Gwathmey Siegel (Houses)

The Gwathmey Siegel design process takes the genre of the house as central to the tradition of architecture and a point of departure for all other building types, directing its investigations of modernist principles toward such prestigious architectural commissions as the addition to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Baker Library for the Graduate School of Business Administration at Harvard University, and the master plan and buildings for Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore. Gwathmey Siegel & Associates' approach both assumes and demonstrates the identity of the house as a formal conception of a structure, as well as an organization of program in relation to spaces. Each house is a test case that can be generalized and used to address fundamental architectural problems: history and context; site influences; arrival, procession, and circulation; scale and proportion; light; the relationship between public and private domains; architectural materials; and the technology of construction -- all of which are prioritized by research and interpretive analysis as tools for exploration and design. Gwathmey Siegel: Houses presents twenty-two of the firm's residential projects, from Charles Gwathmey's first house, completed for his parents in 1965, to more recent large-scale projects. This magnificent volume comprehensively documents each house with full-color and duotone photographs and detailed presentation drawings. In addition to generous illustrations and Gwathmey's personal commentary on each house, Gwathmey Siegel: Houses features illuminating essays by architect Robert A. M. Stern and noted architecture critic Paul Goldberger.