By Carter B. Horsley
This fabulous, small but thick volume describes about 1000 intriguing architectural projects from around the world and has about 2,000 superb color photographs. It is, without question, the best architecture book of the Millennium so far and a splendid introduction to the spectacular works that have been created over the past decade or so, one of the most dramatic and sensational periods in architectural history.
Despite its robust size, this volume has some important omissions. Such important designers Arquitectonica and S.I.T.E., and Zaha Hadid, are missing and others such as Arata Isozaki, Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Helmut Jahn, Shin Takematsu, and Fox & Fowle, are not adequately represented. Norman Foster has 9 entries, the most of any architect, followed by Cesar Pelli, 6, and Salvator Calatrava, Kisho Kurokawa, Renzo Piano, Rem Koolhaas, and William Bruder have four each.
Nevertheless, this is a stupendous book not only for reference, but inspiration. One of its great features is that it covers not only skyscrapers, but airports, train stations, bridges, museums, urban parks, land art, educational and athletic structures, theme parks, religious buildings, hotels libraries, theaters, retail buildings, restaurants, convention facilities, homes, and industrial properties.
Although the book is nicely divided by building type, one cannot discern the emergence of any particular style for the period covered by this book. Post-modernism would appear to be rather moribund and Deconstructivism seems to have lost some of its energy. High-tech, however, seems to have flourished well and what could perhaps be described as Poetic Eclectic Classicism - grand, gestural forms and flourishes - is abundantly evident. Indeed, architecture as sculptural art, best exemplified by Frank Gehry’s famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (one of the few works not shown to its best advantage in this book), is ascendant. Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, of course, is one of the major architectural masterpieces of the 20th Century and certainly the most important building of the 90s, heralding a new age of plasticity.
Not surprisingly, Europe and Asia have more interesting projects than the United States.
Among the eye-openers are the following:
Interchange Module at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy, France, completed in 1994, by Paul Andreu and J. M. Duthilleul, a high-tech marvel, shown above, with a great curved slylight trusses. Photography by Paul Maurer.
The Atocha Station in Madrid, Spain, completed in 1990, by José Rafael Moneo, a great variation on a giant colonnaded dome. Photograph by Luis Casals.
The Kurt-Schumacher Strasse tram station in Hanover, Germany, completed in 1994, by Alessandro Mendini, a yellow-and-black checkered urban folly of simple boldness. Photograph by Thomas Deutschmann.
The La Barqueta Bridge in Seville, Spain, completed in 1992, by Juan J. Arenas and Marcos J. Pantaleón, an awesome bridge with huge triangular porticos for stability and drama. Photograph by Fernando Alda/Expo ’92 photo archive.
The Collserole Tower by Sir Norman Foster & Associates, completed in 1992, and the Montjuic Tower by Santiago Calatrava, both in Barcelona, Spain and completed in 1992, the former a 684-foot-high communications tower and the latter a 390-foot-high sundial, both of great sculptural beauty. Photographs of the former by David Carelius and of the latter by John Edward Linden.
The Schouwburgplein square in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, completed in 1990, designed by West 8, has four 115-foot-high, red "hydraulic post-cranes" that can be coin-operated by the public to change the square’s appearance.
The Citizen’s Square in Tokyo, completed in 1991 and designed by Kenzo Tange Associates, is a semi-circular plaza across from Tange’s great, twin-towered City Hall and it also features two large, red curved elements at its sides, somewhat reminiscent of the cranes in Schouwburgplein Square. Photographs by Osamu Murai, Shinkenchiku Shashiubu.
The Place des Terraux in Lyons, France, completed in 1994 and designed by Christian Drevet, moved a large Bartholdi fountain slightly and created a mini-forest of 69 fountains in front of the Palais St. Pierre on the city’s largest public square. Photograph by Eric Saillet.
The Tower of the Winds in Yokohama, Japan, completed in 1986 and designed by Toyo Ito & Associates, is a ventilation and water tower that has beclad by an ellipitical cylinder of perforated aluminum that becomes, according to the author, "a mirror of its circumstances, and thus is not material." "The direction and speed of the wind as well as the intesnity of the traffic noise and transformed into electrical impulses to become an ephermal architecture of light…The tower is never the same, which makes it ephermeral, changing in essence," he added. Photographs by Sinkenchiku-sha, Tomio.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, completed in 1995 and designed by Mario Botta, is a very elegant and monumental structure of rectilinear setbacks covered in red masonry and punctuated by a gray and white, angled, circular atrium skylight that abstractly conjures the Duomo in Florence. Photograph by Robert Canfield.
The Cartier Foundation in Paris, completed in 1994 and designed by Jean Nouvel, shileds a Chateaubriand cedar tree beween two glass screens and the author notes that part of the building "creates the impression of the Carter Foundation as an ephermal building on the verge of fading away," adding that "It belongs to an unspecified school of modern architecture." Photograph by Christian Richters.
The High School of the Future in Jauney-Clan, France, completed in 1987 and designed by Architecture-Studio, is a boarding school for musicians and is rakisly angled, tiling outwards with a sliding roof that is a powerful expression of technology. Photograph by Stéphane Couturier.
An extension to the Denver Central Library, completed in 1996 and designed by Michael Graves, has an extraordinary square top with three-story angled supports over a cylindrical form. It is one of the architect's strongest and best designs. Photograph by Timothy Hursley.
The Phoenix (AZ) Central Library, completed in 1994 and designed by William Bruder, has enormous glass walls on its north and south facades and tall, vertical fabric sunscreens on its east and west faces, and portrays a great sense of strength, detail and transparency. Photography by Bill Timmerman.
The Monterrey Central Library in San Nicolás de los Ganza, Nuevo León, Mexico, completed in 1994 and designed by Legoretta Architects is an immensely interesting interplay of geometric forms: a central cylinder with protruding square windows, is not fully enclosed and ends in sharply angled buttresses, one of which cascades into water. A rectilinear structure of different facade material is visible inside the cylinder form only from where the buttresses are angled. Photography by Lourdes Legoretta.
La Sémaphore is a complex for shows, concerts, parties and banquets in Roussillon, France, completed in 1994 and designed by Christian Drevet. It has a cylindrical light mast, a metal screen and a parallelepiped. "Behind the metal screen of the facade is a second skin of glass and heind that is a wall which folds like a curtain. Each of these successive skins creates a scenic plane. The spectacularly inclined camera obscura interprets the heights of the various areas: higher in the auditorium and lower in the party and banqueting hall. Photograph by Eric Saillet.
The Stop Line entertainment center in Curno, Bergamo, Italy, completed in 1996 and designed by Studio Archea, is a long, low building that was originally a warehouse and has been reclad in performated Corten steel and surrounded by a narrow moat. It is very beautiful and houses a huge, single interior space. Photographs by Pietro Savorelli, Severio Lombardi Vallauri.
The Triangle des Gares, Euralille, in Lille, France, completed in 1994 and designed by Jean Nouvel, is a shopping mall crowned with a row of small office towers. The project also has a hotel and apartments. It is distinguished by its vibrant use of bold colors. Photography by Phillipe Rualjt and Ralph Richter.
The City of Arts Cinema-Planetarium in Valencia, Spain, shown above, was designed by Santiago Calatrava and completed in 1999. This work has quite a Japanese flavor. Photography by Paco Asensio.
The Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, shown above, was designed for the Council of Europe by Richard Rogers and completed in 1996. Photograph by F. Busam/Architekturphoto.
The new glass dome atop the Reichstag in Berlin, show above, was designed by Foster & Partners and completed in 1999. Photography by Dennis Gilbert and Nigel Young. The interior of the dome has a marvelous reflective inverted cone and is very dramatic.
The Government offices for the Department of Bouches-du-Rhone in Marseilles, France, shown above, was designed by Alsop & Stormer and completed in 1994. Photography by Roderick Coyne.
The DG Bank Headquarters Building in Frankfurt, Germany, shown above, was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and completed in 1993. Photography by Dennis Gilbert.
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron designed an interesting apartment building in Basle, Switzerland in 1991, shown above, that has its street facade covered with cast-iron slats that full the full width and height of each floor in a very elegant design. Photography by Margherita Spiluttini.
The Terminal 2 at San Diego Airport, shown above, was designed by Gensler and completed in 1998. Photography by Marco Lorenzetti and G. Cormier. It bears a resemblance with the Dulles Airport but is quite strong in its own right.
The Wakayama Prefecture Museum of Modern Art, shown above, was designed by Kisho Kurokawa and completed in 1991. Photography by Tomio Ohashi.
The Millennium Experience in London, shown at the top of this article, was designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership and completed in 1999. It measures one kilometer in circumference and is 165 feet high with a diameter of 1,200 feet. The steel masts from which the Teflon fiberglass roof is suspended at 348 feet high. Photography by Grant Smith.