Beyond the Surface: Architecture and Being Alive

Description

Walter C. Kidney

“Here is the essence of Kidney’s thinking about place and about architecture,” writes fine arts consultant Thomas H. Garver in his introduction. Walter reminds “us that ‘place,’ no matter where that might be, is a visceral, sensory experience first, long before it may change in our minds to one of memory or intellect.”

For just over a decade Walter C. Kidney, architectural historian and author for the Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation from the early 1980s until his death on December 1, 2005, thought about, composed, re-worked, refined, and simplified the words that now form Beyond the Surface: Architecture and Being Alive. Walter describes the book as “a little autobiography, with some relevance: how a young Pittsburgher discovered his world, stayed in a very different city, and dealt in time with a crisis of cultural conscience.”

Eighteen choice photographs are reproduced as duo-tones; most were taken by the author in the 1940s with his Argus camera. A select bibliography of the author’s publications is also included, compiled by architect David J. Vater.

• 112 pages, hard bound; 9 ” x 6 ½”
• 18 duotone photos
• ISBN 0978828429