Customer Reviews

Richard Meier Houses and Apartments

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I recieved this book as a gift and was very surprised. Its giver told me she had read a great review of it in the WSJ, and, judging the book by its cover (as all such books may well be sampled) I was excited. I am a great fan of Mr. Meier, so that may make me a little biased, but to Rizzoli's credit, this book is very well done. While I am more interested in his civic buildings, Meier's residential work is so rich that I will concede that it deserves its own volume.
The writings (there are a few essays included) are a nice accompaniment for a relative outsider in the Architecture world, such as myself. The photography is stunning and captures the use light and materials quite nicely. My only complaint is that some of the photographs do not seem to focus so much on the architecture as much as the surrounding environment: stunning views from apartments and private homes as well as a throuroughly modernist approach to siting the structures. Also, some work gets less attention than I would prefer, especially some of the early houses that could be seen as touchstones in the arhictect's career.
But, in toto, this book does a good job of describing and documenting a great swath of Richard Meier's storied architecure and it is well worth exploring.

Richard Meier's work is world renouned of course, but he is known mostly for his museums, like the Getty in L.A. and the High in Atlanta, but were he really shines is in his houses, this setting is more intimate and you see his virtuoisty of his work and observe his architecture evolve. His apartment buildings in Manhattan are known for their clean beauty and unfortuinitely also for their miriad of problems, but in this book the focus in rightfully placed on the architecture not the practicality or the durability, and since i have neither the capitol nor the desire to live in one of his apartments the point is moot to me. Suffice to say if you have any interest in Meier or of beautiful modern architecture then I highly recommend ths book.