The Secret Life of Buildings; An American Mythology for Modern Architecture by Macrae-Gibson, Gavin - 1988

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988. First MIT Press paperback edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Trade paperback. Good. The format is approximately 8.25 inches by 11 inches. xvii, [1], 215, [7] pages. Illustrations (photographs and drawings). Notes. Bibliography. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling, and crease at bottom front cover. Gavin Macrae-Gibson received a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge University in 1977, which he attended as an Anderson-Webb Scholar. He received a Master of Architecture degree from Yale University in 1979, which he attended as a Mellon Fellow. He was an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Architecture from 1982 to 1992, and also taught at Columbia University and the University of Miami. He has lectured at numerous other schools of architecture throughout the United States and Canada. In 1985 MIT Press published his book The Secret Life of Buildings, an American Mythology for Modern Architecture, subsequently published in a Spanish edition by Editions Nerea in 1991. Macrae-Gibson Architects was opened in 1985 and has been in continuous operation in New York since that date, winning numerous design awards. Macrae-Gibson Architects specializes in urban architecture and its components. Since its founding in 1982, the firm's intelligent and pragmatic projects have become imbedded in the texture of Manhattan, quietly strengthening the architectural quality of the city. Macrae-Gibson Architects has achieved success by turning the particularly difficult aspects of its urban projects into unexpected, winning solutions. Such thoughtfulness enables Macrae-Gibson Architects to focus on creating maximum concentration of meaning in its diverse buildings and interiors. American architecture is undergoing fundamental changes. Gavin Macrae-Gibson interprets this new architecture in critiques of Frank Gehry's house in Santa Monica (the representation of perception); Peter Eisenman's House El Even Odd (millenial anxiety); Cesar Pelli's Four Leaf Towers (a sensibility of silence); Michael Graves's Portland Building (a concern for the sublime); Robert Stern's Bozzi House (a discussion of scenography); Alan Greenberg's Manchester Superior Court Building (the continuity of the classical); and Robert Venturi's Gordon Wu Hall Princeton (an irony of the difficult whole). The author rejects modernist explanations of these recent architectural achievements in favor of a new poetic logic that he combines with a formal analysis to reveal the layers of meaning present in each building,including the deepest layer its secret life.