Description
The Odyssey Press, Published 1964. Hardcover, 44 pp.; 11 x 17 cm (oblong); The Odyssey Library no. 8; illustrated by Peter Spier in color and black-and-white, with pictorial endpapers.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition, no dust jacket, as issued. Glossy illustrated boards (Piazza San Marco and campanile, Venice, on front cover) with mild surface and edge wear; light toning to rear cover. Binding tight. Pages mildly toned, otherwise unmarked. Pocket-format illustrated history of Western architecture, from the tombs and temples of Egypt and Mesopotamia to Le Corbusier's Ronchamp, Niemeyer's Brasilia and Saarinen's TWA Terminal (1962). Spier's drawings are on nearly every page: plans, cross sections and cutaways alongside color views of Abu Simbel, Karnak, the Colosseum and Pantheon, Romanesque and Gothic churches, the Wurzburg Residenz and Versailles. Endpapers reproduce 48 dated building vignettes from 722 B.C. Assyria to Yale in 1963. Ends with a chronology of architectural styles and an index. Valmarana, then teaching architectural history at Columbia, later taught at the University of Virginia from 1972 to 2000, where he founded its Venice and Vicenza programs; his family home was Palladio's Villa La Rotonda. Spier went on to win the Caldecott Medal for Noah's Ark.