Summary

This study tells the story of one of America's most gifted architects of the postwar years.

During a career that spanned half a century from the 1930s to the 1980s, Weese produced a large number of significant designs ranging from small but highly inventive houses to large urban scale commissions like the Washington, D.C., Metro system. Although influenced to some degree by the rational, and often austere, work of European modernists like Mies van der Rohe, in most of his own oeuvre Weese instead followed the example of Nordic architects like Gunnar Asplund and Alvar Aalto in favoring natural materials, human scale, and comfort; his work was characterized by a deep respect for older buildings and existing urban patterns and a fondness for unexpected, often idiosyncratic design decisions.

This book takes its place within a fast-growing revival of interest in the work of Weese and a number of his friends and contemporaries with shared assumptions and sensibilities, notably Eero Saarinen, Edward Larrabee Barnes, I. M. Pei, Ralph Rapson, and Paul Rudolph. As important as Weese's buildings were, though, they were only one part of what almost all his contemporaries recognized as his seemingly inexhaustible creativity. Because Weese believed that design was essentially problem-solving, he was willing to apply his skills to everything from a piece of furniture to an entire city. The city on which he lavished the most attention was his own city, Chicago, where he seemed to be everywhere at once, praising, criticizing, cheerleading, and pouring out ideas for creating a humane and livable place for citizens of all walks of life.

Library Journal Review

It has been nearly two decades since the last book addressing the prolific American architect Harry Weese was published. Known most widely for his work in downtown Chicago and on the Washington, DC, Metro system, Weese designed from the 1920s until his death in the 1980s, and his work includes single-family homes, churches, transit buildings, stores, educational facilities, and urban environments. Architectural historian Bruegmann opens the book with a lengthy biography detailing Weese's childhood, education, and career. In the final two-thirds of the volume, art history professor Kathleen Murphy Skolnik contributes a select catalog of Weese's architectural accomplishments. The descriptions include information based on previously unpublished documents and interviews. Historic color and monochrome photographs provide visual documentation for each building, and floor plans are often included.VERDICT Highly recommended for readers interested in 20th-century American architecture. This book will be of interest to students from high school through college. Its readability will also find an audience among general readers following architecture.-Valerie Nye, Santa Fe Univ. of Art and Design, NM (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.