Building a new millennium By: Philip Jodidio

Author: Philip Jodidio

The earth seems smaller after reading this ambitious book. Its aim: to present the world’s most exciting new buildings as humanity enters the new millennium. The book illustrates and analyzes more than 80 projects by 50 well-known architects. While acknowledging the existence of local styles, Philip Jodidio–editor of a prestigious French art journal–emphasizes the global nature of architecture today. The selection of buildings here is truly multicultural, from the new Hong Kong airport and Kyoto’s train station to daringly designed homes, schools, museums, even contrasting styles of crematoria (one each from Germany and Japan). With new “space age” materials and very large sums of public and private money, today’s architects experiment in creating innovative spaces in which cultural, religious, and other more mundane events can be experienced. The buildings often seem ends in themselves: a $10 million museum in Seoul houses just two Rodin sculptures in a light-filled, inspirational environment; the Jewish Museum in Berlin deliberately opened empty, with no collection of any sort, the dark, jagged architecture sending its own message. The book’s international flavor is enhanced by the practice of the publisher, Taschen, to offer text in three languages: English, German, and French. This presents design difficulties that are handled well, with text boxes, alternating triple columns, and restful light-blue “breathing spaces.” Descriptions of the buildings are succinct and informative, the photographs of high quality. Building a New Millennium is a successful portrait of the state of architecture at this moment in our accelerating global culture. –John Stevenson

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