With a body of work firmly at the heart of architectural theory and discourse, Robert
Maxwell is undoubtedly one of the most respected architectural writers and educators
of recent times. Emeritus Professor of Architecture at Princeton University, Robert
Maxwell is a scholar known worldwide for critical writing that looks at modern and
contemporary architecture in relation to our wider culture, including art, literature and
music.
A Few Years of Writing: Interspersed with Some Facts of Life brings together
a collection of over 30 of Maxwell's writings from the late twentieth century to the
present, through which are woven events and occasions from his own diary that
expand on debates in the world of architecture throughout the period.
Texts include "Richard Rogers: an Evaluation", first published in Casabella in
February 1994; "Sounds and Sweet Airs at Stuttgart", a review of the Music School at
Stuttgart, in the RIBA Journal in October 1996; an obituary of Philip Johnson in The
Architectural Review, in March 2005; and "Eisenman: The Formal Basis of Modern
Architecture", in Building Design in September 2006. This engaging collection, at
once intimate and autobiographical, insightful and perceptive, as well as critical
and theoretical, results in a rich description of the culture of architecture across two
decades towards the close of the last century and during the early years of the
present.
A Few Years of Writing: Interspersed with Some Facts of Life is the first of two
books of Robert Maxwell's writing to be published by Artifice, with the second coming
out in Spring 2013.
