The internationally acclaimed architect Rafael Moneo is known to be a courageous architect. His major works include the Houston Museum of Fine Art, Davis Art Museum at Wellesley College, the Stockholm Museum of Modern Art and Architecture and the Potzdammer Platz Hotel in Berlin. Now Moneo will be known as a daring critic as well. In this book, he looks at eight of his contemporaries - all architects of international stature - and discusses the theoretical positions, technical innovations and design contributions of each. Moneo's discussion of these eight architects - James Stirling, Robert Venturi, Aldo Rossi, Peter Eisenman, Alvaro Siza, Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas and the partnership of Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron - has the colloquial, engaging tone of a series of lectures on modern architecture by a master architect; the reader hears not the dispassionate theorising of an academic, but Moneo's own deeply held convictions as he considers the work of his contemporaries. More than 500 illustrations accompany the text. Discussing each of the eight architects in turn, Moneo first gives an introductory profile, emphasising intentions, theoretical concerns and construction proce

Author Biography

Jose Rafael Moneo is an internationally renowned architect, in practice since 1965. He has taught in both Spain and America, and from 1986 to 1990 he was Chairman of the Architecture Department at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He holds the Gold Medal for Fine Arts awarded by the government of Spain, the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize for Architecture, and the Schock Prize.