Formal Basis of Modern Architecture

First published in 2006 (and now rare), and originally written as a dissertation in 1963, The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture is the acclaimed American architect Peter Eisenman's masterly formal analysis of architecture. "I wanted to write an analytic work that related what I had learned to see, from Palladio to Terragni, from Raphael to Guido Reni, into some theoretical construct that would bear on modern architecture, but from the point of view of a certain autonomy of form."

Here, Eisenman--world famous for his Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (2005)--confronts historicism with theory and the analysis of form, illustrating his observations with numerous precisely executed drawings. The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture was Eisenman's dissertation at the University of Cambridge, and was first published as a facsimile edition by Lars M ller Publishers in 2006; that edition is now reprinted in a smaller format.

Peter Eisenman (born 1932) is an internationally recognized architect and educator. Prior to establishing a full-time architectural practice in 1980, Eisenman worked as an independent architect, educator and theorist. In 1967, he founded the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), an international think tank for architecture in New York, and served as its director until 1982. Eisenman is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among other awards, in 2001 he received the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and the Smithsonian Institution's 2001 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in Architecture. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale.