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Reputations


04.29.13: Naomi Stead

Child’s Play
On Places, Naomi Stead examines the cultural perception of architecture as not simply a creative profession but also a kind of child's play — an uber-kindergarten legitimated for academic credit and professional reputation.
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04.08.13: Phyllis Lambert

Seagram: Union of Building and Landscape
On Places, Phyllis Lambert explores the evolution of the Seagram Building, focusing on Mies van der Rohe's profound concern for the relationship between building and nature.
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04.02.13: Ellen Dunham-Jones

The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas
On Places, Ellen Dunham-Jones assesses the protean career of Rem Koolhaas and his provocative efforts to marry art and capitalism, radicalism and pragmatism, icon-making and city-making.
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02.28.13: Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer

Client and Architect
On Places, a republication of Mariana Van Rensselaer's 1890 essay on the architect and the client, and the need for the "reciprocal loyalty from which alone can grow a truly national art."
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02.25.13: Alexandra Lange

Founding Mother: Mariana Van Rensselaer and the Rise of Criticism
On Places, Alexandra Lange explores the ongoing relevance of the late 19th-century writings of Mariana Van Rensselaer, one of the pioneers of architecture criticism in America.
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11.05.12: Belmont Freeman

Past Perfect: Four Freedoms Park
On Places, Belmont Freeman reviews the controversial politics of presidential memorials, focusing especially on Four Freedoms Park in New York City, the memorial to FDR designed 40 years by Louis Kahn.
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05.14.12: Keith Eggener

The Uses of Daylight
On Places, Keith Eggener casts new light on the little-known Boley Building in Kansas City, by Louis Curtiss, which featured one of the first glass curtain walls in America.
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04.10.12: Jerry Herron

The Last Pedestrians
On Places, Jerry Herron traces the intersecting lives of architect Albert Kahn, artist Diego Rivera and industrialist Edsel Ford — and how they all shaped the visioin of Detroit as industrial powerhouse.
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03.19.12: Gabrielle Esperdy

Banham's America
On Places, Gabrielle Esperdy traces the American journeys of Reyner Banham, and views the British historian in the lively tradition of European travelers who tell us Americans something important about ourselves.
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02.27.12: Belmont Freeman

What Is It About the Art Schools?
On Places, Belmont Freeman recounts the dramatic saga of the National Art Schools in Havana — and argues that we are overlooking the larger narrative of post-revolutionary Cuban architecture.
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02.06.12: Keith Eggener

Louis Curtiss and the Politics of Architectural Reputation
On Places, Keith Eggener assesses the work of the neglected Kansas City architect Louis Curtiss — and highlights the politics of professional repuation.
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06.16.11: Alice T. Friedman

Girl Talk: Marion Mahony Griffin, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Oak Park Studio
On Places, architectural historian Alice Friedman explores the pioneering career of architect Marion Mahony Griffin, who rose to prominence in the Oak Park office of Frank Lloyd Wright.
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05.19.11: Ian Baldwin

The Architecture of Harry Weese
On Places, Ian Baldwin reviews The Architecture of Harry Weese, and finds an overlooked modernist whose work was "highly original and often stunning."
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05.16.11: Belmont Freeman

Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment
On Places, Belmont Freeman reviews Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment, and finds much to admire in a long career that has lately been overlooked.
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04.29.11: Gita Lenz & Gordon Stettinius

Gita Lenz: New York Views
On Places, a gallery by the mid-century New York photographer Gita Lenz, whose long neglected work is gaining new recognition.
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04.22.11: Alexandra Lange

The Anti-Monograph
On Places, Alexandra Lange argues that the new monograph from Studio Gang is a version of the anti-monograph: an effort to feed the star machinery and resist it at the same time.
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03.29.11: Jonathan Massey

Breuer, Baby!
On Places, selections from "Marcel Breuer and Postwar America," a recent exhibition at the Syracuse School of Architecture, organized by Jonathan Massey and Barry Bergdoll.
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03.28.11: Mark Lamster

The Architectural Monograph: A Defense
On Places, Mark Lamster asks: In a dynamic era for practice and publishing, what is the future of the architectural monograph?
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01.20.11: Sandy Isenstadt

American Glamour
On Places, Sandy Isenstadt reviews Alice Friedman's American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture.
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09.16.10: Kim Förster

Massimo Vignelli: Oppositions, Skyline and the Institute
On Places, a gallery of Massimo Vignelli's graphic design work for the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, written and curated by Kim Förster.
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06.22.10: Alice T. Friedman

Modern Architecture for the "American Century"
On Places, an excerpt from Alice Friedman's American Glamour and the Evolution of Modern Architecture, on Eero Saarinen's iconic projects for General Motors and TWA, and the rise and fall — and rise — of the architect's reputation.
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05.07.10: Alexandra Lange

Saccharine Design
As curator and subject in his own exhibition, “Marcel Wanders: Daydreams at the Philadelphia,” the designer manages to diminish his appeal.
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03.15.10: Robert Taylor

Words and Pictures
On Places, architect Robert Taylor reviews Fumihiko Maki's collected essays and Shigeru Ban's latest monograph.
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03.06.10: Nancy Levinson

Critical Beats
On Places, Nancy Levinson argues that the fundamental dilemma of architecture criticism is the rise of the global beat — dateline: placeless.
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03.01.10: Ian Baldwin

Reading Rudolph
On Places, architect Ian Baldwin reviews Paul Rudolph: Writings on Architecture, and makes a compelling case for looking anew at several important but neglected projects.
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02.24.10: Robert Bruegmann

The Architect as Urbanist: Part 2
On Places, architectural historian Robert Bruegmann continues his analysis of Paul Rudolph's late work, with a focus on several extraordinary projects in southeast Asia.
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02.24.10: Robert Bruegmann

The Architect as Urbanist: Part 1
On Places, architectural historian Robert Bruegmann argues that the later and lesser known work of Paul Rudolph — best known for his architecture building at Yale —  deserves renewed attention. 
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02.04.10: Timothy Mennel

Working for the People
Completing his doctorate in geography, Timothy Mennel produced not a typical dissertation but Everything Must Go: A Novel of Robert Moses's New York. On Places, read an excerpt, in which Moses and Frank Lloyd Wright take a drive through Harlem and the Bronx.
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02.01.10: Keith Eggener

Lethal T-Square: Architecture, Violence, Renewal
Robert Moses is often compared with Baron Haussman. Keith Eggener argues that he can be compared as well with the vigilante-architect played by Charles Bronson in Death Wish.
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11.11.09: Gavin Browning

it is what it is
Gavin Browning reviews it is what is is, the 1,000-page monograph of the work of the New York-based multidisciplinary design firm 2x4.
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09.16.09: Sandy Isenstadt

Crystal and Arabesque
Sandy Isenstadt reviews Jonathan Massey's Crystal and Arabesque, which retrieves the life and work of the long-neglected early 20th-century architect Claude Bragdon.
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