Product Description

Chicago is world famous for an architectural tradition that has influenced building around the globe. It is the birthplace of the skyscraper and the cradle of modern architecture; it gave rise to the urban office building as we know it, and to the flowing, open floor plans of today's homes. This book chronicles Chicago's architectural tradition from the nineteenth through the early twenty-first century, examining its evolution in the context of broader historical, social, technological, and artistic currents. It explores Chicago architects' quest for a quintessentially American style, and the century of innovation that pushed buildings ever higher, opened them to space and light, and increasingly dissolved the boundaries between indoors and out. It looks at world-renowned structures from the inside out, giving special attention to the interiors that were and remain so important to Chicago's architects. It traces the course of modern architecture from the structural simplicity of Chicago School commercial building, to the low-slung Prairie School house, the streamlined Art Deco skyscraper, and the minimalist Miesian tower of glass and steel, all the way through to the strikingly original, diverse designs of the present day's so-called second modern movement. This eminently readable text vividly discusses both the life and work of such towering figures as Daniel Burnham, John Wellborn Root, Louis H. Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe - as well as that of the many lesser-known architects who have made outstanding contributions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #409177 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.00" h x 9.30" w x 11.20" l, 3.65 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 296 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This lavish, strikingly designed survey focuses on more than 70 Chicago buildings, with an emphasis on their interiors. The book traces the advent of Chicago modernism in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1871, which gave a clean slate to architects Louis Sullivan and John Wellborn Root. Sullivan's disciple, Frank Lloyd Wright, dissolved the boundaries between interior and exterior space in suburban houses that transformed the idea of the single-family home. Mies van der Rohe, George and William Keck and Cesar Pelli, each in different ways, preserved the Chicago School's values of economy, natural light and simplicity. The 243 plates (108 in color) range from H. H. Richardson's 1887 Glessner House, modeled on a medieval English abbey, to Helmut Jahn's gleaming Xerox Centre, and spotlight such landmarks as the Marshall Field store, Marina City, the Railway Exchange, the Auditorium opera house and Eliel and Eero Saarinen's lyrical Crow Island School in the suburb of Winnetka. Larson is a Chicago architect, Pridmore a contributor to the Chicago Tribune.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This book is not to be confused with the almost identically titled Chicago Architecture and Design, 1923-1993 ( LJ 10/1/93), the sequel to Chicago Architecture 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis (Prestel, 1987). These two volumes catalog exhibitions at the Chicago Art Institute celebrating the centennial of the Chicago School of Architecture and the great World's Columbian Exhibition held in The Windy City in 1893 along with more recent architecture extending up to the present. What distinguishes the book at hand from its more scholarly cousins is its emphasis on architectural interiors. It is well written and beautifully illustrated by photographs from the famous collection of Hedrich-Blessing. Highly recommended for architecture libraries and larger art collections.
- Peter Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Chicago is known as an architect's city. Its buildings are bold and innovative, from the organic intricacies designed by Louis Sullivan around the turn of the century to the grand simplicity of Mies van der Rohe five decades later. Larson and Pridmore cover the evolution of modern architecture from the building boom after Chicago's Great Fire of 1871 through the 1992 completion of the Harold Washington Library. They review the careers of Chicago's seminal architects, including John Wellborn Root, William Holabird, Daniel Burnham, David Adler, Frank Lloyd Wright, and George Fred Keck and William Keck, "heroes of Chicago Modernism" during the 1930s. Moving forward in time, they discuss the work of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, the city's most influential builder during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the controversial and flashy structures of Helmut Jahn, particularly the peculiar State of Illinois Building, which sits amid traditional downtown towers like a captured space station. Many of the 243 illustrations display the gracefully designed interiors of Chicago's finest buildings, a facet of architecture often neglected in such surveys. Donna Seaman