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Overview

Cool Construction examines four architects in whose work the tactility of craftsmanship and the luminosity of understatement are combined and refined to an unprecedented degree, creating an architecture that demands patience and scrutiny, but that reveals in return an unparalleled beauty. Although the architectsDavid Chipperfield (London), Waro Kishi (Kyoto), Eduardo Souto de Moura (Lisbon), and Williams and Tsien (New York)are based in different cultures, their work exhibits a rare vision of purity and serenity that is independent of time and place. From Chipperfield's sensitive reinterpretations of historical forms to the exquisite restraint in Kishi's work, from Souto de Moura's robust but elemental use of the vernacular to Williams and Tsien's planar experimentation, each finds maximum expression through the ingenious use of materials and a rigorous manipulation of form. In contrast to the excesses of postmodernism, cool construction is an architecture that is finely honed and carefully wrought, resonant and sublime. 100 color and 180 b/w illustrations and photographs. 4 X 4: a new series on contemporary international architecture. Each title includes: 4 concise architect profiles 16 influential projects a reference section