American masterworks The twentieth-century house

Frampton, professor of architecture at Columbia University, has teamed up with designer David Larkin to produce a fresh, knowledgeable, and visually exciting survey of the modern house in America--the modern house, that is, as a work of art. The 34 featured houses, presented in superb color photographs, truly are gems: cool, angular, pristine, and aristocratic. One of Frampton's criteria for selection stipulated that each house "possess a certain level of complexity and poetic depth." And indeed these houses do, although their complexity becomes all but invisible as we move forward in time. Frampton begins with the Greene and Greene Gamble House, built in Pasadena in 1908, a beautifully realized synthesis of Japanese aesthetics and the American arts and crafts movement. The Japanese influence is prevalent throughout the book, while the warmth of the craft movement quickly fades. The houses become increasingly grid oriented and more open to natural light and the surrounding landscape, so it's no surprise that most are found in California. The masters include Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Philip Johnson (the famous Glass House), Craig Ellwood, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Michael Graves, and Frank Gehry. --Donna Seaman

This gorgeous coffee-table book by Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and one of the most prolific architectural historians of our day, memorializes 34 of the greatest U.S. modern residences of the 20th century. Ascetic orthodox modernism is stressed throughout, from precursors like Greene and Greene in Pasadena to contemporaries like Steven Holl in Texas. Surprisingly, there are no houses by Frank Lloyd Wright dating from his magnificent Prairie years, nor any works by Robert Venturi or Robert A.M. Stern. Designer David Larken is famous for producing some of the most beautiful books on architecture of the past ten years, including Shaker: Life Work and Art (LJ 11/15/87) and Adobe: Building and Living with Earth (LJ 7/94). A fine addition for public and specialty collections.‘Peter Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.