Customer Reviews

David Chipperfield

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Odd that the Brits-generally messy, philistine, and mired in nostalgia-should have generated, over the past two decades, such an impressive body of high tech architecture and purist design. Chipperfield-like John Pawson, for whom he once worked-is a maestro of luxurious minimalism, a perfectionist who demands polish and precision in every detail and on every surface. When he doesn't get it, he walks away: hence the omission of the Bryant Park Hotel in New York-a refined remodel of Raymond Hood's classic American Radiator Building-in which the client didn't stay the course. The thirty buildings and projects, plus furniture and ceramics, that he has anointed are arranged alphabetically to counter any suspicion of linear development. One finds a surprising diversity of invention. Curves sneak in, as they never do in Pawson's relentlessly rectilinear world, and Chipperfield's vacation house in Spain has a checkerboard façade. There are nods to Mies and Le Corbusier, to the English vernacular and to classicism-notably in his work on Museum Island in Berlin. The book is-of course-coolly beautiful, and concludes with a set of literate essays by Jonathan Keates. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

Of course, not everyone has a portfolio like Chipperfield either. Still, with so many books that are stuffed to make them thick (thick books are trendy, even if there's little actually read or see in them), and others being either summary catalogs or picture books with no drawings, it's nice to see a real, honest-to-goodness monograph like this. Sure, it does some odd stuff like present the projects alphabetically, but that's a minor point.

It's refreshing that the book lets the photos and drawings pretty much speak for themselves too. The images aren't just PR shots either, but they actually coordinate and are often analytical in nature. Of course, there's the old napkin-sketch-as-final-design trick, and a lot of these projects have no choice but appear this way because they're not built yet. Also, I think it's a crime that his early career work in Japan is mostly glossed over. The gorgeous sectional renderings of those early house designs are just postage stamps in the essays, but they should dedicate at least half a page for each of them.

The only thing that might make me hesitate about buying this book would be that much of the work is unbuilt, for now anyway. At the same time, would we get so much insight into the firm's process -- drawings, models, renderings, sketches -- if they had more as-built photographs at their disposal?