Vincent Scully
Subtitle: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community
By: Krista Sykes
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Published: 2023
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9781350298408
Subjects: Architectural critics; Architectural historians; History of architecture; Theory of architecture; USA
Description: The renowned architectural historian and critic, beloved Yale professor, and outspoken public activist Vincent Scully (1920-2017) emerged in the 1950s as a guiding voice in American architecture. This intellectual biography of Scully's life and career traces the formative moments in his thinking, charting his relationships with a constellation of architects, artists, and cultural personalities of the twentieth century.    Scully charted an unlikely course from postwar modernism to postmodernism and New Urbanism, overturning outdated beliefs and changing the face of the built environment as he went. A teacher for more than 60 years, and a figure of immense importance in the field, he was central to an expansive network of associations, from Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, and Robert Venturi to Robert Stern, Harold Bloom, and Norman Mailer.  Scully's extensive body of work coalesced around the core belief that all architecture shapes society, and responds, above all else, to the human need for community and connection.  This timely appraisal provides a platform for reassessing the legacy of these values, as well as raising fresh questions about how we write and think about architecture in the twenty-first century.
Table of contents: title: Preface  Introduction 1. Dogs and Books (1920-1940) 2. Then and Since (1940-1946) 3. Marinated in Modernism (1946-1949) 4. Laying the Foundations (1947-1950) 5. A Uniquely American Development (1948-1955) 6. Side by Side in Panorama (1947-1962) 7. Rewriting Modern Architecture (1955-1962) 8. Death of the Street (late 1950s-1964) 9. Complexity and Contradiction (1964-1967)  10. Activism and Accommodation (1967-early 1970s)  11. A Great Shift Towards Realism (late 1960s-early 1970s)  12. The Historian's Revenge (1964 -mid-1970s) 13. What Seas, What Shores (late 1970s-1991) 14. New Urbanism, New Horizons (1980s-2000s) 15. We Can't Say It's a Career Cut Short (1991 - 2017) 16. Legacy  Index