Piero Sartogo and Nathalie Grenon: Architecture in Perspective

Piero Sartogo and Nathalie Grenon are, as Richard Meier writes in his foreword, "European architects with a world perspective." This volume, clearly demonstrating that world perspective, is the first on the work of the Rome- and New York-based architectural practice. More than 30 projects-- built, unbuilt, and under construction-- from around the world-- the United States, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Wales, Japan, and Taiwan-- are included in this monograph. The projects, organized in reverse chronological order, are illuminated by critiques and essays by such leading architectural writers as Rudolf Arnheim, Bruno Zevi, Paul Goldberger, and Kenneth Frampton. This unique organization creates an intense dialogue between architectural criticism and built form. The book opens with the new Italian Embassy in Washington. D.C., currently under construction, Sartogo and Grenon's most important project in the United States. Several significant projects in New York are featured, including the Italian Trade Center and the Banca di Roma, both located in midtown Manhattan. Also shown are urban planning projects, important international competitions, product design, installations for both exhibitions and expositions, and Sartogo's seminal early projects, the Gescal Public Housing Development in Milan and the Medical Association Building in Rome. Through all their work, as Sartogo writes in the introduction, these international architects constantly perceive new ways to design "conceptual space-- the dimension beyond reality... that lives within the physical structure of rooms and buildings and that needs to be articulated."