Charles Jencks, the leading architectural critic and writer, takes on "trendiness" in architecture: namely the rise of the "iconic building," instantly famous and distinctively recognizable structures like Norman Foster's "Gherkin" in London or Daniel Libeskind's Ground Zero designs in New York. Although there have always been buildings built to be instant icons such as palaces and cathedrals, Jencks sees this latest trend as being fueled by the real estate industry's thirst for profit and architects' outsize egos. Since the debut of Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao, a roster of international architects has created iconic buildings that court publicity and controversy in equal measure. Some iconic buildings are successful creations that fulfill their contradictory requirements, while others make the public and the critics wince. In addition to Foster, Gehry and Libeskind, Jencks also discusses recent works by Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, and Renzo Piano.Anyone interested in contemporary architecture and the direction of urban design will be interested in Jencks' witty, irreverent and sympathetic insights into how buildings can become good architecture that enhances the cityscape-and are truly iconic.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The cover of Jencks's snappy survey of the post-Bilbao boom in flamboyant public building has a Photoshopped image of Norman Foster's Swiss Re headquarters in London launching itself like the rocket ship it resembles, complete with flaming thrusters and billowing smoke. The cover's combination of satire, affection and awe sets the tone for the book. Neither a pious jeremiad nor a jargon-ridden manifesto, Jencks's volume is more interested in outsize buildings and personalities than in prescriptions and complaints. And a couple of the architects Jencks (The New Paradigm in Architecture) discusses—including Daniel Liebeskind and Will Alsop—are allowed to answer back, in interviews with the author that are sometimes sparring and combative. The most sustained and brilliant of the book's seven sections is on the still-evolving plans for the site formerly occupied by the World Trade Center. Here Jencks traces the charged intersection of politics, finance and media with lucidity and healthy cynicism. In addition to the numerous expected photographs of famous buildings, the book also includes Jencks's own crude but vivid collages and a fascinating series of white-on-black drawings that wittily depict the underlying forms of some of the buildings under discussion. Brimming with critical energy, this volume often feels as big, shiny and in-your-face as the buildings it describes. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
It's funny and it's clever, and the book ... is also short and concise enough to make its point sharply and memorably World of Interiors A study of our current obsession with shock-value architecture which reads all the more crisply for its mocking elegance of discourse Times Literary Supplement
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I like it,
By
This review is from: Iconic Building (Hardcover)
I find it very entertaining to read through. Some architecture books can be dry and "technical" in their description and yet, this book reads like a novel. It reminds me of "The Edifice Complex" written by another favourite author of mine, Deyan Sudjic. None of the authors here provide us with definite accounts or definitions of what constitute iconic buildings and what kinds of people are immersed into edifice complex. However, they provide us with sufficient examples to talk in-depth about the topics. In this book, Charles Jencks endeavours to differentiate an iconic building from a landmark building. It also dissects if iconic building shall be loved or hated or a combination of both. Poignantly enough, Ground Zero is covered in length here because it entails so many people and so many factors that prevent it from happening. To these days, it's still work-in-progress. Architects that covered extensively here are Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Sir Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano, Jaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Philip Johnson, Miralles, Daniel Libeskind, Will Alsop, SOM and several buildings such as Sydney Opera House, Eiffel Tower, Ronchamp, Scotland new Parliament building, et cetera are mentioned too. The conclusion is succinct but probable, that iconic buildings are an evolution of nature or our human's tendency to be close to the Grand Universe which we don't have answers to. If you are a buff of architecture and that you wish to spruce your knowledge on the subject, you can't go better than this. Even better, this book shall read in conjunction with Deyan Sudjic's Edifice Complex because it counters or gives a new spin on Deyan's point of view on architecture. Contagious to read and highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent !,
By Joong Won Lee "Joongwon" (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Iconic Building (Hardcover)
Mr. Jencks' earlier book hit the public by its correlation to the semantics.
His analytical tools from language promoted his book "Language of Post Modern Architecture" into the international popularity. Likewise, I think this book could hit the global audience. It's very contemporary, dealing star architects' icons, written in extremely stimulating fashion. Like David Chipperfield mentioned it, nowadays smart architects engage in exploring designs, not writing heavy theoretical manifestos. In that sense, everyone around the world is experiencing the explosion of interesting icons produced by architectural celebrity system and is trying to understand the strata of current movement. Jencks's book is one of the books that try to understand the trend. For Mr. Jencks, point of departure to understand the current trend is the term "Icon". That word set the examples and tone of the book. the punch line of the book says, ",,,, the paradox that a great icon need not be a great work of architecture, but it must be a captivating one. It has to move your viscera, whether you like it or not, and stay around as a memory image that attracts other thoughts into its orbit." It stimulates reader's brain when it becomes systematic and linguistic. It seeks patterns and underlying principles of Iconic buildings in the global economy era. Mr. Jencks calls it the age of enigmatic signifier, due to the absence of metanarrative/ ideology/ religion. Ronchamp Chapel, to Mr. Jencks, epitomizes the modern icon. It's undulating form, it's manifestation of light, expressing the theology. Yet, what's different in contemporary icons, as is first launched by Bilbao effect, are that they are outcome of digital age, an enigmatic signifiers, freed from past conventions. Some interesting Details : 1. Stories of powerful institutional museum clients. 2. Comparison of two Pradas by Rem Koolhaas and Herzog de Meuron. The brilliance of Prada owner. 3. fulfilling election and empty promises of the cases in Libskind and Koolhaas. 4. success and failure of being icons. 5. different uses of sun as an expression of cosmology. Libskind's Holocaust light (Berlin), wedge of light (ground zero) son of sun (Corb's Chandigarh), and beacon of a new faith (Foster's Reichstag) Fun Read !
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
THE ROTTEN STATE OF ARCHITECTURE,
By
This review is from: Iconic Building (Hardcover)
The cover of this book says it all. Norman Foster's gherkin is shown devoid of its surroundings - the City of London - which in one swoop was rendered a visual disaster area. That Lord Foster feels entitled to thumb his nose at a thousand years of English history and say "look at me, aren't I clever" sums up what virtually all these modern icons actually represent. "Vanity architecture".
Which should be the nomenclature for any future Charles Jenks books chronicling the erection of all similar monsters which relentlessly ignore the scale of their neighbours. Isn't it obvious to every architectural historian we've finally arrived at an era where computers progammes have displaced human intelligence? And the clear reason why so many modern buildings resemble malevolent alien artifacts is because computers have no "intuitive" respect for human scale. Or any inkling how to compose a harmonious facade. Luckily dead-end trends never last long. Sic, Jenks's post-modern architecture. My hope is one day every design student will be forced to read Trystan Edwards's 3 books concerning "Good and Bad Manners in Architecture". They will then discover how all good design is related to proportions found in nature - especially the human body. They'll find out too what the words "unresolved duality" mean - and make sure they don't commit this cardinal sin - as Lord Foster and his ilk so frequently do. A phrase I like (which goes beyond visual aesthetics) is "one immediately recognises beauty because one's nature craves it". Which explains the universal appreciation for the pefection attained by great classical composers. Another hopeful sign - for the last 500 years there's been no significant change as to what contitutes female beauty. Any face resembling a Raphael Madonna will still trump the whitest teeth and biggest mouth modern surgery can provide. For example - Lily Cole. As for modern Icons - would that they could even get close to the nobility of the small chapel of Ronchamp. The reverse side of the coin being the emotionally barren Guggenheim Museum. The granddaddy of all vanity projects - exploding and imploding wherever money is made available to be thrown away in ever-more desperate attemps "to leave one's mark".
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