Iconic Building

The cover of Jencks's snappy survey of the post-Bilbao boom in flamboyant public building has a Photoshopped image of Norman Foster's Swiss Re headquarters in London launching itself like the rocket ship it resembles, complete with flaming thrusters and billowing smoke. The cover's combination of satire, affection and awe sets the tone for the book. Neither a pious jeremiad nor a jargon-ridden manifesto, Jencks's volume is more interested in outsize buildings and personalities than in prescriptions and complaints. And a couple of the architects Jencks (The New Paradigm in Architecture ) discusses—including Daniel Liebeskind and Will Alsop—are allowed to answer back, in interviews with the author that are sometimes sparring and combative. The most sustained and brilliant of the book's seven sections is on the still-evolving plans for the site formerly occupied by the World Trade Center. Here Jencks traces the charged intersection of politics, finance and media with lucidity and healthy cynicism. In addition to the numerous expected photographs of famous buildings, the book also includes Jencks's own crude but vivid collages and a fascinating series of white-on-black drawings that wittily depict the underlying forms of some of the buildings under discussion. Brimming with critical energy, this volume often feels as big, shiny and in-your-face as the buildings it describes. (Oct.)