Conversations with Peter Eisenman: The Evolution of Architectural Style

By Vladimir Belogolovsky

DOM Publishers, Berlin, September 2016, 152 pages

“Vladimir Belogolovsky has done for architecture what Hans Ulrich Obrist did for the arts: to chart a panorama through the words of its main players. Well-informed and well-traveled, he draws his ‘landscape with figures’ with excellent prose, deep understanding and outspoken wit. The New York-based Russian-American architect, curator, and lecturer has made conversation with a dash of contact sport into an art form; in his new book he manages to coax from Peter Eisenman candid statements and dazzling insights, showing once more that interviews are as intelligent as the interviewer.”

Luis Fernández-Galiano

“Peter Eisenman is in the bloodline of Palladio, Le Corbusier, and Robert Venturi, and in Conversations with Eisenman bemoans the fact that celebrity architects have supplanted such authorities, that is, the authors of a critical architecture that reflects on its own language. All art languages must do this, an important insight of semiotics in the 1960s when Eisenman first started critical practice. Two of his ‘late style’ constructions, in Berlin and Santiago, show what is at stake in such self-reflexive art, and why Eisenman has had such a devoted following around the globe. Pithy assertions emerge here, sometimes in contradiction, as author Vladimir Belogolovosky sympathetically questions Eisenman, whose deep commitment to his art, over fifty years, has helped change contemporary architecture.”

Charles Jencks

Conversations with Architects In the Age of Celebrity

By Vladimir Belogolovsky

DOM Publishers, Berlin, May 2015, 584 pages

“In this complete compendium of master builders, Belogolovsky gives us a fascinating tour of the men and a few women behind some of the best buildings constructed around the world in the last few decades and shows us what they think they are doing, what they look at, and how they would like us to see them.”

Aaron Betsky

“With an intensely personal series of interviews done over the last thirteen years, Vladimir Belogolovsky guides us through the architectural firmament. Himself an architect and well-known international curator, Belogolovsky describes and delineates the charisma, connections and creations of thirty of the black-clad clan, who all come across as pants-one-leg-at-a-time real people. Admire their buildings or not, you will definitely love this insightful book, a Canterbury Tales for 21st century urbanists.”

Rick Bell

“Vladimir Belogolovsky’s ‘Conversations with Architects’ is, amongst other things, a solid proof that one-on-one interviews are the only way to really expose the complexity of thinking that typifies architects. News conferences, press releases, Facebook, magazine profiles, and so on have made architects both far more famous and far less understood. In this book, Belogolovsky challenges his subjects to cut through the fog of professional jargon. They share their intentions with clarity, frankness, and wit.”

Terence Riley

“What excellent company! What great conversations! What terrific insights into the druidism of our profession! My only regret is that I am not in this book!“

Michael Sorkin

“The interviews are a delight to read, thanks to Belogolovsky's probing questions and his curiosity as to an architect's motives. The best conversations are the long ones where the architects are open and when the two are able to delve further into specific projects or ways of thinking.”

John Hill, A Daily Dose of Architecture, New York

“Curator Vladimir Belogolovsky conducts in-depth interviews with two prestigious historians, Charles Jencks and Kenneth Frampton, to make them voice their opinions on the stardom phenomenon, and thirty ‘famous’ architects, some on the rise and others veterans, to have them explain their work or life path. The result is an exciting kaleidoscope.”

Eduardo Prieto, Arquitectura Viva, Madrid

“A good interview requires an interlocutor who has researched his subject but manifests a lively curiosity to discover more… Vladimir Belogolovsky seems to have mastered it, for he draws enlightening responses from 30 widely varied practitioners in Conversations with Architects in the Age of Celebrity. The interviews range over a decade and almost all sound fresh—as though these architects were talking about themselves and their work for the first time.”

Michael Webb, Form Magazine, Stockholm

HARRY SEIDLER: Lifework

By Vladimir Belogolovsky

Rizzoli, April 2014, 300 pages

Reviewed by Jayne Merkel in Architectural Record:

“This exemplary new monograph on one of Australia's most prominent Modern architects tells Harry Seidler's story from the points of view of various people who knew or worked with him. The author, Vladimir Belogolovsky provides an insightful introductory essay, along with commentaries by Kenneth Frampton, Norman Foster, critic Chris Abel, and the late Oscar Niemeyer… At the end of the book, Belogolovsky's interviews with Seidler's wife, Penelope Seidler (also an architect); sculptor Norman Carlberg; painter Frank Stella; and multimedia artist Lin Utzon make this book more like a lively salon than a biography… The book's design by the late Massimo Vignelli—square, bold, spare, and black-and-white—matches the architect's aesthetic vision. Every project is shown in multiple views, some in color, with plans, sections, perspectives, interiors, and often contextual photographs. The illustrations are accompanied by Belogolovsky's astute descriptions of the projects and key information.”

Reviewed by David Neustein in The Monthly:

“Belogolovsky does not regard Seidler’s mastery as a given. Instead, he goes to great lengths to examine and demonstrate the architect’s historical significance... Belogolovsky makes some keen observations, such as how Seidler’s crucial relationship with developer Gerardus Dusseldorp coincided with the 1959 relaxation of height limits in Sydney’s centre… Lifework provides an overdue update to the 1992 monograph Harry Seidler: Four Decades of Architecture, co-written by Kenneth Frampton and Philip Drew. The new book provides superior reference material, with well-presented photographs and drawings arranged on tidy square pages.

Soviet Modernism: 1955-1985

By Vladimir Belogolovsky and Felix Novikov

Tatlin Publishers, Moscow, 2010, 232 pages

Russian/English

“Soviet modernism takes off in the brief ‘thaw’ ushered in by Khrushchev and takes up some of the threads of constructivism that had been cut off by Stalin. As Vladimir Belogolovsky points out, it is a style that, relating to trends in the West, is, however, more socially collective. Emphatic in expressive simplicity, it is also large in scale and imperial in its abstraction. He gives voice to the motives and confusions of this period when a few architects broke free of the new party line to build more authentic works. Such testimonies are rare and welcome.”                  

Charles Jencks

“Vladimir Belogolovsky’s and Felix Novikov’s anthology of Soviet modern architecture makes one realize how exceptionally varied and creative this architecture was once the stylistic rigidities of socialist realism had been relinquished. In part, this cultural liberation entailed a return to the more radical formulations of Soviet constructivism in its primeAt its best, Soviet architecture, in the space of three decades, moved toward an interesting synthesis between Western paradigms and the exciting legacy of its own avant-garde tradition.”

Kenneth Frampton

“The swansong of the Soviet Union has been an architectural one. During the four decades that have followed the rejection of Socialist realism, audacious buildings have shaped the Soviet urban landscape, echoing the work of Western models, and also proposing bold interpretations of programs such as airports, circuses, stadiums, and museums. Vladimir Belogolovsky and Felix Novikov have now created a provocative volume on an overlooked chapter of monumental modernism, in which stunning works are rescued from oblivion.”

Jean-Louis Cohen