Martin Filler is the architecture critic of House & Garden and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. He is the co-author, with Olivier Bossiere, of The Vitra Design Museum: Frank Gehry, Architect.
"Most of these 17 short essays by Filler (architecture critic,
House & Garden) originally appeared in the New York Review of
Books; some have been expanded and updated. They touch on aspects
of the work and lives of 20-plus giants of modern architecture
(e.g., Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier) as well as contemporary
practitioners (e.g., Frank Gehry, Richard Meier)...Filler's
engaging observations and insights are worth reading." --Library
Journal
"Since the mid-1980s, Martin Filler has contributed a medley of
long critical essays on architects and architecture to The New York
Review of Books. A new book by that publisher released on July 17
collects and updates Filler's essays in a single offering entitled
Makers of Modern Architecture: From Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank
Gehry. Arriving in time for the dog days, Filler provides something
to sink our teeth into. Delicious!...Filler's essays consist of a
rich amalgam of biographical analyses, emphasizing each
individual's career trajectory, with some formal analysis of the
architects' built work. Refreshingly, he avoids too much of the
latter, preferring to delve into matters often unexplored in the
popular press. Along the way, we encounter quotable quotes,
digressions, obsessions, professional sympathies, categorizations,
personal prejudices, pronouncements, analogies, refutations, as
well as political and social observations, and a rich, fulsome
exercise of the English language.In our superficial era, when
architectural criticism gasps for column inches in the newspapers,
and blogs woefully lack erudition or research, Filler's assessments
in The New York Review stand apart, eschewing fashion and offering
polished, carefully edited and backed-up, though highly personal,
assertions.says, clearly a fascination, if not minor obsession, of
this New York-based writer...In the course of 300 pages, he engages
17 architects, including the Eamseses (positive review) and
Calatrava (less sanguine), but manages to omit Robert Stern, Peter
Eisenman, and Michael Graves, all 1980s rock stars, as well as a
shopping list of current galactic lights such as Zaha Hadid, Rem
Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel, and Thom Mayne...Ultimately, Filler's
engaging book entertains and informs as it opines; then the
language ceases, leaving us hungering for more of this piquant, yet
savory intellectual dish." --Architectural Record
"Martin Filler's Makers of Modern Architecture...should eclipse
other works in the field. He incisively places many 20th century
architects and their work in a social context. He is also a
refreshingly colorful, on-target observer, as when he limns,
hilariously, the agonizing approach to (and his disappointment in)
Richard Meier's Getty Center in Los Angeles, or notes that Louis
Sullivan 'sometimes edged toward the crackpot in the relentless of
his passionate obsessions.'" --House & Garden
"Imagine a Vasari's Lives for architects, ranging from Louis
Sullivan to Gehry, Piano, Calatrava. That's what Martin Filler has
written with vivacity, concision, and encyclopedic erudition in
Makers of Modern Architecture. If you're an old architectural hand,
you'll need this book as an essential point of reference; if you're
an avid amateur who wonders about the built world, you'll find it
the best college course you never took. Filler's passionate
observations on architecture and art, morality, commerce, and
politics will ignite debates for years to come." --John Guare
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