Martin Filler was the longtime architecture critic of House & Garden until it ceased publication in 2007. He is the co-author, with Olivier Bossiere, of The Vitra Design Museum: Frank Gehry, Architect, and author of Makers of Modern Architecture, based on essays from the New York Review. »

Makers of Modern Architecture

From Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry

By Martin Filler

Everyone knows what modern architecture looks like, but few understand how this revolutionary new form of building emerged little more than a century ago or what its aesthetic, social, even spiritual aspirations were. Through his illuminating studies of the leading men and women who forever changed our built environment, veteran architecture critic Martin Filler offers fresh insights into this unprecedented cultural transformation. From Louis Sullivan, father of the skyscraper, to Frank Gehry, magician of the post-millennial museum, Filler emphasizes how their force of personality has had a decisive effect on everything from how we inhabit our homes to how we shape our cities.

Why was the sudden shift in architectural fashion that wrecked the career of the Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh not enough to destroy the indomitable spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright, who rose from adversity to become America's greatest architect? Why was Philip Johnson, "dean of American architecture" during the 1980s, so haunted by the superior talent of his less-fortunate contemporary Louis Kahn that he could barely utter his name even at the peak of his own success? How did Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum "Less is more" give way to Robert Venturi's "Less is a bore"?

Surveying such current urban design sagas as the reconstruction of Ground Zero and the reunification of Berlin, Filler also trains his sharp eye on some of the biggest names in architecture today, puncturing more than one overinflated reputation while identifying the true masters who are now building for the ages.

Reviews

Martin Filler's Makers of Modern Architecture...should eclipse other works in the field. He incisively places many 20th-century architects and their work in a social context. He is also a refreshingly colorful, on-target observer, as when he limns, hilariously, the agonizing approach to (and his disappointment in) Richard Meier's Getty Center in Los Angeles, or notes that Louis Sullivan 'sometimes edged toward the crackpot in the relentlessness of his passionate obsessions.'
— House & Garden

Imagine a Vasari's Lives for architects, ranging from Louis Sullivan to Gehry, Piano, Calatrava. That's what Martin Filler has written with vivacity, concision, and encyclopedic erudition in Makers of Modern Architecture. If you're an old architectural hand, you'll need this book as an essential point of reference; if you're an avid amateur who wonders about the built world, you'll find it the best college course you never took. Filler's passionate observations on architecture and art, morality, commerce, and politics will ignite debates for years to come.
— John Guare

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