The Critical Edge; Controversy in Recent American Architecture

Cambridge, MA, and New Brunswick, NJ: The MIT Press and The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli art Museum, 1985. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Very good/Good. Format is approximately 9.25 inches by 12.25 inches. [6], 203, [5] pages. Illustrations (some in color). DJ has tear at front spine. This book is based on an exhibition of the same title organized by the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, The state University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Research for the book and exhibition was carried out in a seminar in the Department of Art History, Rutgers University. The exhibition was presented additionally at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, and The Nelson-Artkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. The Critical Edge identifies and presents case histories of the 12 most talked about buildings of our times. No other buildings of this era have so aroused the public, so divided the profession, and so stimulated the press as those that are discussed here. The authors have canvassed the widest possible range of literature and commentary on each building-from airline magazines to professional journals-to plot the vicissitudes of their subjects' critical fortunes and popular reputations. Tod A. Marder, Ph.D., is professor of art history at Rutgers University. He is an expert in the art of Bernini, the city of ancient and modern Rome, and Renaissance and baroque art. He has published Bernini's Scala Regia at the Vatican Palace: Architecture, Sculpture and Ritual (Cambridge University Press) and Bernini and the Art of Architecture (Abbeville Press). All of the important architectural concerns of the 1970s and 1980s are expressed in this book. Discussions of issues range from the initial conception of a building to advanced phases of its use and include questions about planning theory, financing and construction, use, misuse, and disuse, wherever these have been raised. Introductory essays are by Tod A. Marder, Chairman of the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, Robert Bruegmann, Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and Martin Filler, architectural critic and editor of House and Garden. Marder discusses the relationship between architectural criticism and public opinion. Breugmann analyzes the nature of the controversies surrounding these buildings in light of controversies about earlier buildings, and Filler takes up architectural criticism in the context of the publishing industry by considering the relationships of writer, editors, publishers, advertisers, and readers to their various constituencies. Among the buildings covered are: AT&T Corporate Headquarters, Bronx Developmental Center, East Building, National Gallery of Art, Empire State Plaza, Gehry House, The J. Paul Getty Museum, House VI, Indeterminate Facade, Best Products Showroom, Piazza d'Italia, The Portland Building, Renaissance Center, and Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Among the essayists are: Gregory Gilbert, Tana Harvey, Marilyn Fish, Maria Pellerano, Ruth Wilford Caccavale, Kathleen Enz Finken, Michael Bzdak, Jennifer Toher, David Gilbert, Rachel Mullen, and Nicholas Capasso.