A classic work on the joy of experiencing architecture, with a new afterword reflecting on architecture's place in the contemporary moment

Architecture begins to matter, writes Paul Goldberger, when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads. In Why Architecture Matters, he shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao. He eloquently describes the Church of Sant'Ivo in Rome as a work that embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.

In his afterword to this new edition, Goldberger addresses the current climate in architectural history and takes a more nuanced look at projects such as Thomas Jefferson's academical village at the University of Virginia and figures including Philip Johnson, whose controversial status has been the topic of much recent discourse. He argues that the emotional impact of great architecture remains vital, even as he welcomes the shift in the field to an increased emphasis on social justice and sustainability.

An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.

From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a saloon in the open air), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit's Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati's Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America's favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society: the earliest ballparks evoked the Victorian age in their accommodations--bleachers for the riffraff, grandstands for the middle-class; the concrete donuts of the 1950s and '60s made plain television's grip on the public's attention; and more recent ballparks, like Baltimore's Camden Yards, signal a new way forward for stadium design and for baseball's role in urban development. Throughout, Goldberger shows us the way in which baseball's history is concurrent with our cultural history: the rise of urban parks and public transportation; the development of new building materials and engineering and design skills. And how the site details and the requirements of the game--the diamond, the outfields, the walls, the grandstands--shaped our most beloved ballparks.

A fascinating, exuberant ode to the Edens at the heart of our cities--where dreams are as limitless as the outfields.

The illustrated history of a seminal New York neighborhood--a story of birth, decline, and renewal, of high design, of grit and glamour--a tale of real estate wrangling, of art, of commerce.

DUMBO, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is a flourishing neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Romantic cobblestone streets, stunning views of Manhattan, the East River, and New York Harbor, and storied architecture framed by the iconic silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge characterize this extraordinary place. DUMBO, however, was not always flourishing--nor always called by this curious appellation. What we now know and see of the neighborhood is largely the product of adventurous artists and, in the end, the determination of a man with a vision. The story of DUMBO is at once the story of New York and, as well, a story of urban rebirth and our nation's return to the city, a tale involving real estate, of buying and selling with acumen and nerve, of beautiful place-making, and of people who have settled in a long neglected, but extraordinary locale--a place of much history, and, now, of brilliant resurgence.
This volume considers this seminal New York neighborhood with both historic imagery culled from the great city collections as well as new photography taken specifically for the book. It features compelling streetscapes and dramatic views of transformed one-time industrial spaces, intimate apartment interiors, park spaces, and archival imagery from the area's richly layered past, all as seen through the eyes of Paul Goldberger, one of our nation's great writers on architecture, space, and New York.

Beautiful, bespoke, environmentally sensitive houses by the award-winning architecture firm known for clean, modern, soulful design. This is the first book on the firm's work.

Modern houses that are timeless, thoughtfully detailed, marked by innovative and environmentally friendly design, and inevitably situated close to nature--by the sea, on the bluff, upon the dunes--are the hallmark of Stelle Lomont Rouhani.

From Casa Loma and Lazy Point to House on the Point, mere mention of the homes is enough to inspire visions of some contemporary Xanadu. But it is the specifics, the careful use of materials, the very close attention to place, bespoke furniture and fixtures, and above all a sensitivity to those who will live in the spaces created that make these extraordinary works of architecture such beloved dwellings.

With thought to an ultimate experience of comfort, to space and light, to views, and to a way of living beside nature that is considerate of nature, the architects open walls toward the sea and position decks to allow for the enjoyment of morning sunlight and scented breezes redolent of bayberries and pine. Ultimately it is a kind of harmony the architects are after and doing more with less, a Zen-like quality that renews the spirit, offering serenity and repose--and which, in the houses featured here, they so warmly, so quietly find.

Here, from Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Paul Goldberger, is the first full-fledged critical biography of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time. Goldberger follows Gehry from his humble origins--the son of working-class Jewish immigrants in Toronto--to the heights of his extraordinary career. He explores Gehry's relationship to Los Angeles, a city that welcomed outsider artists and profoundly shaped him in his formative years. He surveys the full range of his work, from the Bilbao Guggenheim to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. to the architect's own home in Santa Monica, which galvanized his neighbors and astonished the world. He analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in which an amiable surface masks a driving ambition. And he discusses his use of technology, not just to change the way a building looks, but to revolutionize the very practice of the field. Comprehensive and incisive, Building Art is a sweeping view of a singular artist--and an essential story of architecture's modern era.

The story of the creation of an astonishing house that renews and reinvigorates the spirit of the avant-garde in the Hamptons

Architecture critic Paul Goldberger tells the story of an extraordinary house on the Atlantic Double Dunes in East Hampton--Blue Dream, the result of a remarkable collaboration between collectors Julie Reyes Taubman and Robert Taubman, architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, builder Ed Bulgin, landscape architect Michael Boucher and designer Michael Lewis, who sought to renew the legacy of modernist architecture and art in the Hamptons.
Goldberger offers insight into the complex process by which an architectural idea generated a work that stands as the most striking addition of our time to the roster of architecturally ambitious modernist houses on Long Island. As he notes, There are relatively few books devoted to the architecture of a single house, but what is clear if you read any of them is that they are stories about clients as much as about architects. So it is with Blue Dream. The Taubmans were inspired by the avant-garde spirit of artists and architects who settled and worked in the Hamptons and set out to create a house like no other, a house whose complex curving forms could only be built using the composite material used to make fighter jets.
Iwan Baan's photographic portfolio documents Blue Dream across four seasons. Goldberger's text is illustrated with images of earlier modernist houses that inspired the project, as well as documentation of the design process involved in the making of Blue Dream itself.
Paul Goldberger (born 1950), whom the Huffington Post has called the leading figure in architecture criticism, is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine. Goldberger began his career at the New York Times in 1972 and was appointed architecture critic at the paper in 1973, working alongside Ada Louise Huxtable until 1982. In 1984, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism. As architecture critic for the New Yorker (1997-2011), he wrote the magazine's celebrated Sky Line column. After serving as dean of the Parsons School of Design from 2004 to 2006, Goldberger was named the Joseph Urban Professor of Design at the New School. He is the author of Why Architecture Matters (2023), Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry (2015), Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture (2009), Beyond the Dunes: A Portrait of the Hamptons, with photographer Jake Rajs (2018) and Houses of the Hamptons (1986), among other publications.

Philip Johnson, who died in 2005, was a towering figure in American architecture, both sensing and establishing new directions and stylistic trends. This monograph covers the last decade of his professional life, as he and partner Alan Ritchie collaborated on projects of striking creativity and originality. Ritchie, born in England, worked with Johnson for over twenty years and continues as president of Philip Johnson/Alan Ritchie Architects. This volume includes work built and unbuilt, large-scale and small, designed by the firm throughout the 1990s. Two important themes -- identified by Paul Goldberger in his perceptive introductory essay -- are evident throughout the office's oeuvre. An interest in sculptural form -- or the way in which sculptural form translates into architectural presence -- led Johnson and Ritchie to designs that involve both new kinds of shapes and new ways of using classical architectural form. Such sculptural works include Da Monsta, the new visitor's pavilion at Johnson's famed Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut, and a spectacular folly consisting of four pyramids made of chain-link fencing at a private residence in upstate New York. Simultaneously, the firm has continued to design larger projects, for which it has been well known since the 1980s. A twenty-seven-story apartment tower for Hudson Square in lower Manhattan, the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, and an addition to the Amon Carter Museum (originally designed by Johnson in 1961) in Fort Worth show Johnson and Ritchie's skillful commingling of the modernist and the classicist, the contextual and the unique.

This handsome book examines the remarkable new addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, designed by Renzo Piano and scheduled to open in May 2009. This expansion to the Art Institute of Chicago, already one of the largest museums in the country, will provide new galleries for modern and contemporary painting and sculpture, as well as for photography, film and video, and architecture and design. The structure is Piano's largest art museum building to date.

The museum's director, James Cuno, discusses the history of the commission, and Paul Goldberger writes on how this building fits into the larger context of Piano's work--especially his many museum designs--as well as considers its positioning in a city celebrated for its architecture. Judith Turner provides exquisite architectural photographs, showing many nuanced details and views of the structure, while Joseph Rosa comments on her images and how they convey the beauty and sophistication of the building. Photographs by New York-based architectural photographer Paul Warchol complete the book

Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

Gwathmey Siegel's buildings represent the pinnacle of late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century modernist design, and this new volume focuses on a single architectural masterpiece: 400 Fifth Avenue. Designed by the award-winning architectural firm Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and soaring sixty stories above Fifth Avenue, 400 Fifth Avenue seamlessly integrates an unparalleled collection of spectacular condominium tower residences with the world-class, five-star Setai Fifth Avenue hotel, providing a one-of-a-kind architectural icon in the heart of midtown Manhattan.

Much like Alice Liddell in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, multimedia artist Clifford Ross looks beyond the natural world to uncover another world bound only by the imagination, in which images are reversed and landscapes reimagined in ravishing color. A digital visionary, Ross uses methods old and new to produce exceptionally beautiful and radically redesigned conceptions of reality.

In 2009, Ross was commissioned in collaboration with the fine art manufacturers at Franz Mayer of Munich to create a monumental public art project for the US Federal Courthouse in Austin, Texas. The culmination of this collaboration is a colorful twenty-eight-foot-square stained glass wall with built-in hydraulic doors opening into a large event space. This book documents the long process, which brought together architects, engineers, craftsmen, and government officials and combined centuries-old construction techniques with twenty-first-century digital technology.

With one hundred full-color illustrations from all phases of the wall's design and construction, ranging from photographs to pencil sketches and computer renderings, this book charts the creation of a modern monument.