Paul Hayden Kirk and the Puget Sound School
Description:... "In the third quarter of the twentieth century, Paul Hayden Kirk, and a group of architects whose work he inspired, all of them graduates of the University of Washington, created an architecture of a quality not surpassed by any other in the nation in its time. Their unique achievement lies in the design of houses, medical clinics, churches, a neighborhood library, a teahouse-small buildings, none of them more than three stories. Most American buildings of that scale have been built of wood, but for Kirk and his colleagues it was the defining feature. It was their material of choice for interior and exterior surfaces, and for their always-exposed structures. They detailed it to express its own nature, either leaving it in its natural state or with a slight protective stain. In 1980 the Seattle chapter of the American Institute of Architects curated an exhibit of that work. Philip Johnson, then dean of architectural critics, said he was "astonished" by the "magnificent" work; he had been unaware of its existence. This book is the first to convey that story. It discusses forty key buildings in detail, describing and diagramming the features that unite and distinguish them, and illustrating them in over a hundred color photographs, most of them created specifically for this book. It gives the architecture of Paul Kirk and his colleagues its unique place in the history of American architecture"--
Show description