I find the term "starchitect" quite interesting. It's a term that's propped up in the past 10 or so years and is applied to architects who are "stars"; in both their professions and in today's culture. Their museum buildings, for instance, may be more famous than what's housed within. Do people travel to Bilbao, Spain to see American architect Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum building...or the art it contains? Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum in Berlin - interesting on the outside - was practically unusable for this museum-goer a few years ago. And don't get me started on Peter Eisenman's completely weird field of stones at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews, also in Berlin. I stand there and go "huh?" (The museum underground, though, is one of the best I've ever been to and is well-worth the visit.) But, okay, enough of me and my old-fashioned ideas that buildings should be functional and understandable.
Who were considered - instead of today's "starchitects" - yesterday's "star architects"? According to author Hugh Howard,in his book, "Architecture's Odd Couple: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson" the leading two would have been Wright and Johnson. Both men - who knew and influenced each other in Wright's later years and Johnson's earlier ones - along with others like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, have been the defining and innovative architects from the early 1900's to the early 2000's. Highlighting Wright's "Fallingwater" and Johnson's "Glass House" - as well as Mies' "Villa Tugendhat" - Howard gives his readers an in-depth look at how all three houses influenced each other's work but also architectural design in general. Clients hired Wright, Johnson, and Mies for something "different" and yet, "livable". (You might quibble about living in a totally glass house, but Philip Johnson certainly was able to live in his for years. Though I wonder if he used the non-glassed "guest house", too...)
Hugh Howard also examines their commercial buildings, both in the designing and building, as well as the back stories of how they came to be. And he looks at the personal interplay between the two men, who seemed to both admire and dislike the other. Sort of the new term "frenemy" applies? Howard writes a bit more about Frank Lloyd Wright than he does Philip Johnson; he definitely thinks Wright was the more lasting influence on design. But no matter whose work you might prefer, you'll find Hugh Howard's book great reading. There are also plenty of illustrations.
(For more on Philip Johnson, you can read Franz Schulze's marvelous bio on Johnson, "Philip Johnson: Life and Work", published in 1994. It's one of the best full biographies I've read. And for a wonderful fictional look at the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, seek out Simon Mawrer's "The Glass Room". )
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Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2016
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Wonderfully described cantankerous relationship between two of our most gifted and loved architects of the 20th century.
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2016Verified Purchase
Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2016
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Phil in Buckden
Bashed up book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 10, 2018Verified Purchase
