Title & Author:

An Architecture of Abstraction / [presented by] Charles Gwathmey (Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects).

Publication:

London, England : Pidgeon Digital, 1987.

Description:

1 online resource (1 video file (30 minutes)) : sound, color

Notes:
Charles Gwathmey -- Gwathmey Residence & Studio -- Whig Hall, Princeton University -- Taft Residence -- De Menil Residence, Easthampton, Long Island. South East & East Facade & Entrance -- Westover School. From The Air & East. Facade -- Cornell Agricultural School. East Facade From The Air -- Cornell Agricultural School. New Wall & Arcade -- Cornell Agricultural School. Library Science Building. North Side -- Guggenheim Museum, New York -- No. 1585 Broadway.

Summary:

The late American born Charles Gwathmey studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and at Yale between 1956 and 1962. In 1966 he set up in practice with Richard Henderson. Robert Siegel joined them in 1970, Henderson left the following year. Gwathmey Siegel received very many awards for their work, and Gwathmey himself taught in most of the major architecture schools in the USA. He first became known internationally as one of the "Five Architects" in the exhibition of that name at Princeton, 1972, which subsequently travelled to Europe. Later the partnership was much in the public eye over its proposals for extending the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In this talk, Gwathmey discusses the problems of designing an extension to such a masterpiece. Their scheme completes a twenty year cycle of work that began with the design of his parents' house. Gwathmey Siegel adhere to the ideas and aesthetic of Modernism but not to the dogma. In relation to painting they would like to be referred to as Cubist. Their architectural vocabulary is reductive and abstract, expressing Corbusian forms in an Americanised way, with exterior and interior space interspersed and overlaid, establishing a sensibility of place as opposed to object.

Subject:

Architectural design United States.
Architecture, Modern 20th century.
Design architectural États-Unis.
Architecture 20e siècle.
Architectural design.
Architecture, Modern.
United States.

Added entries:

Gwathmey, Charles, 1938-2009, narrator.