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What exactly gave rise to the phantasmagoric buildings of starchitects such as Zaha Hadid? How did interactions between artists and architects affect architectural production during the twentieth century? Which exhibitions and publications have had a lasting influence over the last century? This concise volume chronicles the movements and trends in architecture over the past 120 years. Written as a narrative but split into succinct sections, it makes for clear and compelling reading. In his pithy and personal style, the Rome-based critic and architectural historian Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi explores the events and motivations that have driven the work of leading architects from Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn, to Rem Koolhaas and Kazuyo Sejima.With over 700 illustrations and a comprehensive list of practitioners, this insightful chronicle is both visually appealing and easy to navigate. It covers buildings from across the globe and details projects by contemporary architects, bringing readers fully up to date.
About the author
Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi, born 1956 in Sicily, studied Architecture and subsequently specialised in Urban Planning. He taught History of Contemporary Architecture at the Sapienza University of Rome, and now teaches History of Contemporary Design at the Rome University of Fine Arts (RUFA). He is the president of the Italian Association of Architecture and Criticism.
He writes for numerous magazines, including Domus, Monument, and the Architects Newspaper, and has guest edited two issues of Architectural Design (AD) dedicated to Italian architecture. His books have anticipated the debate on key themes and figures in contemporary architecture. Among them is Rem Koolhaas: Metropolitan Transparency (1997), which introduced the Dutch architect to Italy. In HyperArchitecture: Spaces in the Electronic Age (1998) he raised the question of the relationship between architecture and digital technologies.
