Customer Reviews

Architects Today: The 100 Greatest Living Architects

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as a lay person with strong interests in architecture, i found this book succeeds at informatively and practically presenting the landscape of today's architectural world.
first of all, it's not intended to be an in-depth analysis on any architect or style, but rather "a spotter's guide to the various breeds of architects", to quote the authors. there's only two pages (usually one full page of text and another page composed of three to four photos) dedicated to each architect, which is a format i happened to enjoy, for personally it served my goal of exploring the contemporary architectural scene at a relatively quick pace and without being blocked by abstract academic discourses.
secondly, according to the authors, the architects are chosen based on whether they are highly "influential", meaning, whether they "have changed the way in which their contemporaries and successors thing and practise". not being an architecture professional, i can not quite tell whether or not this book has done a fair job, but based on the introductory texts for each architect, i felt i was adequately introduced to their accomplishments and their influences.

"Bizarre omissions, weird inclusions-we can hear you muttering now. Any book that attempts to take a broad look at the peculiar world of comtemporary architects and architecture is asking for trouble." (p.7)

This is a direct quote from the introduction of the book written by the three authors. Ironically, I think they made a correct judgment about their book.

My simple critique is: Who are the target readers of this book?

If you are a casual architecture reader, a lay person, the content of this book will not catch your heart. The information about each architect and their works is too brief. Without knowing their works and their idiosyncratic aesthetics, the content in the book will not make much sense to you, not to mention the quality and fairness of the authors' opinions and critiques on those architects.

I truly believe that sincere and true appreciation of architect is much much more important than acquainted you with Who's Who. There are tons of good books with great presentations of architectural works. If you are particularly interested in certain architects, go and find a volume solely dedicated to them, analyzing how they've matured and built their own style.

On the other hand, if you are a professional and quite familiar with the architectural community, then what's the point of getting this book?

So I don't really know what's the purpose of publishing this book? What kind of message do the authors want to convey to the reader? If they had a unique and thoughtful criteria of selecting the architects presented in this book, then they did not fulfill this goal by organizing the architects alphabetically. If they planned to have an overview of the influential living architects (that's actually what they said in the introduction), then their list is far from being complete and representative. If they wanted to highlight some promising young and upcoming talents, they still did not do their research adequately.

The only value of this book, as far as I am concerned, is poping up some interesting architects in front of you (even if you are not familiar with their works). Then you can get more info from other resources.

I thought about rating this book at 2 stars. But considering their hard work of compling all these stuff, a 3-star rating is fair.