Paul Goldberger – författare

This handsome book examines the remarkable new addition to the Art Institute of Chicago, designed by Renzo Piano and scheduled to open in May 2009. This expansion to the Art Institute of Chicago, already one of the largest museums in the country, will provide new galleries for modern and contemporary painting and sculpture, as well as for photography, film and video, and architecture and design. The structure is Piano’s largest art museum building to date.  The museum’s director, James Cuno, discusses the history of the commission, and Paul Goldberger writes on how this building fits into the larger context of Piano's work—especially his many museum designs—as well as considers its positioning in a city celebrated for its architecture. Judith Turner provides exquisite architectural photographs, showing many nuanced details and views of the structure, while Joseph Rosa comments on her images and how they convey the beauty and sophistication of the building. Photographs by New York-based architectural photographer Paul Warchol complete the bookDistributed for the Art Institute of Chicago

A classic work on the joy of experiencing architecture, with a new afterword reflecting on architecture’s place in the contemporary moment“Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, “when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.” In Why Architecture Matters, he shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the Guggenheim Bilbao. He eloquently describes the Church of Sant’Ivo in Rome as a work that “embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.”  In his afterword to this new edition, Goldberger addresses the current climate in architectural history and takes a more nuanced look at projects such as Thomas Jefferson’s academical village at the University of Virginia and figures including Philip Johnson, whose controversial status has been the topic of much recent discourse. He argues that the emotional impact of great architecture remains vital, even as he welcomes the shift in the field to an increased emphasis on social justice and sustainability.

An exhilarating, splendidly illustrated, entirely new look at the history of baseball: told through the stories of the vibrant and ever-changing ballparks where the game was and is staged, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic.From the earliest corrals of the mid-1800s (Union Grounds in Brooklyn was a "saloon in the open air"), to the much mourned parks of the early 1900s (Detroit''s Tiger Stadium, Cincinnati''s Palace of the Fans), to the stadiums we fill today, Paul Goldberger makes clear the inextricable bond between the American city and America''s favorite pastime. In the changing locations and architecture of our ballparks, Goldberger reveals the manifestations of a changing society: the earliest ballparks evoked the Victorian age in their accommodations--bleachers for the riffraff, grandstands for the middle-class; the "concrete donuts" of the 1950s and ''60s made plain television''s grip on the public''s attention; and more recent ballparks, like Baltimore''s Camden Yards, signal a new way forward for stadium design and for baseball''s role in urban development. Throughout, Goldberger shows us the way in which baseball''s history is concurrent with our cultural history: the rise of urban parks and public transportation; the development of new building materials and engineering and design skills. And how the site details and the requirements of the game--the diamond, the outfields, the walls, the grandstands--shaped our most beloved ballparks. A fascinating, exuberant ode to the Edens at the heart of our cities--where dreams are as limitless as the outfields.

A Pulitzer Prize–winning architectural critic explores how modern cities thrive when urban planning leaves room for happy accidents and innovations.“A city is not a symphony, composed as a single work,” Paul Goldberger writes. “It is more like jazz, with its mix of order and improvisation.” The Imperfect City is a record of Goldberger’s looking, lingering, and thinking about cities—how they develop their character, how they affect us, and how they change. On this exhilarating journey around the world, Goldberger points out each city’s notable qualities, from the eco-friendly features of Singapore’s skyscrapers to the collision and coexistence of old and new in Rome, to the boldly imagined lakefront in Chicago. He wanders the picturesque canals of Amsterdam, sets off down the jagged slash of Broadway across Manhattan’s grid, and follows the poetic sweep of Los Angeles’s freeway ramps.Goldberger brings the world’s cities to life on these pages, mixing stories of bold planners and architects bidding for immortality with random, often haphazard elements that pop up in cities as if by accident. Both are necessary, he argues, since no city can be designed down to the last square foot, but neither can the growth of a city be left entirely to chance. All cities are a mix of planning and happenstance, and the best cities are the ones that blend great design with casual, ordinary places: “The city is a collage, not a portrait,” Goldberger writes.Drawn from a lifetime of appreciation, dating back to his own tender-aged first arrivals in Manhattan, Paris, and beyond, this warm and brilliant book shows that the joy of urban experience comes not from seeking the perfection of order, but from embracing the energy, beauty, and unpredictability of cities at their best. The Imperfect City helps us to understand how cities, and people, truly evolve—by luck, accident, and design.

The illustrated history of a seminal New York neighborhood--a story of birth, decline, and renewal, of high design, of grit and glamour--a tale of real estate wrangling, of art, of commerce.DUMBO, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is a flourishing neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Romantic cobblestone streets, stunning views of Manhattan, the East River, and New York Harbor, and storied architecture framed by the iconic silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge characterize this extraordinary place. DUMBO, however, was not always flourishing--nor always called by this curious appellation. What we now know and see of the neighborhood is largely the product of adventurous artists and, in the end, the determination of a man with a vision. The story of DUMBO is at once the story of New York and, as well, a story of urban rebirth and our nation's return to the city, a tale involving real estate, of buying and selling with acumen and nerve, of beautiful place-making, and of people who have settled in a long neglected, but extraordinary locale--a place of much history, and, now, of brilliant resurgence.This volume considers this seminal New York neighborhood with both historic imagery culled from the great city collections as well as new photography taken specifically for the book. It features compelling streetscapes and dramatic views of transformed one-time industrial spaces, intimate apartment interiors, park spaces, and archival imagery from the area's richly layered past, all as seen through the eyes of Paul Goldberger, one of our nation's great writers on architecture, space, and New York.

Masterworks of the Jazz Age architect whose residential buildings are as significant in their impact on the character of New York as the skyscrapers of Wall Street.Known and celebrated for many of the apartment buildings on Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and in Sutton Place—82 in NYC, including the storied 740 Park, sometimes called the richest and most powerful address in New York and whose famous residents included John D. Rockefeller Jr.—Candela’s work is at once timeless and profoundly of its time. Classical in styling and even modest on the exterior, it is on the insides, in the apartment interiors, the floorplans, the extraordinary and frequently luxurious arrangements of rooms and space, where his designs set a standard that serves as a benchmark and aspirational goal of taste and refinement. The authors explore these seminal spaces through the lens of exteriors and urbanism, planning and interior architecture, and the circumstances and stories of creation.Lavish and comprehensive black-and-white vintage photography as well as color imagery of the exteriors, original plans, and a collection of exceptional interior views give historical perspective (including a seductive Slim Aarons' Park Avenue streetscape) and contemporary sizzle (as seen in Derry Moore’s depiction of K. K. Auchincloss’s penthouse at 1040 Fifth). The story told is of a genius designer who gave form to the New York of his dreams.

Jed Johnson: Opulent Restraint is the first book to chronicle the fascinating career, work and times of an interior design superstar whose life was cut short in 1996 by the disastrous explosion of TWA Flight 800. From humble beginnings in Minnesota, Johnson rose to prominence in nineteen-seventies New York, via the Warhol Factory, to the highest echelons of the rarified world of design and decoration. His impressive celebrity client list included Pierre Bergé, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Richard Gere, and Barbara Streisand. Yet, with success and acclaim, he never lost his shy humility, generous spirit and quiet grace. Through a series of essays, project photographs and personal pictures we trace the influences on his nascent career, his special relationship with Andy Warhol and his magical affect on others. Many never-before-seen photographs are included by important photographers, among them: Cecil Beaton, Francesco Scavullo, Billy Name, Jack Mitchell, John Hall, Elizabeth Heyert and Warhol himself. Opulent Restraint is a must have book for every interior design office and for those interested in the fascinating Warhol years in New York. Interior Design magazine called Johnson “a great talent” whose “spirit lives on in a stunning legacy of interior design.”

Beautiful, bespoke, environmentally sensitive houses by the award-winning architecture firm known for clean, modern, soulful design. This is the first book on the firm’s work.Modern houses that are timeless, thoughtfully detailed, marked by innovative and environmentally friendly design, and inevitably situated close to nature—by the sea, on the bluff, upon the dunes—are the hallmark of Stelle Lomont Rouhani.From Casa Loma and Lazy Point to House on the Point, mere mention of the homes is enough to inspire visions of some contemporary Xanadu. But it is the specifics, the careful use of materials, the very close attention to place, bespoke furniture and fixtures, and above all a sensitivity to those who will live in the spaces created that make these extraordinary works of architecture such beloved dwellings.With thought to an ultimate experience of comfort, to space and light, to views, and to a way of living beside nature that is considerate of nature, the architects open walls toward the sea and position decks to allow for the enjoyment of morning sunlight and scented breezes redolent of bayberries and pine. Ultimately it is a kind of harmony the architects are after and doing more with less, a Zen-like quality that renews the spirit, offering serenity and repose—and which, in the houses featured here, they so warmly, so quietly find.

This first book to comprehensively consider ODA’s range in architecture, from apartment to building to neighborhood. Projects underline a humanistic philosophy seeking community engagement, social connectivity, and above all to inform and uplift.Founded in 2007 by Eran Chen, ODA seeks to reconcile the conditions of vertical urban living with quality of life and has established a reputation for mold-breaking designs. Seeking to reorder urban architectural priorities by putting people first, ODA challenges conventional perspectives of dwelling that will, over time, influence life in our cities.Full of setbacks, cutouts, and terraces, an ODA building invariably has an exciting profile, tending to be sculptural where important to be visually exciting, up in the sky, and plainer where more important to be straightforward, at street level. Building shapes catch the eye but forms are never arbitrary or excessive. Some, like 15 Renwick in Manhattan, as observed by Goldberger, “are … well-behaved, and defer to the street more than show off their shape; others, like Bevel in Long Island City, Queens, … are more striking … but they never come off as excessive, as form for form’s sake.”With chapters moving from Apartment to Building to Block to Neighborhood and a gatefold that reveals an exciting new project destined to enliven the New York skyline, the book’s message underlines ODA’s fundamental understanding that nothing exists in isolation, and the goal of architecture is not just the making of comfortable and visually pleasing places in which to live, but the making of community.

From Pulitzer Prize–winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger: an engaging, nuanced exploration of the life and work of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time. This first full-fledged critical biography presents and evaluates the work of a man who has almost single-handedly transformed contemporary architecture in his innovative use of materials, design, and form, and who is among the very few architects in history to be both respected by critics as a creative, cutting-edge force and embraced by the general public as a popular figure. Building Art shows the full range of Gehry’s work, from early houses constructed of plywood and chain-link fencing to lamps made in the shape of fish to the triumphant success of such late projects as the spectacular art museum of glass in Paris. It tells the story behind Gehry’s own house, which upset his neighbors and excited the world with its mix of the traditional and the extraordinary, and recounts how Gehry came to design the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, his remarkable structure of swirling titanium that changed a declining city into a destination spot. Building Art also explains Gehry’s sixteen-year quest to complete Walt Disney Concert Hall, the beautiful, acoustically brilliant home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Although Gehry’s architecture has been written about widely, the story of his life has never been told in full detail. Here we come to know his Jewish immigrant family, his working-class Toronto childhood, his hours spent playing with blocks on his grandmother’s kitchen floor, his move to Los Angeles when he was still a teenager, and how he came, unexpectedly, to end up in architecture school. Most important, Building Art presents and evaluates Gehry’s lifetime of work in conjunction with his entire life story, including his time in the army and at Harvard, his long relationship with his psychiatrist and the impact it had on his work, and his two marriages and four children. It analyzes his carefully crafted persona, in which a casual, amiable “aw, shucks” surface masks a driving and intense ambition. And it explores his relationship to Los Angeles and how its position as home to outsider artists gave him the freedom in his formative years to make the innovations that characterize his genius. Finally, it discusses his interest in using technology not just to change the way a building looks but to change the way the whole profession of architecture is practiced. At once a sweeping view of a great architect and an intimate look at creative genius, Building Art is in many ways the saga of the architectural milieu of the twenty-first century. But most of all it is the compelling story of the man who first comes to mind when we think of the lasting possibilities of buildings as art. 

From the Hardcover edition.

A celebration of luxury apartment towers by RAMSA, the unquestioned leader in this architecture arenaIn the early twentieth century, a spate of elegantly proportioned and classically detailed residential buildings in New York gave rise to the concept of the Golden Age of apartment living. After a significant hiatus, these design values have resurfaced and expanded in reach, with New York-based architecture firm RAMSA leading the charge.Urban Elegance is an immersive exploration of RAMSA’s residential towers, including 15 Central Park West and 220 Central Park South—two renowned buildings in New York —as well as projects in exclusive residential enclaves around the world, from South Florida, San Francisco, and Chicago to Lima, London, Tianjian, and Shanghai.The book spotlights RAMSA’s deep appreciation of history, commitment to modern classicism, and focus on interpreting the architecture for local climate and culture. Each project is introduced by a short essay describing the place, its history, and the architectural traditions that inspired the building’s form and materials. Dialogues between RAMSA partners Michael Jones, Gemma Kim, Daniel Lobitz, and Paul Whalen address the design intent as well as the final execution of the work.Lush photographs of the completed projects, capturing both the larger neighborhood context and the fine artisanal details, bring these extraordinary buildings to life. Preliminary sketches, plans, and renderings reveal the meticulous process that characterizes all RAMSA designs.

In Up from Zero, Paul Goldberger, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells the inside story of the quest to rebuild one of the most important symbolic sites in the world, the sixteen acres where the towers of the former World Trade Center stood. A story of power, politics, architecture, community, and culture, Up from Zero takes us inside the controversial struggle to create and build one of the most challenging urban-design projects in history.What should replace the fallen towers? Who had the courage and vision to rise to the task of rebuilding? Who had the right, finally, to decide? The struggle began soon after September 11, 2001, as titanic egos took sides, made demands, and jockeyed for power. Lawyers, developers, grieving families, local residents, politicians, artists, and architects all had fierce needs, radically different ideas, strong emotions, and boundless determination. How could conflicting interests be resolved? After hundreds of hours of often rancorous meetings, the first sets of plans were finally revealed in the summer of 2002–and the results were staggeringly disappointing.Yet, as Goldberger shows, the rebuilding process recovered and began to flourish. Rather than degenerating into turf wars, it evolved in ways that no one could have predicted. From the decision to reintegrate the site into the dense fabric of lower Manhattan, to the choice of Daniel Libeskind as master planner, to the appointment of a memorial jury, the process has been marked by moments of bold vision, effective community activism, and personal instinct, punctuating the often contentious politics of public participation.Up from Zero takes in the full sweep of this tremendous effort. Goldberger presents a drama of creative minds at work, solving seemingly insurmountable clashes of taste, interests, and ideas. With unique access to the players and the process, and with a sophisticated understanding of architecture and its impact on people and on the social and cultural life of a city, Paul Goldberger here chronicles the courage, the sacrifices, and the burning passions at the heart of one of the greatest efforts of urban revitalization in modern times.

The story of the creation of an astonishing house that renews and reinvigorates the spirit of the avant-garde in the HamptonsArchitecture critic Paul Goldberger tells the story of an extraordinary house on the Atlantic Double Dunes in East Hampton—Blue Dream, the result of a remarkable collaboration between collectors Julie Reyes Taubman and Robert Taubman, architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, builder Ed Bulgin, landscape architect Michael Boucher and designer Michael Lewis, who sought to renew the legacy of modernist architecture and art in the Hamptons.Goldberger offers insight into the complex process by which an architectural idea generated a work that stands as the most striking addition of our time to the roster of architecturally ambitious modernist houses on Long Island. As he notes, "There are relatively few books devoted to the architecture of a single house, but what is clear if you read any of them is that they are stories about clients as much as about architects." So it is with Blue Dream. The Taubmans were inspired by the avant-garde spirit of artists and architects who settled and worked in the Hamptons and set out to create a house like no other, a house whose complex curving forms could only be built using the composite material used to make fighter jets.Iwan Baan's photographic portfolio documents Blue Dream across four seasons. Goldberger’s text is illustrated with images of earlier modernist houses that inspired the project, as well as documentation of the design process involved in the making of Blue Dream itself.Paul Goldberger (born 1950), whom the Huffington Post has called "the leading figure in architecture criticism," is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine. Goldberger began his career at the New York Times in 1972 and was appointed architecture critic at the paper in 1973, working alongside Ada Louise Huxtable until 1982. In 1984, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, the highest award in journalism. As architecture critic for the New Yorker (1997–2011), he wrote the magazine’s celebrated "Sky Line" column. After serving as dean of the Parsons School of Design from 2004 to 2006, Goldberger was named the Joseph Urban Professor of Design at the New School. He is the author of Why Architecture Matters (2023), Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry (2015), Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture (2009), Beyond the Dunes: A Portrait of the Hamptons, with photographer Jake Rajs (2018) and Houses of the Hamptons (1986), among other publications.

Multimedia artist Clifford Ross looks beyond the natural world to uncover a world bound only by the imagination, much like in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Images are reversed and landscapes reimagined. Ross uses old and new methods to produce exceptionally beautiful and radically redesigned conceptions of reality, presenting his own digital vision.