Main entry:

Clausen, Meredith L.

Title & Author:

Pietro Belluschi : modern American architect / Meredith L. Clausen.

Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©1994.

Description:

x, 469 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 450-454) and index.
Preface -- Italian orgins -- Early years in Portland -- The Portland Art Museum and the emergence of modernism -- Regional modernism: The houses -- Modernism versus Tradition: The churches -- The Equitable Building and the postwar boom -- MIT, Boston, and change in practice -- The Pan Am Building and sixties backlash -- The AIA Gold medal and Belluschi's return to Portland -- Belluschi in the 1980s: Confronting Postmodernism and the return to basics -- Conclusion.
Current Copyright Fee: GBP15.00 0.
Dust jacket.

Summary:

Pietro Belluschi (1899-1994) was the last of a generation of architects that included Marcel Breuer, Jose Luis Sert, and Louis Kahn, European immigrants who had a major impact on American architecture. This first extensively illustrated study of his life and work brings to light a remarkably accomplished architect, recipient of the AIA Gold Medal and designer (by his own estimate) of well over 1,000 buildings and projects.
Meredith Clausen reveals the enormous power that Belluschi wielded as an arbiter of taste and decision-maker in the 1950s and 1960s; his role in shaping the policy of the State Department in its overseas building program; and his role in securing major commissions for favored architects such as I.M. Pei. Equally important is Clausen's discussion of Belluschi's role in the development of regionalism in the Pacific Northwest and its impact on the definition of modernism as it was emerging in the United States.
Clausen examines all aspects of Belluschi's long and productive career, from his classical origins in Rome and the arts and crafts influences in the Pacific Northwest that helped shape his aesthetic to the stores, shopping centers, and flush-surfaced glass and metal corporate towers that were the bread and butter of his later practice. In between, she gives illuminating accounts of the restrained, modernist houses and churches that comprised his early work; and of buildings like the startlingly modern Portland Art Museum of 1931 and the aluminum-clad Equitable (now Commonwealth) Building of 1948 that were at the cutting edge of progressive architecture.
Clausen also describes the collaboration with Walter Gropius on the massive Pan Am Building that marked a downturn in Belluschi's popular reception and in the fortunes of modernism in general. By aligning himself with large-scale institutions and private developers, Clausen observes, Belluschi alienated both avant-garde theorists and aesthetic trendsetters and was increasingly at odds with the temper of the times, a fall from grace that culminated in a well-publicized debate with Philip Johnson in the late 1970s over Michael Graves's design for the Public Services Building in Portland, Oregon.

Resources:
Table of contents

ISBN:

0262032201
9780262032209
0262531674
9780262531672

Subject:

Belluschi, Pietro, 1899-1994 Criticism and interpretation.
Belluschi, Pietro Criticism and interpretation.
Belluschi, Pietro, 1899-1994
Belluschi, Pietro, 1899- Criticism and interpretation.
Belluschi, Pietro, (1899- ) Critique et interprétation.
Architecture United States History 20th century.
Architecture États-Unis Histoire 20e siècle.
Architecture.
Arquitetura Moderna (Est Unidos)
Architects United States 20th century.
Architecture 20e siècle États-Unis.
Architecture United States 20th century
United States.

Form/genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Added entries:

Belluschi, Pietro, 1899-1994.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 104255
Call No.: NA44.B449.9 (ID:94-B1950)
Status: Available