about an architectrsquo;s motivations and evolving frame of mind as Le Corbusier: A Life; by Nicholas Fox Weber.The author takes us from Gehryrsquo;s difficult childhood in Toronto in the 1930s; through the move to Los Angeles in 1947; architecture school at USC; a stint in the army; city planning at Harvard; work for shopping mall designer Victor Gruen; time in Paris and then back to LA where he launched his practice in 1962. There he found friendship with; and inspiration from; a circle of up-and-coming modern painters who incorporated ordinary found objects in their work. Subsequent chapters cover the building of his and second wife Bertarsquo;s famous cyclone fence house in Santa Monica; his fish sculptures and cardboard furniture; the commissions for Bilbao and Disney; the range of New York work; the Dwight Eisenhower Memorial in Washington D. C.; and the Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris; which opened last year.The author is adept at drawing Gehry out and getting at the thinking; and the contexts and stories; behind the designs. In a way Goldberger acts as kind of architectural therapist; helping Gehry unravel and make sense of a lifetime of anxiety about his own work and; in effect; complementing the actual psychotherapy Gehry received from his friend the psychologist Milton Wexler. So I guess you could say that this book is the architectrsquo;s ultimate ldquo;psychiatry couch session.rdquo;One theme thatrsquo;s especially strong throughout Building Art is the sense of contradiction; both within Gehryrsquo;s nature and his art. For example; Goldberger writes: ldquo;Frankrsquo;s work represented emotion as much as intellect and emerged out of intuition far more than theory; like all of his architecture; Bilbao was at once pragmatic and idealistic.rdquo; He makes the point that Gehry was heavily influenced; in a push-pull sort of way; by the mid-century California modernism of his early milieu. Describing the billowing shapes of Disney Hall; he writes: ldquo;The great sails were a symbol of the new; but they were also a way of creating decoration; or giving the building an element that existed solely for visual pleasure. Frank was consciously going against the puritanical strain that had always run through modernist architecture; the belief that a building needed to be lsquo;honest;rsquo; lsquo;pure;rsquo; and lsquo;rationalrsquo; mdash; that ornamentation was not just a self-indulgent frill and a useless return to historical copying; but an ethical transgression; a violation of modernist principles.rdquo;A related theme is Gehryrsquo;s desire to express movement in architecture; leading to his manipulation of fish shapes and compound curves; which drew inspiration from Japanese carp and Greek sculpture. Expressive movement would become his way of providing the third ingredient in the classical Vitruvian definition of architecture as ldquo;commodity; firmness; and delight.rdquo; Goldberger explains: ldquo;The architecture of Bilbao would articulate his larger goals more clearly than ever before: he wanted less to shock than to find a fresh and different way of using architecture to produce the sensations of satisfaction; comfort; and pleasure that more traditional buildings did.rdquo;I have experienced a concert at Disney Hall and there Frank Gehry made not only a new symbol for LA on the outside; but also a space that lifts the audience; reshapes and recombines it with the orchestra; and transports both into a sensual new reality. Itrsquo;s a room that does more than reverberate mdash; it resonates. So does this book.6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Goldberger provides not only the good aspects of the Gehry person and architect but quite ...By Violet FlowerReally interesting book written by an honest admirer of the subject. Mr. Goldberger provides not only the good aspects of the Gehry person and architect but quite a bit of the bad as well. I would have given the book a 5 except it lacks enough images of the buildings described to lessen the impact the excellent writing could have had.10 of 11 people found the following review helpful. Photo-free book about architecture?By Cynthia R. GraceI read Kindles eBook version. It has a very few photos. Really? A book about architecture with few photos? I went to bookstore to look at the hardbound version. It has a lot more photos and many are in color. I feel cheated. Im sure they do this to keep prices down. The problem is; you d/n know before you buy the eBook version that it has no or fewer pictures than bound versions. I want this info upfront.