Customer Reviews

New London Architecture

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Ten years ago this would have been a slim and depressing volume, but London-so long mired in nostalgia and mediocrity-has become the most adventurous of the world's capitals for new architecture and design. Norman Foster bestrides the world like a colossus, but some of his best work is now rising in full view of his Thameside office. Younger practices are also flourishing, and-in contrast to LA-most of the building is in the public realm: from the new underground stations and museums to the unjustly maligned Millennium Dome and the popular London Eye. Powell, a leading London critic, infuses this sparkling selection with sharp, insightful comments.

I'm not going to review the subject that this book addresses, as the above reviewer does. What one thinks about London's new architecture is a matter of personal opinion. For myself, I think this book shows some great work and some quite abysmal work too. To be quite honest, I personally prefer a more classical-postmodern aesthetic than that reflected in most of the buildings in this book. I happen to sympathize a great deal with the views of the Prince of Wales, and I am disappointed with a great deal of the architecture of 1990s-2000s London.

What I do want to critique is the book itself, especially its arrangement and presentation of information. It suffers from a wooden structure, usually devoting exactly two pages to a project. This inflexibility results in minimal coverage of some truly important buildings and too much on some minor projects.

An even more serious criticism, in my view, is that this book has very, very few plans and elevations. Instead, almost all illustrations are photographs, and the few plans that are given are all very, very small. Personally, I find plans extremely helpful in look at and analyzing a work of architecture, as they present a great deal of information in a compact form, but the editors apparently thought that this sort of presentation was unnecessary.

To its credit, this book does have some very fine photos. But it seems written for the more casual enthusiast than one who seriously wants to understand the buildings in this book.