IAUS, the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies

Book excerpt: The book is a combined memoir and impressionistic history of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. At first affiliated with New York's Museum of Modern Art and Cornell University, the Institute housed architects, artists and historians who worked on creative design and intellectual projects and would become world renown. Its creation and direction was in the hands of its able leader, Peter Eisenman. Besides a documentary study of the work that went on there, among an international clearing house, the book is laced with impressions of the author's experience there. It has been in the works for over 12 years and was originally financed by the Graham Foundation for the Study of the Fine Arts and has subsequently been aided by Dr. Jenny Kaufmann. The photographs of the Institute at the height of its activity are included and so does an original ground plan of its West 40th Street office done by Scott Brandi who also designed the book. It ends with 27 interviews of prominent members of the Institute who comment on it and their experiences. The book should appeal to architecture students and those interested in architecture and urbanism of the seventies when the government in the United States was more reasonable in economic and political equity.