Bøger af Esther McCoy

Richard Neutra (1892-1970) is considered one of the twentieth century's most influential architects. Born in Vienna, his career occurred at a critical moment in the history of the modern movement. His early inspiration was provided by pioneering architects such as Adolf Loos and Frank Lloyd Wright. His first major commission -- Lovell House -- built in Los Angeles in 1929, just six years after his arrival in the United States, is known as one of the landmarks of modern architecture.He is recognized for his open and innovative designs, his extensive use of glass allowing indoor and outdoor spaces to flow freely together, and his application of industrial techniques to architecture. He made major contributions to urban planning, was the author of several books, including Survival through Design, and won over fifty awards for architectural designs.Neutra established new aesthetic standards and there is currently a tremendous renewal of interest in his legacy. This concise overview of his achievements is the essential introduction to his work and philosophy.

Esther McCoy (1904-1989) is one of the twentieth century's foremost architecture historians, and one of the greatest chroniclers of the architecture of midcentury southern California. Her 1960 book Five California Architects has long been acknowledged as an indispensable classic, and as Reyner Banham famously observed of her, "no one can write about architecture in California without acknowledging her as the mother of us all." Piecing Together Los Angeles: An Esther McCoy Reader is the first anthology of McCoy's writing. It features a selection of some 70 pieces--ranging from her 1945 article "Schindler, Space Architect" to "Arts & Architecture: Case Study Houses," a 1989 essay commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. From fiction for The New Yorker to seminal essays on new architectural forms, McCoy charts the progressive edge of American idealism, from the collective utopian spirit of Jazz Age Greenwich Village, through the Depression and the war years, to the optimism of the 1950s and 1960s. In preparing this volume, writer and editor Susan Morgan extensively researched the McCoy papers at the Archives of American Art. Her editorial decisions were based, in part, on McCoy's original selections for an unrealized anthology solicited by W. W. Norton in 1968. Expanding on that project, Morgan has included essays, articles, lectures, correspondence, memoirs and short stories that illuminate the breadth and complexity of McCoy's writing and the southern California region that inspired her groundbreaking work.