PAUL RUDOLPH: THE FLORIDA HOUSES by Christopher Domin and Joseph King

Princeton Architectural Press, 2002 First edition, second printing, 237 pp., 8 1/4" X 10 1/2", Hardcover Very good Paul Rudolph, one of the 20th century's most iconoclastic architects, is best known—and most maligned—for his large "brutalist" buildings, like the Yale Art and Architecture Building. So it will surprise many to learn that early in his career he developed a series of houses that represent the unrivaled possibilities of a modest American modernism. With their distinctive natural landscapes, local architectural precedents, and exploitation of innovative construction materials, the Florida houses, some eighty projects built between 1946 and 1961, brought modern architectural form into a gracious subtropical world of natural abundance. Like the locally inspired desert houses of another modern master, Albert Frey, Rudolph's Florida houses represent a distillation and reinterpretation of traditional architectural ideas developed to a high pitch of stylistic refinement. Paul Rudo