What do you think?
Rate this book
On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change
The architectural revolution of the twentieth century as witnessed by America's preeminent architecture critic. Known for her well-reasoned and passionately held beliefs about architecture, Ada Louise Huxtable has captivated readers across the country for decades, in the process becoming one of the best-known critics in the world. Her keen eye and vivid writing have reinforced to readers how important architecture is and why it continues to be both controversial and fascinating. In her new book―which gathers together the best of her writing, from one of her first pieces in the New York Times in 1962 on le Corbusier's Carpenter Center at Harvard, to essays in the New York Review of Books , to more recent writing in the Wall Street Journal ―Huxtable bears witness to some of the twentieth century's best―and worst―architectural masters and projects. With a perspective of more than four decades, Huxtable examines the century's modernist beginnings and then turns her critic's eye to the seismic shift in style, function, and fashion that occurred midcentury―all leading to a dramatic new architecture of the twenty-first century. Much of the writing in On Architecture has never appeared in book form before, and Huxtable's many admirers will be delighted to once again have access to her elegant, impassioned opinions, insights, and wisdom. "Looking back, I realize that my career covered an extraordinary period of change, that I was writing at a time in which architecture was changing slowly but radically―a time when everything about modernism was being incrementally questioned and rejected as we moved into a new kind of thinking and building." And while it was a quiet, nearly stealth revolution, it was a absolutely a revolution in which the past was reaccepted and reincorporated, periods and styles ignored by modernism were reexamined and reevaluated. History and theory, once considered irrelevant, became central to the practice of architecture again."
496 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 2008
32 people are currently reading
347 people want to read
About the author
Ada Louise Huxtable
29 books26 followersAda Louise (Landman) Huxtable (b. March 14, 1921, in New York, NY) is an architecture critic and writer on architecture. In 1970 she was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for "distinguished criticism." Her father, Michael Landman, was co-author (with his brother, Rabbi Isaac Landman) of the play "A Man of Honor."
Ada Louise Landman received an A. B. (magna cum laude) from Hunter College, CUNY in 1941. In 1942, she married industrial designer L. Garth Huxtable, and continued graduate study at New York University from 1942-50. She served as Curatorial Assistant for Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1946-50. She was a contributing editor to Progressive Architecture and Art in America from 1950-63 before being named the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a post she held from 1963-82. She has received grants from the Graham Foundation for a number of projects, including the book "Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?".
She is currently the architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal.
John Costonis, writing of how public aesthetics is shaped, used her as a prime example of an influential media critic, remarking that "the continuing barrage fired from [her] Sunday column... had New York developers, politicians, and bureaucrats, ducking for years." He reproduces a cartoon in which construction workers, at the base of a building site with a foundation and a few girders lament that "Ada Louise Huxtable already doesn't like it!" (Costonis,1989)
Carter Wiseman writes, "Huxtable's insistence on intellectual rigor and high design standards made her the conscience of the national architectural community." (Wiseman, 2000)
She has written over ten books on architecture, including a 2004 biography of Frank Lloyd Wright for the Penguin Lives series.
Ada Louise Landman received an A. B. (magna cum laude) from Hunter College, CUNY in 1941. In 1942, she married industrial designer L. Garth Huxtable, and continued graduate study at New York University from 1942-50. She served as Curatorial Assistant for Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1946-50. She was a contributing editor to Progressive Architecture and Art in America from 1950-63 before being named the first architecture critic at The New York Times, a post she held from 1963-82. She has received grants from the Graham Foundation for a number of projects, including the book "Will They Ever Finish Bruckner Boulevard?".
She is currently the architecture critic for The Wall Street Journal.
John Costonis, writing of how public aesthetics is shaped, used her as a prime example of an influential media critic, remarking that "the continuing barrage fired from [her] Sunday column... had New York developers, politicians, and bureaucrats, ducking for years." He reproduces a cartoon in which construction workers, at the base of a building site with a foundation and a few girders lament that "Ada Louise Huxtable already doesn't like it!" (Costonis,1989)
Carter Wiseman writes, "Huxtable's insistence on intellectual rigor and high design standards made her the conscience of the national architectural community." (Wiseman, 2000)
She has written over ten books on architecture, including a 2004 biography of Frank Lloyd Wright for the Penguin Lives series.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 18, 2014
This collection is exquisite.
Ada Louise Huxtable writes with a remarkable authority and grace, balancing improbably a preservationist bent with repetitive defenses of modernism. Here are some examples of her fabulous authority:
The pinned butterfly of urban phenomena, the dissected and annotated crisis, with enough academic verbiage attached, substitutes handily for solutions. (p. 9)
and
(Alvaro) Siza's work, which depends on the exacting organization of its minimal components, is the most abstract of the three and has immense poetic rigor. It is also the hardest to imitate; great talent is required to resolve complex needs while using forms of such absolute, elemental purity. (p. 25)
and
At best, Pan Am is an impressive demonstration of the number of square feet (2.4 million) of completely standard rentable office space that can be packed into one income-producing structure, a lesson in how to be mediocre without really trying. ... This is a prime example of a New York specialty: the big, the expedient, and the deathlessly ordinary. (p. 38)
and
But perhaps more cannot be achieved within the limits of superficial commercial competence that television has established as its standard. It is distressingly obvious that inadequate goals have been set, and that they have been met to the industry's satisfaction. - (p. 201) (1962)
and
There is no law that the cost of creativity has to be greater than that of formulaic mediocrity. There is no reason why New York construction should be abysmally ordinary or stupefyingly reactionary, while first rate architecture recognized everywhere else goes begging here. Our developers might just try springing for the real thing. (p. 291)
and
It follows naturally that the great American pastime of shopping figures prominently in all of these enterprises. From credentialed restorations carried out by trained professionals to the most blatant pit stop on marginal historic tours, from a Colonial craft-and-candle shop and the general store in the rebuilt western ghost town to the roadside rest and souvenirs stand, behind the reconstructed or imaginary facades, there are always goods for sale. ... Potemkin Villages offer postmodernist facades with false dormers, towers, arches, and trim in shades of my mauve, pumpkin, and pistachio, while the chains and franchises behind them are predictably the same. ... History is a marketing ploy; shopping is the end of the preservation rainbow. (p. 428)
and finally
But "appearance design," or "styling" for transient promotional purpose, produces dumbed-down objects that eliminate the possibility of anything genuinely new and appealing because the truly innovative or unprecedented cannot be visualized through marketing surveys or by focus groups. (p. 444)
Like all the best writing, one needn't be an expert on its subject to enjoy it immensely.
Ada Louise Huxtable writes with a remarkable authority and grace, balancing improbably a preservationist bent with repetitive defenses of modernism. Here are some examples of her fabulous authority:
The pinned butterfly of urban phenomena, the dissected and annotated crisis, with enough academic verbiage attached, substitutes handily for solutions. (p. 9)
and
(Alvaro) Siza's work, which depends on the exacting organization of its minimal components, is the most abstract of the three and has immense poetic rigor. It is also the hardest to imitate; great talent is required to resolve complex needs while using forms of such absolute, elemental purity. (p. 25)
and
At best, Pan Am is an impressive demonstration of the number of square feet (2.4 million) of completely standard rentable office space that can be packed into one income-producing structure, a lesson in how to be mediocre without really trying. ... This is a prime example of a New York specialty: the big, the expedient, and the deathlessly ordinary. (p. 38)
and
But perhaps more cannot be achieved within the limits of superficial commercial competence that television has established as its standard. It is distressingly obvious that inadequate goals have been set, and that they have been met to the industry's satisfaction. - (p. 201) (1962)
and
There is no law that the cost of creativity has to be greater than that of formulaic mediocrity. There is no reason why New York construction should be abysmally ordinary or stupefyingly reactionary, while first rate architecture recognized everywhere else goes begging here. Our developers might just try springing for the real thing. (p. 291)
and
It follows naturally that the great American pastime of shopping figures prominently in all of these enterprises. From credentialed restorations carried out by trained professionals to the most blatant pit stop on marginal historic tours, from a Colonial craft-and-candle shop and the general store in the rebuilt western ghost town to the roadside rest and souvenirs stand, behind the reconstructed or imaginary facades, there are always goods for sale. ... Potemkin Villages offer postmodernist facades with false dormers, towers, arches, and trim in shades of my mauve, pumpkin, and pistachio, while the chains and franchises behind them are predictably the same. ... History is a marketing ploy; shopping is the end of the preservation rainbow. (p. 428)
and finally
But "appearance design," or "styling" for transient promotional purpose, produces dumbed-down objects that eliminate the possibility of anything genuinely new and appealing because the truly innovative or unprecedented cannot be visualized through marketing surveys or by focus groups. (p. 444)
Like all the best writing, one needn't be an expert on its subject to enjoy it immensely.
September 29, 2010
3 1/2. This is a really fascinating collection of selected published pieces from throughout Huxtable's career. It's nice to have all these pieces compiled into one space. However, you'll have to be an architecture buff to enjoy it. My major gripe is that I wish she and her publisher had chosen to include more images. While I understand most of the original articles likely did not include photos or images when they were published, I think the book would have benefited from their addition. I found myself constantly stopping and looking up buildings to put their image in my head if I was not already familiar with them, and even if I was. I also find the title at least mildly misleading for those not familiar with the fact that Huxtable's career as an architecture critic, from which these works are drawn, started in 1963 and of course most of her work has covered new buildings. Not quite a century, but still an intriguing collection.
April 8, 2018
Huxtable, Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic, was not only a keen observer, but also a reliable analyst and interpreter of architecture's effect on New York City's neighborhoods and the shape of the city's planning and architecture as a whole. I found this collection of her writing an excellent history of the city through the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st. It is as much about bureaucratic mindlessness as it is about creation and realization. Her critical essays reveal the precarious balance among preservation, planning and development, demolition, and rebuilding. Her writings about the World Trade Center, from conception and construction in the 1960s through its destruction and the turmoil experienced in rebuilding, provided a perspective on the city that was new to me. Along the way I learned about the city's leading architects and their projects that have given New York City its profile. I bought this book at McNally Jackson in the city.
February 23, 2012
Wonderful collection of essays and articles on architecture and design as built (mostly in NYC) in the mid-late 20th century. Sharp, piercing, enlightening and often entertaining insights on what "good design" means and how buildings both shape and reflect history and culture.
Essays on the great modern architects-- Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gehry and others are exceptional.
There are many golden nuggets and short essays that you wish were longer. Among the most enjoyable and thought-provoking are the beauty of Danish design, great corporate architecture of the 50s & 60s, the genius of Rennie Mackintosh, Fallingwater, the "good" and "bad" works of Robert Moses and a collection of essays on the World Trade Center.
Highly recommended.
Essays on the great modern architects-- Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Gehry and others are exceptional.
There are many golden nuggets and short essays that you wish were longer. Among the most enjoyable and thought-provoking are the beauty of Danish design, great corporate architecture of the 50s & 60s, the genius of Rennie Mackintosh, Fallingwater, the "good" and "bad" works of Robert Moses and a collection of essays on the World Trade Center.
Highly recommended.
February 15, 2018
Great voice, sharp observations.
Read
May 30, 2023The book is a collection of the author's newspaper columns from the 1960s through the early 2000s. My thought process for picking up this book was that while I am very interested in architecture, I don't have much knowledge about it or any formal schooling, so a collection of newspaper columns written for the layman might be the place to start.
I neglected to note, however, that the New York Times architecture critic does not write for laymen, she writes for people in the New York City architecture scene. What I mean is that I spent a lot of time reading this book looking up pictures of buildings, reading about architecture schools, and trying to give myself enough of a baseline so I could really make sense of what she was writing about.
It was a useful experience, but if you're an architecture neophyte like I am, I suggest you stay away from this one. I am not giving it a rating because I don't feel I'm qualified to really evaluate much besides her prose (which is good).
I neglected to note, however, that the New York Times architecture critic does not write for laymen, she writes for people in the New York City architecture scene. What I mean is that I spent a lot of time reading this book looking up pictures of buildings, reading about architecture schools, and trying to give myself enough of a baseline so I could really make sense of what she was writing about.
It was a useful experience, but if you're an architecture neophyte like I am, I suggest you stay away from this one. I am not giving it a rating because I don't feel I'm qualified to really evaluate much besides her prose (which is good).
June 15, 2021
This was a long read and a labor of love for me. The essays are themed, but many require a little background knowledge to read. It is an excellent snapshot of Huxtable's thought.
May 27, 2009
There is a Half a Star plus/minus added to this review.
Huxtable's reflections or published memories of change is certainly better than a two or just O.K., and also it is not a great addition to most collections. The reason for this is the huge amount of ground that is so eclectically reviewed over about a half century of writing, but trying to reflect on the whole of the world of architecture for a century with a handful of columns. Yes, a handful by comparison to the number Huxtable and others have written.
The limitation to these wordy ad hominem commentaries is that they ignore, dismiss, or otherwise miss many important elements in the development of architecture in the Twentieth Century. The New York City centric writing even belies Huxtable own work, certain minimizes it, as exemplified by the role she played in the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.
Areas of the world chosen for review are not always the most representative or even vital. Examining New Harmony, Indiana while ignoring Columbus, Indiana just down/up the road is a case of poor selection of columns. Whether you like California or structures built there, to say nothing of the west coast, this set of reviews all but ignores its existence.
Other areas that are mostly ignored include Chicago, Houston, and the Pacific Northwest in general to say nothing of Toronto. Are there great building outside of a handful of Cities? Of course. But you wouldn't know the importance of several areas of the world from the set of writing.
Focusing on what is in essence, office and institutional building, the collected writing in this book ignore some of the great public works structures such as dams, bridges, and most great city scapes. A few of the later, city scapes, mentioned are done so either as bad examples, total outrageous and now torn down or demolished works. Great works from the rubble of war is mostly ignored.
As a matter of disclosure I have always disagreed with her views to some extent on the nature of the importance and essence of the Bauhaus movement. The arbitrary divisions of the 20th century periods of movements and styles in building is another are where the lines are not always drawn clearly or accurately. Again, these are columns that are being reprinted without editing from the contemporaneous source to be presented as a 'reflection'. The result is not always pretty or complimentary to Huxtable or the genre'.
The nature of Huxtable's criticism was well known to me going into this book, but I was rather appalled at the selections that resorted to using attendance as an example for a meaningful negative criteria by which to evaluate an architectural work.
Ada Louise Huxtable has written some wonderful prose in her career and in that this book does not disappoint. But she has written much better and said more that would have been far more advantageous and appreciated than many, but not all the selections in this collection.
Architecture fans seeking a work that will illuminate about a wide range of modern works will be disappointed. Those seeking eclectic snippets and don't need a cohesive presentation will be more receptive to this work.
I suggest reading this book at some point. To do so without preparation or background however will only engender a distorted view of the topic that will make a Gehry structure look normal.
Huxtable's reflections or published memories of change is certainly better than a two or just O.K., and also it is not a great addition to most collections. The reason for this is the huge amount of ground that is so eclectically reviewed over about a half century of writing, but trying to reflect on the whole of the world of architecture for a century with a handful of columns. Yes, a handful by comparison to the number Huxtable and others have written.
The limitation to these wordy ad hominem commentaries is that they ignore, dismiss, or otherwise miss many important elements in the development of architecture in the Twentieth Century. The New York City centric writing even belies Huxtable own work, certain minimizes it, as exemplified by the role she played in the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.
Areas of the world chosen for review are not always the most representative or even vital. Examining New Harmony, Indiana while ignoring Columbus, Indiana just down/up the road is a case of poor selection of columns. Whether you like California or structures built there, to say nothing of the west coast, this set of reviews all but ignores its existence.
Other areas that are mostly ignored include Chicago, Houston, and the Pacific Northwest in general to say nothing of Toronto. Are there great building outside of a handful of Cities? Of course. But you wouldn't know the importance of several areas of the world from the set of writing.
Focusing on what is in essence, office and institutional building, the collected writing in this book ignore some of the great public works structures such as dams, bridges, and most great city scapes. A few of the later, city scapes, mentioned are done so either as bad examples, total outrageous and now torn down or demolished works. Great works from the rubble of war is mostly ignored.
As a matter of disclosure I have always disagreed with her views to some extent on the nature of the importance and essence of the Bauhaus movement. The arbitrary divisions of the 20th century periods of movements and styles in building is another are where the lines are not always drawn clearly or accurately. Again, these are columns that are being reprinted without editing from the contemporaneous source to be presented as a 'reflection'. The result is not always pretty or complimentary to Huxtable or the genre'.
The nature of Huxtable's criticism was well known to me going into this book, but I was rather appalled at the selections that resorted to using attendance as an example for a meaningful negative criteria by which to evaluate an architectural work.
Ada Louise Huxtable has written some wonderful prose in her career and in that this book does not disappoint. But she has written much better and said more that would have been far more advantageous and appreciated than many, but not all the selections in this collection.
Architecture fans seeking a work that will illuminate about a wide range of modern works will be disappointed. Those seeking eclectic snippets and don't need a cohesive presentation will be more receptive to this work.
I suggest reading this book at some point. To do so without preparation or background however will only engender a distorted view of the topic that will make a Gehry structure look normal.
Read
March 2, 2009Huxtable is a tour de force when it comes to understanding and deconstructing architecture. The book was simply a pleasure to read. As a journalist, I was especially touched by this excerpt of her introduction: "Those of us who write for newspapers have little time to consider the long term or the larger implications of our work, nor are editors known for welcoming such digressions. We are focused on the moment, looking for the next big thing; it is the immediate news peg or upcoming trend that matters. Sometimes we are so busy fighting a defensive rearguard action for an old revolution that we miss the signals of a new one...[This has been particularly true for the champions of modernism, a crusade that never seemed to end even as the ground shifted radically under its practitioners' feet.:]
Pressing deadlines, we are not given to abstractions, but this does not mean that we are without passionately held convictions or a personal point of view...
I've had the great fortune of editing a book that will be released in October 2009 by W.W. Norton titled "Four Florida Moderns." In it, four architects working under the principles of the European Modernists like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, passionately consider themselves the current generations of "moderns" working in Florida today. Doing research for my preface introduced me to the precepts of the early European moderns and I am impressed with Huxtable's insight into these highly creative individuals. In her essay, "Architect of Today's World," she called Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, or Le Corbusier, "a Renaissance man who turned the twentieth century into a one-man renaissance" and "one of the major shapers of today's world."
The book is a collection of Huxtables columns for the "New York Times," the "New York Review of Books," and the "Wall Street Journal." In terms of viewing architectural history and recording its progress, Huxtable herself becomes "one of the major shapers of today's world."
Pressing deadlines, we are not given to abstractions, but this does not mean that we are without passionately held convictions or a personal point of view...
I've had the great fortune of editing a book that will be released in October 2009 by W.W. Norton titled "Four Florida Moderns." In it, four architects working under the principles of the European Modernists like Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, passionately consider themselves the current generations of "moderns" working in Florida today. Doing research for my preface introduced me to the precepts of the early European moderns and I am impressed with Huxtable's insight into these highly creative individuals. In her essay, "Architect of Today's World," she called Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, or Le Corbusier, "a Renaissance man who turned the twentieth century into a one-man renaissance" and "one of the major shapers of today's world."
The book is a collection of Huxtables columns for the "New York Times," the "New York Review of Books," and the "Wall Street Journal." In terms of viewing architectural history and recording its progress, Huxtable herself becomes "one of the major shapers of today's world."
March 27, 2010
This is a collection of all of Ada Louise Huxtable's critical writings for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times over the decades between the 60's and today. It is not her best book, but it certainly is informative and provides a window to students of architecture on the modern and post modern periods in Neew York and throughout the world. Huxtable is quite discerning in being able to differentiate between what is good and lasting and what is faddish and will pass from the scene. She is egalitarian in her treatment of the outstanding and the horrendous. Her writings are, as far a I am concerned, required reading for anyone serious about the study of structural design and planning and the high art of architecture.
December 28, 2013
Collected newspaper columns on architecture from 1960s-2006. I especially enjoyed the columns group, "Modernism and its Masters." She covers so many different buildings and happenings. I so wish I had read them at the time they appeared in the New York Times, and not as a historical note. Since we have been through the 1990s when architecture styles had confusing(silly) labels, it is good to read her steady hand and hear how various worldwide buildings and architects were viewed when first open to the public. She got her start in writing by praising the Modernists in early '60s at the point when most of them were gone.
July 1, 2014
For someone uninitiated to Ada Louise Huxtable, I can't imagine a better introduction. The length of her career as a critic gives her work an astounding depth and unmatched perspective.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews