Synopses & Reviews
She has designed banks and hotels, college master plans and retail spaces, galleries, residences, and studios for leading artists. In more than twenty-five years of practice, Deborah Berke has produced an extraordinary body of work that is grounded in the conviction that architecture is not an end in itself, but a setting that is enhanced by its use.
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This book is the first to explore Berkeand#8217;s remarkable career as an architect, designer, teacher, and writer who has forged a strong and evolving aesthetic. As examined in a series of engaging essays, Berkeand#8217;s architecture blends tectonic coherence, a keen sensitivity to the intrinsic qualities of materials, and meticulous attention to detail. While all of her work possesses these distinctive attributes, each project is subtly rooted in its context and ennobles the uses specific to that space.
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Through newly commissioned photographs, twenty-one of Berkeand#8217;s thought-provoking projects appear here, including the Irwin Union Bank, Yale School of Art, 21c Museum Hotel, and Marianne Boesky Gallery. Also featured are Berkeand#8217;s reflections on her growing interest in the and#147;here and nowand#8221;and#151;an approach to architecture intended to counteract the banal placelessness of much of our environment by designing buildings that are intensely bound to and grounded in their sites.
Synopsis
She has designed banks and hotels, college master plans and retail spaces, homes and studios for leading artists, and her work has appeared in Vogue, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair. Hailed as one of her generation’s only true modernists, architect Deborah Berke has, perhaps ironically, made a name for herself by creating what she calls an “architecture of the everyday.”
This book is the first to explore Berke’s remarkable career as an architect, interior designer, teacher, and writer who has forged a strong and evolving aesthetic. Her style, as examined in a series of engaging essays, blends energy, simplicity, functionality, and keen sensitivity to site—without the forced distinctiveness common in contemporary architecture.
Through newly commissioned photographs, twenty-one of Berke’s most celebrated projects appear in this beautifully produced book, including the Irwin Union Bank, Battery Park City Parks Conservancy, 21c Museum Hotel, and Marianne Boesky Gallery. Also featured are Berke’s reflections on her growing interest in the “here and now”—a site-specific architecture designed to counteract banal, uncaring placelessness.
About the Author
Tracy Myers is curatorand#160;at the Heinz Architectural Center of the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Amy Hempel is a fiction writer whose publications include Tumble Home (1997) andand#160;The Dog of the Marriage (2005).