The Frankfurt Museum for Decorative Arts (Frankfurt am Main, 1985) is one of Richard Meier's major buildings of the 1980s. The clean white design derives from Le Corbusier's Purist syntax, and sets out from two existing geometries found on the site: the cube formed by the Villa Metzler (an earlier neo-classical pavilion, incorporated by Meier into the new design), and the slightly skew angle between the museum site and the riverbank. From these origins Meier creates a subtle and intricate building consisting of shifted grids, superimposed planes, reverse curves and ramps.
It is a richly rewarding case example for all architects and students interested in museum design, or more generally in Richard Meier's strategies of architectural composition.
'Architecture In Detail' is a superbly photographed and technically informative series of monographs which embraces a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, drawn predominantly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each sixty-page volume contains a lucid text by a respected author; a sequence of large-format, high-quality colour and black and white photographs; a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details; and a complete bibliography and chronology, thus making these books the definitive work on the subject. They are essential purchases for enthusiasts, practitioners and students alike.
