Skrevet af CARTER FRAMPTON
James Stirling and Michael Wilford realised a significant body of work
during their partnership. Considered one of the most important
international architectural practices of the twentieth century, Stirling
and Wilford made an exceptional contribution to contemporary
architecture. Young, radical and eccentric, their work rejected the
prevalent orthodoxy of the International Style, revisiting instead the
early masters of heroic Modernism and achieving legendary status amongst
a younger generation of architects.
With early work in the UK and
then Europe, from the late 1970s the practice designed buildings at four
American Universities: Harvard, Rice, Cornell and UC Irvine, as well as
a number of unbuilt projects. The Arthur M Sackler Museum at Harvard
University, 1984, retains an iconic status, and straddles the postmodern
and classical vocabulary that Stirling and Wilford employed at the Neue
Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, 1984, and No 1 Poultry, completed in 1997,
after Stirling's death in 1992. Yet, despite the significance of these
projects, until now, the contribution of the practice's work in the
United States to the development of late twentieth century architecture
has never been fully appraised.
Through texts by eminent contributors
including Kenneth Frampton and Robert Maxwell, Stirling and Wilford
American Buildings reassesses the importance of this body of work,
establishing the legacy of the later American work of one of the
twentieth century's most influential architectural practices.
