The Evolution of an Architect

Book excerpt: In this monumental volume, one of the most important architects of our time gives us his own life story, and reveals the development of his work in several hundred magnifcent photographs, plans and drawings. When the publisher told Edward Durell Stone that The New York Times called him "one of the most controversial architects in America today," he replied, "I'd rather be universal than controversial." Readers of this book will discover that he is both. The fascinating story of Edward Durell Stone's career spans over sixty years of American life, and he tells it with unforgettable warmth and wit. Beginning with an idyllic childhood in an atmosphere of serenity and affluence, he describes the town of his youth, the "hot bed of tranquility in the Ozarks, and then takes us in rapid scenes to Boston, New York, Washington and Europe. It is on a morning in New York that the visual miracle occurs: We see precisely how the seeds of architecture take root in his imagination, and we witness the flowering of the talent that has created an incredible variety of romantically beautiful structures-houses, churches, hotels, universities, buildings of every description celebrated throughout the world. The story of Edward Stone's career parallels the story of modern architecture. In the early Thirties he designs the famed Mandel and Goodyear houses and the Museum of Modern Art among others. In the Forties, he produces an enormous number of exquisite residences, varying from small houses to large estates - and moves with an incomparable surge of creativity into the Fifties to design some of the most widely discussed buildings in the world: the United States Embassy in India (hailed for its lyrical beauty by Frank Lloyd Wright), the Brussels World's Fair Pavilion, the El Panama hotel (virtually without corridors and doors-a design which has since been imitated in resort hotels allover the world), the Graf House in Dallas, the Yardley building in New Jersey and the Stuart building in Pasadena, the Stanford Medical Center, etc., etc. Now, in the Sixties, the most important creations of Edward Stone's inventive genius are under way around the globe- a series of apartment buildings and hotels in New York, Philadelphia, Palm Beach, Pittsburgh, etc., the Huntington Hartford Gallery of Modern Art in New York, a new campus for Beirut, a mosque and a new atomic institute for Pakistan, the National Cultural Center for Washington, a revolutionary skyscraper for New York, a great number of others- among them the largest project of his fantastically productive career, a complex of buildings to form an entirely new campus for ten thousand students at State University of New York in Albany. Mr. Stone's personal life is intertwined as one with his creative career and so we discover many revealing passages of friendship and family life: delightful sketches of his parents, his formidably relaxed uncles, his imaginative architect brother; there are wonderful recollections of Frank Lloyd Wright; and, above all, the moving account of his meeting with the fascinating girl, Maria, who was to become his wife and the inspiring force in his life- a life which may be said to be in itself an American work of art. -- from dust jacket.