When it comes to determining the relative quality of architecture, who
is best equipped to make the distinctions? Is it the public who lives in
and among the buildings? The people who commission and pay for the
buildings? Art historians? Or architects themselves?
These provocative essays take up the questions of what people value in
architecture and how changing values influence opinions about it. In the
intriguing opening essay, Michael Benedikt makes an argument for the
role of architects in the delineation of value in architecture. He
discusses the differences between icon and canon, a theme threaded
through many of the essays. In addition to unexpected analyses of
buildings such as Eero Saarinen's Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Paul
Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building at Yale University, and the work
of Antoni Gaudí and Frank Gehry, the collection includes a clear-eyed
look at the role of architecture in addressing social problems.
Ultimately, these essays assert that judging architecture requires more
than a refined sensibility. Buildings also need to be evaluated by their
impact on the people living within and around them.
Contributors: John Beardsley, Harvard Design School; Michael Benedikt, U
of Texas, Austin; Tim Culvahouse, California College of the Arts; Lisa
Finley, California College of the Arts; Kurt W. Forster,
Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar, Germany; Kenneth Frampton, Columbia U;
Diane Ghirardo, U of Southern California; Charles Jencks; David
Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; Nancy Levinson; Hélène Lipstadt;
Juhani Pallasmaa, Helsinki U of Technology; Timothy M. Rohan, U of
Massachusetts, Amherst; Roger Scruton; Daniel Willis, Pennsylvania State
U.
William S. Saunders is editor of Harvard Design Magazine and assistant
dean for external relations at Harvard University's Graduate School of
Design. He is the author of Modern Architecture: Photographs by Ezra
Stoller and editor of three other Harvard Design Magazine Readers.
Michael Benedikt is Hal Box Chair in Urbanism and director of the Center
for American Architecture and Design at the School of Architecture at
the University of Texas at Austin.
