Customer Reviews

Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind

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3 star:		(1)
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This book presents history and architecture in a way that everyone can (and should!) enjoy -- it is superbly and entertainingly written. Yes, more color pictures would be nice, but the real essence of this book is that it distills Furness's biography and designs into an engrossing story that also tells us about Philadelphia and America in the late nineteenth century.

This book transcends the genres of both biography and architechural study to emerge a fully-formed captivating portrait of an American original. The book is also beautifully-produced. I couldn't put it down!

For anyone interested in Furness, Architecture, Philadelphia or historic figures, this book is extraordinary. An extensively researched, beautifully written account of his life and work. Includes an excellent selection of photos and drawings.

This book is very well made with quality paper. Of all the biographies written about famous architects, this one is the best I have ever read. In most biographies on famous architects, I get lost in aesthetic philosophy to the point it becomes mumbo jumbo. This author is different. He tells a balanced and tasteful story on Furness's life and career. The following is a brilliant analysis of Frank Furness's work:

"In this, Furness's banks both echo mannerism and predict postmodernism, fitting in somewhere between Michelangelo and Michael Graves. In both movements, a recognized conventional form was taken and distorted for expressive reasons. In order for this technique to work, a certain degree of knowledge is demanded of the viewers of a building. This is what makes much of postmodernism rather thin and often crass: only the most cartoonish versions of historical tradition are utilized, and in cut-out fashion. Furness's work was so much more satisfying because of its solid architectural foundation: each work was conceptualized in three dimensions and according to the tectonics of construction, and therefore evolved into a resolved piece of sculptural form. Nothing could be further from the pasteboard cut-outs of Furness's modern imitators."

Frank Furness was a civil war veteran and this author's analysis points out the relationship between his experiences in war and Furness's architecture. My favorite period of Furness's architecture is the time between when he left his partner George Hewitt and when he reached 50 years in age. The reasons can be seen in the Provident Life and Trust Building (1878-79). During this period of his career, Furness built buildings that looked as if they experienced a period of plasticity with the building materials receiving a strong gravitational pull to the Earth resulting in compressed and oversized gothic orders. His buildings captured structural action or highlighted the relationships between his buildings and the gravitational pull of the earth. This perceived structural action is pleasurable to the inner eye.

The only disappointment for me is the lack of color photographs within this book. The author discusses Furness's color theories but the only color illustrated in the photographs is located on the book jacket. Once Furness left his partner George Hewitt, his architectural color pallet consisted mostly of shades of red like the color of his hair and personality (furnace fire). Furness was a Master form giver.

Furness must have been an intense character, and the insight this book gives on his family, childhood, history, and being a novice architect is informative, but I was hoping for a less bias, more thorough analysis and review of him and his work. And color photos! Furness's work needs to be shown with a little color, at least.