David Chipperfield

Rating:
Summary: David Chipperfield: Architectural Works 1990¿2002
Review: Odd that the Brits-generally messy, philistine, and mired in nostalgia-should have generated, over the past two decades, such an impressive body of high tech architecture and purist design. Chipperfield-like John Pawson, for whom he once worked-is a maestro of luxurious minimalism, a perfectionist who demands polish and precision in every detail and on every surface. When he doesn't get it, he walks away: hence the omission of the Bryant Park Hotel in New York-a refined remodel of Raymond Hood's classic American Radiator Building-in which the client didn't stay the course. The thirty buildings and projects, plus furniture and ceramics, that he has anointed are arranged alphabetically to counter any suspicion of linear development. One finds a surprising diversity of invention. Curves sneak in, as they never do in Pawson's relentlessly rectilinear world, and Chipperfield's vacation house in Spain has a checkerboard façade. There are nods to Mies and Le Corbusier, to the English vernacular and to classicism-notably in his work on Museum Island in Berlin. The book is-of course-coolly beautiful, and concludes with a set of literate essays by Jonathan Keates. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)