Blue Dream and the Legacy of Modernism in the Hamptons traces the making of a single house whose curving composite forms — borrowed from fighter-jet manufacturing — represent the most architecturally ambitious addition to Long Island's modernist tradition in a generation.
About This Book
Architecture critic Paul Goldberger tells the story of Blue Dream through the lens of its most essential ingredient: the client. Collectors Julie Reyes Taubman and Robert Taubman, driven by the avant-garde spirit that has long animated the Hamptons, commissioned Diller Scofidio + Renfro to design a house unlike anything built there before. Goldberger maps the full collaborative network — landscape architect Michael Boucher, designer Michael Lewis, builder Ed Bulgin — to show how architectural ambition is realised not by architects alone but through an extended creative negotiation. Iwan Baan's photographic portfolio documents the finished house across all four seasons, while contextual images of earlier modernist precedents situate Blue Dream within the longer history of serious residential architecture on Long Island.
Key Features
- 280 pages of critical architectural writing and documentary photography by Iwan Baan across four seasons
- Text and analysis by Paul Goldberger; photography by Iwan Baan
- Features Blue Dream by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with contextual images of Hamptons modernist precedents
- Published by Delmonico Books, 2018
What You'll Discover
- How composite materials developed for fighter-jet construction were adapted to realise Blue Dream's complex curving architectural forms
- The collaborative dynamic between clients Julie Reyes Taubman and Robert Taubman, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and the wider creative team — and why Goldberger positions the client as central to the architectural story
- The historical lineage of avant-garde modernist architecture and art in the Hamptons, and how Blue Dream positions itself within that legacy
- The design and construction process documented in detail, from initial concept through to seasonal occupation of the completed house
About the Author
Paul Goldberger is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and one of the most prominent architecture critics working in the United States. He began his career at the New York Times in 1972 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1984, later writing the New Yorker's celebrated "Sky Line" column from 1997 to 2011. He has served as dean of the Parsons School of Design and as the Joseph Urban Professor of Design at the New School.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 280
- Dimensions: 330 x 254 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781636811123
- Publisher: Delmonico Books
- Publication Date: 2018
Perfect For: Architects and designers interested in contemporary residential design, readers drawn to the work of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, collectors and scholars of modernist architecture on Long Island, and anyone engaged with the relationship between ambitious clients and experimental practice.