Gordon Bunshaft and SOM : building corporate modernism / Nicholas Adams.

Main entry:

Adams, Nicholas, 1947- author.

Title & Author:

Gordon Bunshaft and SOM : building corporate modernism / Nicholas Adams.

Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 2019.
©2019

Description:

vii, 288 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 30 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Youth -- To work -- Building corporate modernism -- Bunshaft's hands and the exquisite details -- Plasticity -- Mixing public and private -- Power matchless -- Days of peculiar silence.

Summary:

Gordon Bunshaft's (1909-1990) landmark 1952 design for Lever House reshaped the Manhattan skyline and elevated the reputation of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the firm where he would spend more than 40 years as a partner. Although this enigmatic architect left behind few records, his legacy endures in the corporate headquarters, museums, and libraries that were built in his distinctive modernist style. Bunshaft's career was marked by shifts in material. Glass and steel structures of the 1950s, such as New York's Chase Manhattan Bank, gave way to revolutionary designs in concrete, such as the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and the doughnut-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Bunshaft's collaborations with artists, including Isamu Noguchi, Jean Dubuffet, and Henry Moore, were of paramount importance throughout his career. Nicholas Adams explores the contested line between Bunshaft's ambition for acclaim as a singular artistic genius and the collaborative structure of SOM's architectural partnership. Bunshaft received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1988 and remains the only SOM partner to have achieved this distinction. Adams counters Bunshaft's maxim that "the building speaks for itself" with necessary critical context about this modernist moment at a time when the future of Bunshaft's iconic works is very much in question

ISBN:

0300227477 (hardcover)
9780300227475 (hardcover)

Subject:

Bunshaft, Gordon, 1909-1990 Criticism and interpretation.
Bunshaft, Gordon Criticism and interpretation.
Bunshaft, Gordon, 1909-1990.
Bunshaft, Gordon 1909-1990
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Employees.
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Architects New York (State) New York.
Architecture United States History 20th century.
Architectes New York (État) New York.
Architecture États-Unis Histoire 20e siècle.
Architects New York (State)
Architects.
Architecture.
Employees.
Architekt
Architektur
Moderne
Modern movement (Architecture) United States.
New York (State) New York.
United States.
USA

Form/genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 306568
Call No.: BIB 252122
Status: Available

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