{"product_id":"building-the-getty-9780375400438","title":"Building the Getty","description":"\u003cp\u003eOne of Americas most eminent architects tells us what it was like to undertake the architectural commission of the century: the building of the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Writing with wit and passion and in engrossing detail  Richard Meier takes us behind the scenes of the thirteen-year-long  one-billion-dollar project.  We follow Meier from 1957 when  just out of Cornell  he traveled to Europe for a grand tour and to seek work with two of his architectural heroes  Le Corbusier and Alvar Aalto  and through to his early years in New York with Marcel Breuer. After Meier established his own private practice  we see him designing public housing and the private houses that expressed his distinctive modernist style of pure geometric line  of whiteness  and open spaces flooded with light. We also see him  in time  designing such important art centers as the Museum of Decorative Arts in Frankfurt  the High Museum of Art in Atlanta  and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.  And then--in 1984--the Getty Center. Meier tells us how he was selected from more than thirty architects  after a lengthy and involved series of interviews  to design the cultural campus on the spectacular 110-acre site overlooking the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. The Getty was a new cultural institution  and Meier worked with the program directors to design the buildings that would serve them best. In the beginning  neither he nor the Getty had any idea of the complications in store for them. Each of the Centers six components  including the Getty Museum  had its own set of priorities. Meier faced two important contradictory challenges: the creative and the practical. His task was to design a series of buildings that would stand as architectural masterpieces. But  at the same time  he had to deal with myriad specific demands and limitations imposed not only by his client  but also by the local homeowners  who were alarmed by the specter of a vast complex arising in their midst. As a result  the design process itself was not completed until 1991  when the drawings and large-scale model of the Center were finally unveiled to the press.  But Meiers task had scarcely begun. The sheer scale and complexity of the project  and the number of people involved in every decision  continued to mean constant revisions. As construction moved ahead  Meier lived on the site  yet commuted to his New York office to manage ongoing European projects  while in his new office in Los Angeles  the population of architects handling the Getty grew to more than a hundred. Although the Centers design had been agreed on  much negotiation lay ahead before questions of material  color  and landscaping were at last settled.  Finally  in 1996  almost half of the Center was ready to be occupied  and Meier could see that the work--carried out by the many architects  engineers  technicians  craftsmen  and builders for thirteen years--was well on its way to being completed. Meiers fascinating book  chronicling the creation of one of the cultural monuments of our time  is a unique record of the art and process of building in this century  and an important contribution to architectural history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45965862535221,"sku":"ByrdShop_0375400435","price":22.14,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780375400438.jpg?v=1788370978","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/building-the-getty-9780375400438","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}