THE TALL BUILDING ARTISTICALLY RECONSIDERED: The Search...

THE TALL BUILDING ARTISTICALLY RECONSIDERED: The Search for a Skyscraper Style by Ada Louise Huxtable (University of California Press: $15; 128 pp., illustrated). These argute reflections on urban architecture and its implications were expanded from a series of lectures delivered at UC Berkeley in 1982. Describing the skyscraper as “the single most challenging design problem of our time,” Huxtable blends history, artistic considerations and technical information in a lively discussion of the aesthetic and social significance of these Gargantuan structures. Commenting on Philip Johnson’s infamous “Chippendale” AT&T; building in Manhattan, she concludes, “(T)his is a skyscraper that thuds rather than soars. The postmodern historical references add up to a kind of architectural malapropism at drop-dead scale. In all-too-solid stone and steel, the building has lost even its original, anti-modernist shock value. It has turned out to be ponderously pedestrian.” Huxtable’s thoughtful, eloquent prose offers a model to critics in all disciplines.