New Architecture in Britain

Rating:
Summary: New Architecture in Britain
Review: First London, and now the provinces of Britain are enthusiastically embracing blobs, high tech steel and glass structures, and abstractions of the rural vernacular-a development that would have been inconceivable a few decades ago, when the natives cordially (and understandably) detested the few scattered impositions of Brutalism. Powell has made a judicious choice of a hundred buildings completed in the last three years, or about to be.

Aside from the po-mo villas of Quinlan Terry, it coheres as a portrait of the best new British architecture, with good representation of stars and emerging talents, plus guest turns by Gehry, Ando, and Libeskind. The descriptions are terse and perceptive; the illustrations of each project are few, but carefully chosen. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)