Building The Getty

Provides an history of the planning, design, and construction of the six-building Getty Center in Los Angeles, one of the great cultural complexes. This book takes us behind the scenes of the thirteen-year-long, one-billion-dollar project.

Provides an history of the planning, design, and construction of the six-building Getty Center in Los Angeles, one of the great cultural complexes. This book takes us behind the scenes of the thirteen-year-long, one-billion-dollar project.

In October 1984, following an eighteen-month selection process, architect Richard Meier was chosen to design the Getty Center. This book summarizes the processes involved in selecting an architect and building site and discusses the creation of the overall architectural program. The architectural design development drawings by Richard Meier and Partners are the major focus of this book. Numerous photographs of the site and of the presentation models are included. The text provides an insider's view of the history of the building project and the design process. Richard Meier is the recipient of the 1984 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the profession's most prestigious award, and is the designer of many building projects in the United States and Europe. The Getty Center, which will occupy a stunning 110-acre hilltop in west Los Angeles, will provide a permanent home for the various operating entities of the J. Paul Getty Trust, including the new Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Center for Education in the Arts, the Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, the Art History Information Program, and the Getty Grant Program.

Style-Architecture and Building-Art is Hermann Muthesius’s classic criticism of nineteenth century architecture. Now published for the first time in English, this pivotal text represents the first serious effort by Muthesius to define the elements of early modernist architecture according to notions of realism and simplicity. Although Muthesius is known best in Anglo-American architectural literature for his studies of the English house, his scholarship constituted a wide-ranging modernist polemic emanating from the German realist movement of the late 1890s. Notions that were introduced in Style-Architecture and Building-Art became common in later modernist historiography: disdain for the nineteenth century’s artistic eclecticism and lack of originality; appreciation of the material and industrial aspects of building technology, and, above all, a simpler approach to design. Muthesius' critique of stylistic architecture is not only linked to the development of the Deutsche Werkbund movement, but also can be viewed more broadly as a cornerstone of the modern movement. In his introduction, Standford Anderson situates Muthesius and his work in turn-of-the-century architectural discourse and analyzes his vision of a new form of architecture. Anderson also discusses the rationale underlying the call for cultural renewal, the role of English architectural models in Muthesius’s thought, critical differences between the first and second editions of Style-Architecture and Building-Art, the influence of the Jugendstil and Art Nouveau movements on Muthesius and, in turn, the influence of Muthesius on the Deutsche Werkbund movement.

Provides a history of the buildings that have housed the Getty Museum collections, overviews the collections themselves, and offers a biography of J. Paul Getty

This volume completes the documentation of the planning, design, and construction of the Getty Center begun in The Getty Center (1991). Designed by Richard Meier and Partners, the Getty Center sits atop a stunning 110-acre hilltop in west Los Angeles and is the new home for the Museum, the five Institutes, and the Grant Program that make up the J. Paul Getty Trust. The book includes a series of essays that underscore the challenges faced by architect, contractor, and owner working collaboratively. A chronology identifies the key dates and events in the design and construction process. Extensively illustrated with photographs by several accomplished photographers, site drawings from Richard Meier and Partners, and Robert Irwin's drawings of the Central Gardens, the book presents readers with an insider's view of the making of the Getty Center.

Over the concluding decades of the twentieth century, the historic preservation community increasingly turned its attention to modern buildings, including bungalows from the 1930s, gas stations and diners from the 1940s, and office buildings and architectural homes from the 1950s. Conservation efforts, however, were often hampered by a lack of technical information about the products used in these structures, and to fill this gap Twentieth-Century Building Materials was developed by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Park Service and first published in 1995. Now, this invaluable guide is being reissued—with a new preface by the book’s original editor. With more than 250 illustrations, including a full-color photographic essay, the volume remains an indispensable reference on the history and conservation of modern building materials. Thirty-seven essays written by leading experts offer insights into the history, manufacturing processes, and uses of a wide range of materials, including glass block, aluminum, plywood, linoleum, and gypsum board. Readers will also learn about how these materials perform over time and discover valuable conservation and repair techniques. Bibliographies and sources for further research complete the volume. The book is intended for a wide range of conservation professionals including architects, engineers, conservators, and material scientists engaged in the conservation of modern buildings, as well as scholars in related disciplines.

The original Getty Museum, housed in a replica of a Roman Villa on a site overlooking the Pacific Ocean, is one of Los Angeles's most treasured landmarks. Closed for almost ten years while renovations were made to the building and the site itself was transformed into a center for the study of antiquities and conservation, the Getty Villa is now set to open late in 2005. The Getty Villa is a lively history of the Getty Museum, its renowned antiquities collections, and its growth from a small museum in a ranch house in Malibu to its first home in a building designed to replicate what we know of the Villa dei Papiri, an ancient Roman villa partially uncovered in Herculaneum. Most engagingly, this book records the ten-year adventure in reconfiguring a beautiful, but topographically challenging, site into one that could continue to accommodate the splendid Museum building and also provide for an outdoor theater, laboratories for conservation work and research, offices for staff and visiting scholars, and an education program for adults and children. This is a story of architectural imagination, geographical challenges, and legal hurdles, all of which have resulted in a truly unique and beautiful site. The story is an enlightening and rewarding one for anyone interested in architecture and in the difficulties posed by building on a grand scale in the twenty-first century. Beautifully illustrated throughout, the book includes 250 reproductions of works of art, photographs of both the old and the new Getty Museum, site plans, and architectural elevations.