Big Jim: The Life and Work of James Stirling
About this book
The first major biography of James Stirling, one of the world's greatest modern architects - an intimate portrait of the man and a critical assessment of his work. James Stirling is one of the few postwar architects to whom the word genius can be applied. Formidable, ebulient, self-centred, at times outrageous, he pursued architecute and the creation of buildings with a single-minded intensity, evoking hero-worship and sometimes hatred in the process. Mark Girouard traces Stirling's life from his tough boyhood in Liverpool to the revolutionary buildings of the 1960s - the Engineering Buiding for Leicester University, the History Faculty Building at Cambridge and the Florey Building at Oxford - and the acclaimed Stuttgart Art Gallery in 1980. Celebrated abroad, in Britain Stirling's association with Palumbo's plan for a new building in the centre of the City of London divided the architectual world into furious camps, creating fiery debates which lasted until his early death in 1992. The arguments and the passions still reverberate today. Mark Girouard's perceptive, entertaining account combines an intimate picture of the man - his personality, his relationships, his life-style and mania for collecting - with an informed eye.