50 Architects You Should Know

The title of this post above refers to the exact title of a book by Prestel and written by Isabel Kuhl, Kristina Lowis and Sabine Thiel-Siling. I bought this book early this year and I never had a chance to complete the book not until just now, when I finally flipped to the last page of the book. I would rather say this is a good book to read and to spend your time, but still not informative enough with lack of explanation of told concepts behind some architects as well as lock of images which are far useful than words.

It is a thin book with around two to four pages dedicated to each architects listed from the Renaissance period whom many I do not recognize up till famous architects nowadays whom I have known almost all of their names from their masterpieces, or from their distinctive approaches in architecture.  There is an excerpt at the back of the book which basically summarizes the content of it;

‘Bold structures, dignified splendor, innovative designs – in all eras there have been architects of outstanding vision who have decisively shaped our towns and cities worldwide. In this volume, 50 of the most important architects since the Renaissance are brought together and represented by their major works. Lively accounts of their designs and careers are supplemented by additional information about architectural styles and historical contexts, making this book a unique and highly accessible work of reference.’

This book is useful and interesting if you wish to have a rough and basic ideas of each architectural styles or approaches by every architects listed. However, certain information seems to be unnecessary like mentioning of the architect’s background in too detail that did not help in his/her progress or interest in the field. Some examples of the works are just mentioned without the aid of even a single picture of it. However, I find the words used in this book are very well written and the content is very much written based on language of architecture which I can learn and apply to my future works too. It is very beneficial in mastering impressive English vocabularies for that.

So, here below is the list of the 50 architects you should know and how many of them do you recognize? Some of the architects are mentioned in the name of firm (a group or partner) which they are successful or famous not in individual basis but in that particular group. Hence, actually more than 50 architects are mentioned. They are Alvar Aalto, Tadao Ando, Leon Battista Alberti, Gunter Behnisch, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Donato Bramante, Filipino Brunelleschi, Daniel Burnham, Norman Foster, Antoni Gaudi, Frank O. Gehry, Von Gerkan and Marg Und Partner, Walter Gropius, Zaha Hadid, Herzog and de Meuron, Steven Holl, Victor Horta, Toyo Ito, Thomas Jefferson, Philip Johnson, Louis I. Kahn, Rem Koolhaas, Le Corbusier, Nicolas Ledoux, Daniel Libeskind, Richard Meier, Michelangelo, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Rafael Moneo, Balthasar Neumann, Richard Neutra, Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Nouvel, Andrea Palladio, Ieoh Ming Pei, Cesar Pelli, Auguste Perret, Renzo Piano, Gerrit Rietveld, Richard Rogers, Aldo Rossi, Eero Saarinen, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Gottfried Semper, SOM – Skidmore, Owings and Merill, Louis Sullivan, Kenzo Tange, Otto Wagner, Christopher Wren and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Some other famous architects that I have known but are not on the list in the book is Carlo Scarpa, Peter Zumthor, Glenn Murcutt, Robert Venturi, Kengo Kuma, Kohn Pedersen Fox, Terry Farrell, Kisho Kurokawa, Sir James Stirling, Jorn Utzon, and some others I might have forgotten at the moment. Many of the architects had even won the highest architecture honour, the Prtizker Prize in their respective year of fame. It seems like now I am writing a review for book too…haha…no, I just want to share my view on the book after I have read the whole book recently.