The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 17 July 2012
by Paul Goldberger
To the extent that most people think about architecture, it is probably when it becomes intrusive, impressive or offensive. By and large, Americans seem to appreciate being surrounded by architecture that offers comfort and familiarity. Sprawling suburbs of comfortable houses. Strip malls that look like Tuscan villas. Warm earth tones and salmon pinks. Colonial revivals set to replace notable modernism (see Paul Rudolph's Orange government center in New York). Nobody really wants to be challenged daily by their environment. Even clients of great architects have suffered from the challenge of living inside a work of art. So, it is not really a surprise when our landscape is made up mostly of bland subdivisions and unimpressive commercial districts. And yet, people complain about those, too. Reyner Banham quoted someone else when he said "art can offend you, but a building can fall on you". Indeed, we are confronted with architecture every day. Some of it is great. Some of it is not particularly interesting. A lot of it is just plain bad. In a field which produces more than its fair share of glossy coffee table books, there are yet a number of good books about the nature of architecture, its special place in our lives, and how and why buildings look and feel the way they do. Particularly the feel, as architecture done well is art.
Paul Goldberger writes for Vanity Fair, has held a number of distinguished positions in the field, and was awarded the Pulitzer prize for his architectural criticism in 1984, so he knows whereof he writes in this short engaging book. Goldberger invites the reader to take a look at our architectural landscape and to consider what it is about buildings that offer us comfort, intellectual engagement, light, space, shelter and delight. While he is firmly rooted in Modernism (in itself becoming an historical architectural style), Goldberger has a sprawling interest in the history of our built environment and a compassionate appreciation of how that environment affects us and how we live. With chapter headings like Challenge and Comfort, Architecture and Memory, and Buildings and Time, the author engages the reader in a sometimes personal discussion of buildings and the place they occupy in the landscape. He traces the history of architectural thought from Vitruvius to Frank Gehry, but this is no dry academic work. What he shares is his passion for the topic, the sense of one's sensual appreciation of a space, its style, and its solution to particular problems of function and use. Mr. Goldberger's style is conversational and engaging. His intent is not so much that the reader see architecture the way architects do, but to appreciate the humanity expressed in even a technologically abstract building. After reading this book, the reader may have a deeper understanding why the mini-mall down the street has to look like a Colonial mansion, or why the new art museum looks like an assemblage of dented aluminum cans. One might even find a way to like it that way.
Also by Goldberger: [Building Art]
See Also: [Experiencing Architecture by Steen Eiler Rasmussen] [The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton]