New Forms: Architecture in the 1990s - Softcover

These two volumes address topics in the earliest and latest periods covered in the publisher's ambitious and almost global (Africa is regrettably not included) 40-volume "World Architecture" series. While Wildung's volume is a fundamental analysis of the ancient Egyptian building arts, Jodidio's book is more of a journalistic review of contemporary trends. After an introductory chapter that presents an architectural vocabulary, Wildung, curator of the Egyptian Museum, Berlin, surveys his topic chronologically from the early dynastic through the Roman periods. Serviceably translated from the German, his prose eschews academic language. Perhaps of the greatest value are the color photographs and the numerous plans and sections. Two indexes cover personal names and monuments, arranged by locality. By contrast, American Jodidio (Richard Meier, Taschen, 1995) arranges his book by building type and offers an innovative chapter on the intersection of art and architecture. Jodidio's introduction provides an overview of the period and useful definitions of postmodernism and deconstructivism. The selection criteria are unclear, however, with practitioners such as Josef Paul Kleihues and Michael Graves curiously absent. The text is a general discussion of design trends rather than an analysis of building form and content. Unfortunately, the index includes personal names only, though the biographies are helpful. In neither volume does the text refer to the illustrations. Nevertheless, the high quality of the graphic material makes these very sound investments for all architecture collections.?Paul Glassman, Pratt Inst. Lib., New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.