old architecture books
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I buy old Pelican books… the blue covers… especially old architecture ones, they’re always interesting as opinions change and authors get revisionist over their past mistaken accolades… when you have multiple copies of the book published 15 years apart, its always interesting to see which buildings did not stand the test of time and got dropped…
anyway yesterday I got a nice copy of “The new architecture of Europe” by G.E. Kidder Smith…. 1961
I bought it for one particular reason – the section on Ireland which only included Busaras, no surprise there… but it was the bitchy comments before it that made me laugh….
Eire has almost no contemporary buildings of merit; however the Irish apparently prefer life this way. The country is wrapped in an anachronistic past that virtually forces bright young people of whatever profession to emigrate – hardly a lovely stage of progress…… This if it continues – fortunately there are indications of improvement – will be ominous for Ireland and equally unhappy for the rest of the world. Talent is many forms is not unknown to the Emerald Isle; if given half a chance….
other that than it is quite a good book with some varied projects illustrated…. some unusual suspects there as well as the usual…
As late as 1987… “modern Architecture in Europe” – De Witt……
“Ireland is a relatively poor country which, during the last 150 years, has suffered revolution, civil war, famine and mass emigration. Today its population is about half that in 1835, and its most talented and ambitious young architects, such as Kevin Roche, often feel that they must emigrate to succeed.”
… One building only mentioned… New Library Trinity College… ABK
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