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(More customer reviews)The long-awaited fifth edition of an LA guide that's often called "the bible" is a major disappointment. Robert Winter is a perceptive scholar of Victoriana and arts and crafts, but he sensibly left modernism to his collaborator, the late David Gebhard. Now he has attempted to do it all, by providing entries on key buildings of the 1990s that he neither likes nor understands, and the result is embarrassing. Gehry, Maltzan, Mayne, Moss, Pei, and Yazdani will be surprised to find themselves bundled together under the label "Neo-Expressionism (Postmodernism)." Disney Hall, which is pictured on the cover, is described in terms of what happened ten years ago (plus cloddish public reactions to the first pictures of the model); there's not a sentence on the completed building. Other adventurous work is dismissed as "very strange." A long-winded entry on the Getty reads like a chatty letter to a friend; most are absurdly brief. The revisions add almost nothing, and are woefully incomplete; the publisher is guilty of gross negligence for not wielding an editorial pencil. Earlier selections have been edited, but the William Cameron Menzies house in Beverly Hills is still there, even though it was demolished three editions ago, along with Gehry's Venice restaurant, Rebecca's. The original 97 percent of the guide remains invaluable and engaging. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)
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Known as "the bible" to Los Angeles architecture scholars and enthusiasts, Robert Winter and David Gebhard's groundbreaking guide to architecture in the greater Los Angeles area is updated and revised once again. From Art Deco to Beaux-Arts, Spanish Colonial to Mission Revival, Winter discusses an impressive variety of architectural styles in this popular guide that he co-authored with the late David Gebhard. New buildings and sites have been added, along with all new photography. Considered the most thorough L.A. architecture guide ever written, this new edition features the best of the past and present, from Charles and Henry Greene's Gamble House to Frank Gehry's Disney Philharmonic Hall. This was, and is again, a must-have guide to a diverse and architecturally rich area.
Robert Winter is a recognized architectural historian who lives in Los Angeles, and has led architectural tours through the Los Angeles area since 1965. He is a professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
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