Author: Clausen, Meredith L.
Title: Pietro Belluschi : Modern American Architect
Description: Cambridge [MA], MIT Press, 1994. orig.wrappers. x,469 pp. PAPERBACK.. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ Pietro Belluschi (1899-1994) was the last of a generation of architects that included Marcel Breuer, Jose Luis Sert, and Louis I. Kahn, European immigrants who had a major impact on American architecture. This illustrated study of his life and work brings to light a remarkably accomplished architect, recipient of the AIA Gold Medal and designer (by his own estimate) of well over 1000 buildings and projects. It reveals the enormous power that Belluschi wielded as an arbiter of taste and decision maker in the 1950s and 1960s; his role in shaping the policy of the State Department in its overseas building programme; and his role in securing major commissions for favoured architects such as I.M. Pei. This text also discusses Belluschi's role in the development of regionalism in the Pacific Northwest, and its impact on the definition of modernism as it was emerging in the United States. Clausen examines all aspects of Belluschi's long and productive career from his classical origins in Rome and the arts and crafts influences in the Pacific Northwest that helped shape his aesthetic, to the restrained, modernist houses and churches that comprised his early work; individual buildings like the startlingly modern Portland Art Museum of 1931 and the aluminum-clad Equitable (now Commonwealth) Building of 1948 that were at the cutting edge of progressive architecture;and the stores, shopping centres, and flush-surfaced glass and metal corporate towers that were the bread and butter of Belluschi's practice...." - Publisher's description.

Keywords: American Architects, Pietro Belluschi, Modern Architecture, Architectural, History, United States, , ,