Richard Meier Modern Masters

Richard Meier founded his office in 1962 and almost immediately established his presence as an architect of international stature. He was awarded a Pritzker Prize in 1984 and Gold Medal from the RIBA in 1989, and has won several honour awards from the American Institute of Architects, among other international honors. Meier was one of a group of young East Coast practitioners known in the early 1960s as the "New York Five" who returned - controversially at the time - to the formal and stylistic issues of modernism, in Meier's case with buildings influenced by the white forms and geometries of the International Style. (Others in the group were Charles Gwathmey, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, and Michael Graves) He began his professional career designing houses renowned for their simplicity and meticulous detail, like the Douglas House, built on a spectacular wooded site overlooking Lake Michigan in 1973 and recognized by its gleaming white finishes, tubular-steel balustrades, and large plate-glass windows. Meier's signature style crystallized with The Athenaeum in New Harmony, Indiana (1975-79), a visitor and community centre clad in bright white panels of enamelled steel. During the 1980s he further elaborated this style, characterized not only by white cladding but also by layers of wall and window planes, interpenetrating ramps, and clean, modern spaces filled with light. Meier's career continued to soar in the next decade, and he completed the High Museum in Atlanta and the Grotta House in New Jersey (1989) as well as a number of high-profile commissions in Europe, including the Canal+ Television Headquarters in Paris (1992), the Hypolux Bank Building in Luxembourg (1993), and the City Hall and Library in The Hague (1996). This book presents Meier's work up to his most recent projects, including the Department of Art History and Fine Arts Library at Yale University in Connecticut (in design), the Burda Collection Museum in Baden-Baden, Germany (under construction), and the Canon Headquarters, Tokyo (2002). In recent years Meier has incorporated new materials and techniques like curved, precast concrete for the Jubilee Church (Church of the Year 2000) in Rome, and for a private house in Katonah, New York, cladding of glass louvres and stainless-steel rods..