Subject: Re: Review of Denys Lasdun: Architecture, City, Landscape
THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN FORWARDED TO DESIGN-L.
>DENYS LASDUN: ARCHITECTURE, CITY, LANDSCAPE by William J.R. Curtis.
>Phaidon Press Limited, 140 Kensington Church Street, London, W8
>4BN, distributed in the United States by Chronicle Books, 275 Fifth
>Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, (800) 722-6657, (800) 445-7577 in
>CA, (415) 777-8887 FAX. Illustrated, index, index of works,
>concise biography, notes, bibliography. 240 pp., $60.00 cloth.
>0-7148-2871-8
> REVIEW
>Credit Phaidon with good timing. Their new Lasdun overview comes
>amid a tumultuous controversy over plans to remodel the Lasdun-
>designed National Theatre in London. The intention was announced
>the same day that the theatre was listed as a building of
>"outstanding architectural quality" by National Heritage Secretary
>Peter Brooke. Prince Charles has disdainfully called it "a clever
>way of building a nuclear power station." Despite the turmoil,
>Curtis has written a solid historical assessment of Lasdun's ideas
>of the "urban landscape," with examples such as the towers and
>terraces of the Bethnal Green housing clusters, the Royal College
>of Physicians, the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, and the
>Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem (which was never built). But the
>crowning creation is the National Theatre, to which Curtis devotes
>two chapters, investigating the initial plan for a National Theatre
>and Opera House, and its metamorphosis into the present structure
>that has existed for eighteen years. Curtis' appraisal of Lasdun
>is balanced, much more so than Lasdun's statement, in answering the
>facelift plans, that "If you found the Venus de Milo with her arms
>on, you wouldn't go and knock one of them off, would you?" Such
>modesty is refreshing. "Denys Lasdun" is recommended for fine arts
>libraries and architecture students.
THIS REVIEW HAS BEEN FORWARDED TO DESIGN-L.
>DENYS LASDUN: ARCHITECTURE, CITY, LANDSCAPE by William J.R. Curtis.
>Phaidon Press Limited, 140 Kensington Church Street, London, W8
>4BN, distributed in the United States by Chronicle Books, 275 Fifth
>Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, (800) 722-6657, (800) 445-7577 in
>CA, (415) 777-8887 FAX. Illustrated, index, index of works,
>concise biography, notes, bibliography. 240 pp., $60.00 cloth.
>0-7148-2871-8
> REVIEW
>Credit Phaidon with good timing. Their new Lasdun overview comes
>amid a tumultuous controversy over plans to remodel the Lasdun-
>designed National Theatre in London. The intention was announced
>the same day that the theatre was listed as a building of
>"outstanding architectural quality" by National Heritage Secretary
>Peter Brooke. Prince Charles has disdainfully called it "a clever
>way of building a nuclear power station." Despite the turmoil,
>Curtis has written a solid historical assessment of Lasdun's ideas
>of the "urban landscape," with examples such as the towers and
>terraces of the Bethnal Green housing clusters, the Royal College
>of Physicians, the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, and the
>Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem (which was never built). But the
>crowning creation is the National Theatre, to which Curtis devotes
>two chapters, investigating the initial plan for a National Theatre
>and Opera House, and its metamorphosis into the present structure
>that has existed for eighteen years. Curtis' appraisal of Lasdun
>is balanced, much more so than Lasdun's statement, in answering the
>facelift plans, that "If you found the Venus de Milo with her arms
>on, you wouldn't go and knock one of them off, would you?" Such
>modesty is refreshing. "Denys Lasdun" is recommended for fine arts
>libraries and architecture students.