Publisher's Synopsis
Peter Eisenman has been an innovative presence in the field of architecture and architectural theory for more than thirty years. Architect, educator, founder and director of the Institute for Architecture and Urbanism, he has given definition to the principal debates on the architecture of our past, present, and future. In this remarkable collection, nineteen of his most important essays are presented together for the first time. Generously illustrated and with a new introduction by the author, these writings assemble the ideas that both set and provoked contemporary architectural practice and theory. This collection ranges from comprehensive theoretical analyses to close readings of Eisenman's own work and that of such architects as Andrea Palladio, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alison and Peter Smithson, James Stirling, Philip Johnson, and John Hedjuk. Providing new perspectives on these architects and on Eisenman's own methodologies, these writings present an insider's appraisal of the polemics that have defined architecture over the past half century and that continue as one of the major ongoing forces in the discourse today.
