Martin Filler

I'm very much reviewing this based on my enjoyment; I can easily imagine someone picking this up and throwing it away within half an hour. It's a collection of essays, some of which kind of sort of touch on architecture, with others mostly biographical, and a few about the ridiculous nature of the architectural industry. But I loved it, because Filler is fierce in his criticism, and it's so damn refreshing to read someone who can write wonderful sentences and call out trash when he sees show more trash--not because the person who made it was a bad person (though many of them were), but because the thing itself is trash. Plus, I learned a bit about modern architects, if not modern architecture; it's far too allusive to teach you anything about the buildings or the theories. You do learn about Filler's preoccupations, though, and that's nice: basically, architects should aim to produce public buildings that serve a civic function, rather than a profit motive. Hear hear. show less

Whether you'll appreciate this collection of essays about famous architects first published in the New York Review of Books depends on how much you already know about the topic. Some of the essays read like filler, like they have been phoned in: The author has been sent to report back on the new Acropolis Museum designed by Bernard Tschumi. Gathering a number of the usual suspects and clichés, a quick essay is churned out - an approach which works well for a magazine but is too light for a show more book.

The essay about Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, creator of the Frankfurt kitchen, has its origin in the reviewers' accurate description that the first volume treated only dead white males. The essay, however, reads like a student's extra homework assignment. The author's knowledge about the subject is very shallow. German expressions are misspelled and translated badly, while the context of German and Austrian social housing construction is viewed from an incomplete and inaccurate Anglo-American point of view. Ultimately, every essay and topic is about New York. For New Yorkers and readers of the (well made) New York Review of Books, this might be quite ok. For a collection of essays that aspire to some form of permanence, this is lacking in intellectual nourishment. show less

Diminishing returns, a bit, as Filler writes about the same people here as in the first two volumes, for the most part. But still, he seems like someone I'd want to have dinner with, and he teaches me about architecture, so I can't complain.

Out of the three volumes, I think this one is probably the best--I learned more than from the first volume, and by the third volume, things start to get a bit predictable.