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Brad's favourite architects
Sunday Herald, The, Feb 9, 2003 by Peter Ross
Brad's favourite architects Frank Gehry Born in Toronto in 1929 and responsible for a whole new way of thinking about architecture, Gehry has worked out of California for the last 40 years. Software development has allowed him to design extremely complex structures which showcase his curvaceous and gestural style; his buildings are come-ons in titanium and steel. Famous examples include the Guggenheim Museum (1997) in Bilbao, and Seattle's Experience Music Project (2000), an undulating tribute to Jimi Hendrix.
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Charles Rennie Mackintosh Born in Glasgow, 1868, died in London, 1928, Mackintosh's designs have become almost kitschily synonymous with the city of his birth. In Scotland, we are perhaps too familiar with his work to truly appreciate him, but there is no denying Mackintosh was an important forerunner of European Modernism, and his buildings - notably Glasgow School of Art (1909) and Hill House in Helensburgh (1903) - have an elegant power.
Daniel Libeskind Born in Poland, 1946. Eighty members of Libeskind's family died in the Holocaust. Unsurprising then that many of his best known projects have deep political resonance. His Jewish Museum in Berlin opened in 2001 to huge acclaim, as did the Imperial War Museum North (2002) in Salford. Two years ago, Libeskind was the first architect to be awarded the Hiroshima Art Prize, an award given to an artist whose work promotes international understanding and peace. He is currently one of seven architects shortlisted to build on the site of the World Trade Centre, having submitted a design for a spire rising 1776ft into the sky to symbolise the year America won its independence.
Mies van der Rohe Born in Aachen, Germany in 1886, died in Chicago in 1969, van der Rohe was director of the Bauhaus art and architecture school, and coined the much-misused dictum 'less is more'. His lasting legacy are his steel-and-glass designs, including extremely influential skyscrapers such as New York's Seagram Building (1954). His Barcelona Pavilion (1929), "the perfect building" according to Brad Pitt, is a key work of 20th century architecture, emblematic of modernity.
Rem Koolhaas Born in Holland in 1944, Rem Koolhaas won the coveted Pritzker Prize, architecture's Oscar, two years ago. The jury described him as a visionary and philosopher, and it's true that his buildings seem to be more expressions of radical theory than actual places for people to live and work. Take his design for the Seattle Public Library, scheduled to open this year, a $156million free-jazz squall in glass, copper and metal mesh. More popular is his Educatorium (1999) at Utrecht University, while his Maison Bordeaux (1998), designed to accommodate a man who was confined to a wheelchair after a car accident, is problem-solving raised to the level of poetry.
Frank Lloyd Wright Born in Wisconsin in 1867, died in Arizona in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright believed that "form and function are one", a notion he applied to a signature architecture which embraced nature - all skylights, natural materials and wall-windows, blurring the line between inside and out. His cycloning Guggenheim Museum (1956) in New York upstages the art within, while his most famous work, Fallingwater (1936), a cantilevered private residence built over a waterfall in Pennsylvania combines great drama with an incredible stillness and repose.
Peter Ross
Copyright 2003 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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