Architecture Biography

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for The New York Times comes an intimate, behind-the-scenes portrait of the world-renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In this book, Huxtable looks at the architect and the man, exploring the sources of his tumultuous and troubled life and his long career as a master builder, as well as his search for lasting, true love.

This story is an inspiring and personal testimony of how a woman fell in love with architecture and created a life for herself but then decided to give everything up for love and follow the American Dream. Little did she know, a pandemic, a baby, and a new business would all happen at once! Follow Gloria’s incredible journey to becoming a worldwide renowned architect and business owner while being a new mom. Through this book, you’ll learn how women in any industry can find a balance between their professional life and motherhood without having to compromise either role.

Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as a rank egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius. Harder to detect, but no less real, is a Wright who fully understood, and suffered from, the choices he made. This is the Wright whom Paul Hendrickson reveals in this masterful biography: the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life.

To look south and skyward from Central Park these days is to gaze upon a physical manifestation of tens of billions of dollars in global wealth: a series of soaring spires stretching from Park Avenue to Broadway. Known as Billionaires’ Row, this set of slender high-rise residences has transformed the skyline of New York City, thanks to developer-friendly policies and a seemingly endless gush of cash from tech, finance, and foreign oligarchs. And chances are most of us will never be invited to step inside.

Born to a Jewish family in Estonia in 1901 and brought to America in 1906, the architect Louis Kahn grew up in poverty in Philadelphia; by the time of his death in 1974, he was widely recognized as one of the greatest architects of his era. Yet this enormous reputation was based on only a handful of masterpieces, all built during the last 15 years of his life.

In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood.

A visionary carpenter shares meditations on work, creativity, and design, revealing powerful lessons on building a meaningful life through his experience constructing some of New York’s most iconic spaces.

Fiona MacCarthy challenges the image of Gropius as a doctrinaire architectural rationalist, bringing out the visionary philosophy and courage that carried him through a politically hostile age. Pilloried by Tom Wolfe as inventor of the monolithic high-rise, Gropius is better remembered as inventor of a form of art education that influenced schools worldwide. He viewed argument as intrinsic to creativity. Unusually for one in his position, Gropius encouraged women's artistic endeavors and sought equal romantic partners.

Over more than five decades, legendary architect Moshe Safdie has built some of the world's most influential and memorable structures. Safdie always refers to the "silent client" an architect must ultimately serve: the people who live in, work in, or experience a building. If Walls Could Speak takes listeners behind the veil of an essential yet mysterious profession to explain through Safdie's own experiences how an architect thinks and works.

Have you ever seen the Eiffel Tower? Gustave Eiffel’s tower is one of the most recognized landmarks in the world, but it wasn’t an easy path to turn his idea into a reality. Listeners will love learning the story behind the name as they follow along with Gustave’s beginnings as a bridge designer and the engineer behind the Statue of Liberty, the criticism and personal attacks by the media he faced while building the tower, and his eventual world-renowned success.

King Charles III’s affection for architecture is wellknown, but the extent of his engagement has never been fully presented to the public. This is the first book to draw together the many threads, from the "carbuncle" speech, made at Hampton Court in 1984, until his accession to the throne. He has created model settlements such as Poundbury through the Duchy of Cornwall, Dumfries House in East Ayrshire has been made a beacon of social regeneration, and his educational initiatives have changed lives.

He was described as one of the only persons smarter than Einstein, by no less than Eugene Wigner, a Nobel-Prize winning physicist, who knew both of them well. He was a polymath who spoke multiple languages and possessed an extraordinary intellect. He could perform complex mathematical calculations in his head, recite entire books verbatim after a single reading, and engage in advanced scientific discussions even as a child. He made groundbreaking contributions to mathematics, physics, economics, and computer science, notably developing the Monte Carlo method for nuclear reactor simulations ...

Fue una de las principales figuras de la arquitectura española de finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. Autor de obras de inigualable belleza como la Casa Milá o el Park Güell, Gaudí siempre será recordado por la obra cumbre de su carrera: el Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia, una construcción colosal e inacabada en la que están condensados todos los principios que guiaron su interesante proceso creativo.

Royal Lodge is one of a scattered group of dwellings, mansions, forts, and follies in the southern recesses and environs of Windsor Great Park which have served royal pleasures and private needs ever since the carefree days of Charles II. It has been the home of artists and courtiers and farmers and foresters, the picnic pavilion of queens and the private abode of two kings. Meticulously researched, royal chronicler Helen Cathcart paints a vivid picture of the evolving architecture, changing decor, and esteemed inhabitants of Royal Lodge from earliest days through to the mid-twentieth century.

The story of how one woman's long love affair with New York's Central Park led her to organize its rescue from a state of serious decline, returning it to the beautiful place of recreational opportunity and spiritual sustenance that it is today. Interwoven into her own story is a comprehensive history of Central Park: its design and construction as a scenic masterpiece; the alterations of each succeeding era; the addition of numerous facilities for sports and play; and finally, the "anything goes" phase of the 1960s and 70s, which was often fun but nearly destroyed the park.

Maverick for the Built Environment is a biography of my father. A trained architect, he felt that architecture, indeed all engineering disciplines, should not ignore the human factor and that new ways of thinking were needed to improve the built environment. “This generation of students and young professionals,” he testified before Congress in 1973, “feels the need to deal with issues which reflect a socially responsible position by the profession…they want to have some confidence that their design decisions make a positive contribution to the quality of the environment.” Not ...

Nobody could get Frederick Law Olmsted to sit still. He was filled with energy, adventure, and dreams of changing the world. As a boy, he found refuge in the peace and calm of nature, and later as an adult, he dreamed of designing and creating access to parks for a growing and changing America. When New York City held a contest for the best park design for what would become Central Park, Olmsted won and became the father of landscape architecture. He went on to design parks across America, including Yosemite National Park and even the grounds for the United States Capitol.

Peter Cook has been a pivotal figure within the architecture world for over half a century. Suffused with Peter’s infectious energy, enthusiasm, and charm, this intriguing memoir explores major themes in architecture through the lens of his life and work. Taking the listener on a journey through his colorful and wide-ranging career, it touches on his early years and architectural education, his relationships with key figures within the architecture community, and his work teaching and lecturing internationally.

The raucous and surprisingly poignant story of a young, Russia-obsessed American writer and comedian who embarked on a solo tour of the former Soviet Republics, never imagining that it would involve kidnappers, garbage bags of money, and encounters with the weird and wonderful from Mongolia to Tajikistan.

This is celebrated architect Ken Tate’s creative memoir about his life. Beginning with his days growing up in Columbus, Mississippi, where he was surrounded by beautiful Greek Revival houses, the book journeys through Ken’s upbringing as a creative adolescent to his early days at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta where he started his architectural collegiate career. There, Ken struggled to keep up with the hard-edged modernism being taught in school and longed to design beautiful houses with soul.