Kohn Pedersen Fox: Architecture and Urbanism, 1993-2002
The too-often faceless glass-and-steel postmodern architecture dominating the world’s big cities is creatively manipulated by "KFP," which builds big, but which finds ways to incorporate a harmonious fluidity and strikingly holistic concept of building into its mostly corporate projects, which include the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C., the IBM World Headquarters in Armonk, New York and the Shanghai World Financial Center, which, when completed in 2005, is set to be the tallest building in the world. This book documents 60 of the firm’s projects from the last 10 years, and it is impressive, both in form and content. Three short essays give the history of the firm (which was founded in 1976) and describe some of its advances in design and engineering. Following that, each project appears chronologically, introduced by a few paragraphs detailing the building’s site and the building itself, with a photo of the project (if presently completed) on the facing page. A few pages of drawings come after, with more photos of the building, in situ and in use, rounding things out. The photos are shot from revealing angles and flattering lights, and are crisply printed, and the layout is thoughtful and unobstrusive. This is the kind of book that could easily be presented to clients who are thinking of spending hundreds of millions of dollars, as it probably will be.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.