50 Architects 50 Buildings: The Buildings That Inspire Architects Hardcover – February 7, 2017 by Twentieth Century Society (Author), Pamela Buxton (Editor) (Batsford)

In this book, 50 leading contemporary architects choose the 50 buildings that have inspired them and made a lasting impact on their own work. Interviewed by Pamela Buxton, with specially commissioned photography by Edward Tyler and Gareth Gardner, they describe their personal reaction to inspirational buildings from housing estates to castles and coal mines to cathedrals.

Based on the Inspiration series commissioned by architecture newspaper Building Design (bd), this book includes great work by leading architects and designers of the last century such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Alvar Aalto, as well as lesser-known gems such as an asylum church in Vienna and ‘Lucy’, a building in the shape of an elephant. Other examples include Richard Rogers on Maison de Verre, Ted Cullinan on the Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut at Ronchamp, and Sarah Featherstone on the Byker estate.

By sharing the stories of encounters with buildings both great and humble, this book emphasises the importance of actually visiting buildings, and insights about the influence of the architecture of the C20th

Examples include:

Richard Rogers (of RHSP) on Maison de Verre (Paris, France)

Chris Williamson (of Weston Williamson) on the Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames (Los Angeles, CA)

Takero Shimazaki (of T-SA, UK) on Hexenhaus by Alison and Peter Smithson (Bad Karlshafen, Germany)

Ted Cullinan (of Cullinan Studio) on Chapel of Notre Dame Du Haut by Le Corbusier (Ronchamp, France)

Michael Squire (of Squire & Partners, UK) on Grundtvig’s Church by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Jonathan Woolf (of Jonathan Woolf Architects) on Haus Esters and Haus Lange by Mies van der Rohe (Krefeld, Germany)