Jorn Utzon: Houses

What a beautiful book! You feel that it is a labour of love with every photo on every page speaking to you about the specialness of each building. Utzon is a brilliant architect, one of that small group of twentieth century achitect's who speaks directly to our soul both through his few humanist writings and built work (people like Louis Kahn, Aldo van Eyck and Alvaro Siza among others). Apart from the 20 page illustrated introduction called 'Conversations', the book is a large format book of exquisite full-colour architectural photographs. Ten buildings are covered each with basic plans and the occasional elevation, sketch or section which remain very subsidiary to the photos. Unfortunately very little published work exists in English on the complete body of Utzon's output, and the few tend to be out-of-print, very expensive or difficult to get. This is unfortunate because the book under review needs such a supplementary text to give this overview of Jorn Utzon's architecture. The best book for this currently available at a reasonable price is "Jorn Utzon: Works & Projects" by Jaime J. Ferrer Fores, published by GG in 2006, in their small format bilingual edition. Again unfortunately this is not presently available through Amazon. Each book is excellent but if you get both books you should feel satisfied. Separately they are like a meal without the wine.

Utter disappointment given the cost! Of the ten projects featured within this book six are actual houses as we define them today. The rest could be considered houses in the sense of being an opera house, a government house and a church house. The title is misleading, although much of the interiors of the institutional projects have a definite residential scale and detailing. Twenty-two pages of explanatory text in the form of an interview, and 98 pages of the remaining 220 covering residences. However, in the case of The Fredensborg Houses, all of the interior photographs, with the exception of one small photograph, are of the complexes club centre, restaurant and lounge. The books balance leans heavily towards the photographs and is lean on drawings. When there are floor and site plans they lack north arrows or scales. The photographs are labeled sporadically and given the small drawings it is sometimes difficult to understand where the photographs where taken. The book verges on being more a style book than a book on architecture. However, since very little has been published on this architect's work, except for the Sydney Opera House, it may have a place in one's library.

I love Utzon's work, especially his own residence in Majorca. The man is a genius. From the title "Jorn Utzon Houses", I was looking forward to a book on houses that people live in. Four of the ten "Houses" in the book were 1) the Sidney Opera House, 2) the Bagsvaerd Church, 3) the Herning School Complex and 4) the Kuwait National Assembly. There are many beautiful, period color photographs by Per Nagel, a nice long "Conversation" between Utzon and Moller and clear, well printed glossy pages. Many of the high quality photos I have not seen reproduced before. I especially liked seeing the Bagsvaerd Church and the Majolica house in greater detail. The diagram of Utzon's "additive architecture" was informative, but most plans and sections were too reduced in size. There is a little information about each project, but not as much as an architect would like to have. This is a beautiful coffee table book and given the fact that there is little of Utzon's residential work in book form, Utzon lovers have no choice but to buy this photo collection. I would suggest coupling this book with the Utzon chapter in Kenneth Frampton's "Studies in Tectonic Culture".

OK but I thought this was going to focus predominantly on Utzons houses but it also covers his public works which are covered by other (better) publications elsewhere. Best book on Utzon is Edition Blondal by Richard Weston - hard to come by but try publisher and DAC: http://edition-blondal.dk/richard-weston-utzon-inspiration-vision-architecture/ http://www.dac-bookshop.dk/In-English.aspx?ID=103

Absolutely fabulous book with brilliant photographs and sketches of one of the finest modern architects