Product Description

Maybeck at Principia: Architect & Client and the Art & Craft of Building brings focus to Maybeck's late career and work outside California and provides a reevaluation of his design approach and intentions in his more traditionally styled work. The book relies on a unique and extensive archive at Principia College, and documents Maybeck's last and longest commission, the campus plans, un-executed projects, and built architecture for Principia. New assessments have been gained through Maybeck's taped interviews with this major client, Frederic Morgan, and with Edward Hussey of Maybeck's office, as well as on conversations and interviews with others associated with the work. The extensive Maybeck-Morgan correspondence allows much of the story to be told by the participants, through letters and other records preserved in the Principia archives. The Maybeck reassessment is also presented in the light of a wider range of theoretical influences discussed here for the first time.

For those of the college community who live and work at Principia and who daily experience its architecture as art, it is easy to see why Principia College was recently recognized as a National Landmark. Robert Craig is Professor of Architecture at the College of Architecture, Georgia Tech, where he has taught since 1973. He is President of the 19th Century Studies Association; Secretary of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH); Past-President of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies; and a founding trustee, Past President, and currently Treasurer of the Southeast Chapter, SAH. He is author of Atlanta Architecture: Art Deco to Modern Classic, 1929-59, and co-author with John Portman and Aldo Castellano of John Portman: An Island on an Island. Craig has written on Maybeck for over three decades, including his doctoral dissertation on the Principia commission. He lives with his wife and son in Atlanta, Georgia.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #827444 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 544 pages

From the Inside Flap
Bernard Maybeck at Principia Colleg: The Art and Craft of Building brings focus to Maybeck's late career and work outside of California and provides a reevaluation of his design approach and intentions in his more traditionally styled work. It documents Maybeck's last and longest commission, the campus plans, unexecuted projects, and built architecture for Principia.

The history of Bernard Maybeck at Principia College is a story of an architect with romantic vision and matured practical experience in college planning and architecture who finds an immediate rapport with a client of extraordinary managerial abilities and insight. It was a romantic vision, conceived in spirit that evolved into an architectonic painting set among the trees above the bluffs at Elsah, Illinois, which is today recognized as a National Landmark.

From the Back Cover
"Your architect very evidently not only had an interesting job but he also loved it because you can see countless evidences of personal attention in various details throughout. Beautiful as are the dormitories, the Chapel, however, is simply perfect in every single detail, inside and out. I regard it as flawless..." --Hugh Ferris, 1935

About the Author
Robert Craig is Professor of Architecture at the College of Architecture, Georgia Tech, where he has taught since 1973. He is President of the 19th Century Studies Association; Secretary of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH); Past-President of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies; and a founding trustee, Past President, and currently Treasurer of the Southeast Chapter, SAH. He is author of Atlanta Architecture: Art Deco to Modern Classic, 1929-59, and co-author with John Portman and Aldo Castellano of John Portman: An Island on an Island. Craig has written on Maybeck for over three decades, including his doctoral dissertation on the Principia commission. He lives with his wife and son in Atlanta, Georgia.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous - History of Maybeck and Principia
This book is not only filled with fabulous pictures of one of the most beautiful college campuses in America, but provides a well documented history of its creation. A wonderful example of architect and client working together in support of what is now a 107 year-old institution, still dedicated to providing excellent academic, athletic, social, moral and spiritual development for its students.

A Prin Grad Remembers
I attended Principia College about the same time as Bob Craig and remember vividly how rock solid the Maybeck architecture was. I lived in Rackham West, gave flute lessons in "The Mistake House" (the first picture in the book), and my wife, Nancy, and I were married in the College Chapel. Bob's book is a wonderful compilation of information on the creative genius of Bernard Maybeck. If you ever get to Elsah, Illinois, you must visit the campus! Oh yes...buy the book first!! :-)

Architecture and Learning
A great example of the creation of an academic village, Principia College's orginal dormitories and buildings bring to mind buildings in the English countrside. As a student, I lived in a couple of the dorm buildings designed by Maybeck and it was a great pleasure to experience the many different styles of rooms incorporated into the buildings.

A casual glance at the buildings would lead visitors to believe they were partially constructed of wood. In fact the entire buildings including exposed "beams" were made from concrete.......so bomb proof that they were considered to be an adequate refuge from an atomic attack on St. Louis.....or so legend had it. Definitely sturdy enough to withstand epic water wars and tennis ball fights. Ah....college!

Of course, one of the great pleasures of student life was to either tour with or overhear from a room in the chapel where I would study the great Dr. Charles B. "Chuck" Hosmer wax rhapsodic on Maybeck's work. If you are interested in historical preservation and architecture, Hosmer was a preminent scholar in the field and his "Presence of the Past" as well as the two-volume "Preservation Comes of Age" remain seminal works in the field. God speed, Hos!