**Examines the influence of twentieth-century avant-garde movements on
the contemporary architectural landscape through the work of
"disruptors" such as Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, and Zaha Hadid. With an
irregular format designed by celebrated graphic designer Abbott Miller
of Pentagram.
**
In Architecture Unbound, noted architecture critic Joseph Giovannini
proposes that our current architectural landscape ultimately emerged
from transgressive and progressive art movements that had roiled Europe
before and after World War I. By the 1960s, social unrest and cultural
disruption opened the way for investigations into an inventive,
antiauthoritarian architecture. Explorations emerged in the 1970s, and
built projects surfaced in the 1980s, taking digital form in the 1990s,
with large-scale projects finally landing on the far side of the
millennium.
Architecture Unbound traces all of these developments and influences,
presenting an authoritative and illuminating history not only of the
sources of contemporary currents in architecture but also of the
twentieth-century avant-garde and the twenty-first-century digital
revolution in form-making, and profiling the most influential
practitioners and their most notable projects, including Frank Gehry's
Guggenheim Bilbao and Walt Disney Concert Hall, Zaha Hadid's Guangzhou
Opera House, Daniel Libeskind's master plan for the World Trade Center,
Rem Koolhaas's CCTV Tower, and Herzog and de Meuron's Bird's Nest
Olympic Stadium in Beijing.
