Observations for Young Architects
Like a mentor dispensing wisdom to his disciples, architect Pelli prescribes for the student his ground rules for a modern architecture. The eight connections, or rules, through which he views architecture--time, construction, place, purpose, culture, design process, constituency, and oneself--form a chapter here. Citing buildings designed by architects as well as more vernacular examples, Pelli aims to define the connections by telling us what he finds successful in each of his selections. Like architects' treatises from Vitruvius to Venturi, this is as much a platform for the promotion of Pelli's own work, which he immodestly describes in an italicized font. Unfortunately, Pelli does not tell us much that historians, such as Vincent Scully in Architecture: The Natural and the Manmade (LJ 10/1/91) or Spiro Kostof in A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals (Oxford Univ., 1995), have not already expressed more eloquently. This volume also would benefit measurably from higher-resolution photographic illustrations, more complete figure captions, references to figures in the text, an index, and a bibliography. For architecture school libraries only.-Paul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib.Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.