The Master Builders; Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright

New York: W W Norton & Co., Inc, 1976. The Norton Library Edition [Paperback Edition], Third Printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good. xiv, [4], 430 pages. Preface to the Paperback Edition. Illustrations. Index. The cover has slight wear and soiling. Contents are: Le Corbusier and the Mastery of Form; Mies van der Rohe and the Mastery of Structure; Frank Lloyd Wright and the Mastery of Space; and Prospect. Peter Blake was an architect, critic and former editor in chief of Architectural Forum who was known for his lively critiques of Modernism and his friendships with artists. One of Mr. Blake's most-discussed designs was never built: an "Ideal Museum," conceived in 1949 for Jackson Pollock, a friend. Mr. Blake envisioned a spare building behind the artist's house in East Hampton in which Pollock's paintings would be set between mirrored walls, creating a sense of infinite views. The design was included in a Pollock exhibition in the Betty Parsons Gallery in Manhattan and, in the 1980s, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He became a citizen in 1944 and changed his name to Blake. By then he had struck up an acquaintance with a wide and often rambunctious circle of artists, architects and writers, from Jackson Pollock to Charles Eames. In 1948, he was named curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art writing a monograph on the architect Marcel Breuer. Books exploring Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson followed. From 1965 to 1972, he was the editor in chief of Architectural Forum, which attracted a wide following with its articles on architectural currents. Mr. Blake then founded his own magazine, Architecture Plus, where he worked until 1975. Le Corbusier gave to modern design a sure and brilliant sense of form; Mies brought an almost Gothic discipline of structure; and Wright heralded a new and dramatic concept of space and freedom. Through this triple focus, Peter Blake provides a perspective on the entire range of twentieth-century architecture.