000			03692cam a2200409 a 4500
001			12838
003			OSt
005			20250818131259.0
008			920727s1993 nyua 001 0aeng
010			_a 92027847
020			_a9780393315035
035			_a2978005
040			_aDLC _cDLC _dDLC
043			_an-us---
050	0	0	_aNA737.B55 _bA2 1993
082	0	0	_a720.92 BLA _220 _b12838
100	1		_aBlake, Peter, _d1920-2006.
245	1	0	_aNo place like Utopia : _bmodern architecture and the company we kept / _cPeter Blake.
250			_a1st American ed.
260			_aNew York : _bKnopf, _c1993.
300			_axvi, 347 p. : _bill. ; _c25 cm.
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_aunmediated _bn _2rdamedia
338			_avolume _bnc _2rdacarrier
500			_aIncludes index.
520			_aFor more than half a century, Peter Blake has lived in the mainstream of contemporary architecture and art. As writer, magazine editor, critic, and practicing architect, he has numbered among his friends and acquaintances (and occasionally enemies) virtually all of the major figures of modern architecture, and a good many famous artists as well. In this crisp and lively memoir, he brings them - and the time he shared with them - vividly and memorably to life. The anecdotes are memorable. Here is Frank Lloyd Wright (regarded by Blake as a perfect example of "the Artist as Ham," though he greatly admired his buildings) exploding at the discovery of young Blake's savage review of his Autobiography ... Bertrand Russell trying to escape visitors by hiding up a tree in Pennsylvania, as he calmly puffs away on his pipe ... Buckminster Fuller tap-dancing on a drafting table to demonstrate the metrical affinity between bebop and a new mathematical system he is working on ... Mies van der Rohe at work, stolidly gazing at a model of an ITT building while assistants scurry around making alterations ... Marcel Breuer telling how he invented his famous chair ... Philip Johnson delightedly answering a solemn question about heat loss from a visitor to his glass house: "The heat loss is absolutely tremendous"--And beaming from ear to ear. But No Place Like Utopia also has a deeper theme: how modern architecture, born and raised between the wars and after with a strong sense of social and political idealism, in the 1960s gradually fell back into its ancient role as an elitist pursuit dedicated to flattering the rich and powerful. Only now, as Blake makes clear, can we see the beginnings of a return to its original principles. From the push-and-pull of politics, culminating in the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period, to heady days in the magazine business, first with Architectural Forum and then with the brilliant but ultimately doomed Architecture Plus, Peter Blake has always been energetically involved with his art and with his era. No Place Like Utopia is thus doubly valuable, as a wonderfully readable historical and personal document, and a pungent commentary on where modern architecture went wrong and right.
600	1	0	_aBlake, Peter, _d1920-2006.
650		0	_aArchitects _zUnited States _vBiography.
650		0	_aInternational style (Architecture)
650		0	_aArchitects _xPsychology.
650		0	_aArchitecture and society _xHistory _y20th century.
655		7	_aBiographies. _2lcgft _0https://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms/gf2014026049
906			_a7 _bcbc _corignew _d1 _eocip _f19 _gy-gencatlg
942			_2ddc _cBK _n0
999			_c11662 _d11662