Architect : the pritzker prize laureates in their own words (Relié)

Jean Nouvel speaks of the similarities between film and architecture, Robert Venturi finds ideas in 'gas stations as well as Borromini and Chartres', James Stirling believed that the best architecture was 'a gift to the city.' And Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa aspire to a certain evanescence in their work, what they call their own 'imaginative principles.' These comments are among the abundance of ideas, hopes and inspirations expressed in this richly assembled volume, where the voice of the architect is privileged over the more customary critic or scholar.
Here, it is the architects themselves - 35 Pritzker Prize laureates, deemed the leading architects in the world - who speak directly tous about what they do and why. Along the way, they answer such questions as, What did the architect intend? Why is a building a given shape, or made with certain materials? What about the landscape, or the constraints of a city? And what about us - how much are we, the public, considered when an architect first begins to imagine a building? Architect is the first book to document what the Pritzker Prize laureates have said and written about their field.
Paired with their running commentary is a selection of their major built works, seen in more than 700 images. The results are illuminating. Architect is organized chronologically, taking as its starting point today, zoio, and retracing the laureates back to the debut of the Pritzker Prize in 1979. Each profile features approximately four to six important built works, which in sum reflect the diversity of our lives, including schools and libraries, museums, places of worship, corporate headquarters, residences, civic centres, shops, airports, courthouses, stadiums and hotels.
The Pritzker Prize architects, who collectively have shaped our built environment at the end of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first, talk about what matters to them - light, materials and sustainability, for example - as well as their heroes and what buildings they admire. Collectively, they prove what Jorn Utzon, much beloved by his peers, once remarked, 'First and last, you have a relationship with the people who are to use the buildings.' Architect speaks directly and passionately to each of us about our built world.