About

 

Alastair Gordon is an award-winning critic, curator, cultural historian and author. For more than twenty years, he wrote on art, architecture and the environment for the New York Times and in 2008 became Contributing Editor on design for WSJ., the Wall Street Journal Magazine, as well as launching and producing the popular “Wall-to-Wall” design blog on the Journal’s web site. Gordon’s essays have been published in many other publications including Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Le Monde, Architectural Record, New York Observer, House & Garden and Dwell. From 2014 to 2019 he was the architecture/design critic for the Miami Herald, and in 2020 launched the Poetics of Place (POP) podcast series. In addition to his critical journalism, Gordon has published more than 28 books on art, architecture and environment, including such critically acclaimed titles as Weekend Utopia, Naked Airport, Spaced Out, Theater of Shopping, Arquitectonica, Romantic Modernist and Wandering Forms. See “Books”. In 2016, he launched a critical writing program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and has taught and lectured at many other institutions. Earlier in his career, Gordon was General Editor of The Princeton Papers on Architecture and served as the Robert Lehman Curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y. He has received numerous prizes for his critical journalism and received a special citation for ‘Excellence in Criticism’ from the American Institute of Architects. Alastair is Co-Founder and Editorial Director of Gordon de Vries Studio, an imprint that specializes in books about the human environment.

“Gordon’s eye for the convergence of art, architecture and commerce is unerring.”  – Publisher’s Weekly

“Gordon’s ideas are rooted in the tangible intangible. He empowers through his vision and passion.” – Bomb Magazine

 

33 thoughts on “About”

  1. Dear Mr. Gordon:

    I am the owner of the last house Peter Blake ever designed (2002). It is located in Warren County, NJ, not so far from Milford, Pa. Please let me know if you would like to see it sometime.

    I admire your book “Weekend Utopia.” Peter gave me my copy, so he must have admired it too.

    Best wishes,

    Ben Gerson

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  3. Mr. Gordon,

    I’ve just finished reading ‘Spaced Out’, which which was a huge help in both personal and academic research. Thank-you for such an excellent book on such an excellent topic.

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  4. Mr. Gordon,
    I am a student at Grand Canyon University. In one of my classes we are doing a presentation about your father and to have your input would be fantastic knowledge to share. I loved your entry Comrades of Night and would like to know if I could ask you a few questions about your father. Thank you for what you share in your blog and your time.

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  5. Hi Alastair, Im a danish journalist doing a story about Airports, your book Naked Airport is central to the piece, and I have a few questions for you, could you please contact me trough my email.

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  6. Dear Peter,

    I have an author enquiry for a book proposal I am working on. If you could contact me via my email I would like to send you the details for your review.

    Best wishes

    Helen

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  8. Hello Mr. Gordon,
    We are hosting an Eero Saarinen exhibition, and we are interested in offering a talk about the history of the airport in the Modern era. Can you please send email contact information to me via email so we might discuss inviting you to speak?
    Best,
    Eileen

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  9. Hello Mr. Gordon,

    I’m the editor of the website Curbed.com and we’re looking for a few pertinent details about a Bridgehampton property linked to Jaffe, which we’d like to cover on the site. I think you could really be of help in trying to sort through some misleading listing text that contradicts property records, etc. If you’d kindly shoot me an email (sarah@curbed.com) I’d love to make the connection and get your thoughts.

    Thank you!
    Sarah

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  10. Hi Alastair,

    I represent The Dali Museum in St. Pete, Florida, and we are hosting an event next month in NYC and would love for you to join us. If you could please send me your email address I will send you the invite.

    Best,
    Courtney

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  11. Hi, Alastair. Hampshire College’s magazine “Non Satis Scire,” would love to do a profile on you. Our upcoming issue is focused on architectural projects and programs on campus (including a “living” building that will be the entry point onto campus). A quick interview and short profile would be wonderful, if you’re willing and have time? Best, Elaine Thomas, director of communications

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  13. Mr Gordon: I own a Norman Jaffe home in Greenwhich Ct. It is an absolute beauty. 12,000 plus sq ft., indoor/outdoor pool, tennis ct., etc. I have to list it for sale but have no idea where to price it. Any suggestions you can give is greatly appreciated.

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    • Hi Stuart,
      Very interesting!
      Can you please send me a photograph of your house?
      How do you know it was designed by Jaffe?
      Do you have original plans?
      Do you know who the original owner was?

      Any information would help.

      In some cases the Jaffe name has made a difference in real estate sales
      but it depends on location and all that. His name is very well known in the Hamptons–
      in fact, he’s something of a myth–but that didn’t stop several new owners from tearing the houses down,
      so I’m really not sure about your case. If it is a genuine Jaffe, you can certainly promote the fact and
      say that he was a prominent architect and that there’s a monograph on his work.
      Some prospective buyers like this kind of info but there are many others who couldn’t care less
      and want to build an enormous MacMansion…
      – Alastair Gordon
      e-mail: alastair4252@gmail.com

      – Alastair

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  14. Hi Alastair,
    You appeared in a Dream, I was very happy to See you again After you Rang the Bell of my
    Studio in Ziegelbrücke, Switzerland. i Look forward to Read your writings and remember
    The Humor you have and had back then.
    i have a show on now at http://www.annemarie-verna.ch

    Warm regards,
    Joseph Egan

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  15. Hello Alastair,

    I just read your article about the two Fly’s Eye Domes in Miami.
    I found out about Bucky Fuller in 1985, two years after he passed. His writings and direction in life helped influence mine, so much so, that I was determined to try to carry on where he left off (with the Fly’s Eye Dome) I produced various size scale models of this style dome, bowling ball size up to 9′ in diameter. I then received enough materials from companies in the fiberglass industry to complete a re-designed 33′ diameter dome. This dome fits right between the two sizes of Bucky’s originals. Please read the article about my efforts… My dome is at Longhouse Reserve, East Hampton LI NY
    http://compositesandarchitecture.com/?p=2436
    I am looking for collaborators to work with to complete a semi autonomous dwelling that Bucky envisioned! jkuhtik@gmail.com Facebook page Fly’s Eye Dome (R. Buckminster Fuller Continuum)

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  16. Mr. Gordon,
    Several years ago, I read Weekend Utopia with great pleasure. I was recently researching the architect William Muschenheim. In 1941-42 e designed what seems to be a wonderful modern house for Whitfield Hawkes in Nassau Point, on Long Island’s North Fork.
    I don’t recall this house being discussed in your book, but I thought it might interest you.
    The University of Michigan has the material in its archives:
    http://bentley.umich.edu/exhibits/musch/ The Hawkes house is job #83.
    Best
    Bob

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  17. Dear Mr Gordon,
    I admired your poem to Fred published in July last year and have had in an open tab in my browser for some months now.
    I worked and collaborated with Fred in the middle 1980’s. We remained in irregular contact.
    I have a framed print of a competition entry he drew, along with copies of projects that we worked on.
    I would like your permission to print and retain copy of the poem.
    thank you, Jonathan

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  18. I’d like to send you materials about my book “Creating the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – The Inside Story.” I was in charge of realizing it. Can you provide e-mail/slow-mail addresses?
    Thanks,
    Robert W. Doubek

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  19. Hello Mr Gordon

    I’m over in NYC from Edinburgh Scotland with the intention of submitting a report to the UN Board of Auditors over the abject failure of UNESCO to do anything about the swamping of their Edinburgh World Heritage Site with commercial development of crassest mediocrity.

    You might wonder what this has to do with the USA – well, quite a bit, really. First of all Charleston SC is seeking UNESCO World Heritage Status – the people there should know that they’re chasing a rainbow.

    Second of all our ‘Penn Station’ moment in Edinburgh has just come to pass, – and it concerns a building of universal significance which, in a strange way, could also be considered part of American architectural history. There is a particularly crude plan to hack it around and make it a smart hotel. Consider this excerpt from the dossier I’ll be dropping on the Board of Auditors – –

    To call Thomas Hamilton’s Royal High School iconic could only be regarded as an understatement – there are very few buildings in the world which you can say that about. In his definitive A History of American Architecture Professor Mark Gelernter, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at Colorado University, cites three of the world’s most outstanding Greek revival buildings, one being Hamilton’s ‘richly eclectic High School’ designed ‘around a Greek Doric temple.’ The other two are Schinkel’s Altes Museum in Berlin, and Smirke’s British Museum – and it surely tells us something that it the Hamilton building, rather than the Smirke one, which is illustrated. For the great Glasgow architect, Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, Hamilton’s school was one of the two finest neo-Greek buildings in the Kingdom, the other being Liverpool’s St George’s Hall.

    In his classic 1972 study The Greek Revival the architectural historian J Mordaunt Crook was positively rhapsodic about ‘Hamilton’s heroic High School’ as the foremost of those buildings which ‘brilliantly turned Calton Hill and its environs into a Caledonian Acropolis.’ For Mordaunt Crook, in designing the school ‘Hamilton produced one of the most exquisitely modulated facades in the whole history of the [Greek Revival] movement.’

    Thus does one of the leading scholars of his generation heaps praise upon Edinburgh’s ‘self taught Grecian of rare skill and uncommon sensibility – a master of the majestic and the miniature’ whose Calton Hill masterpiece was unquestionably ‘the grandest monument of the Athens of the North’ and the building for which ‘this half deaf, solitary genius will always be remembered.’ He underlines this reverence by including no fewer than five plates illustrating the building, both individually and in its setting, and also includes plates of The Thesion and the Choragic Monument of Thrasyllus from Stuart and Revett’s 1787 Antiquities of Athens which provided Hamilton’s inspiration.

    Mordaunt Crook’s opinions were widely shared, and he himself quotes another respected scholar, Sir Albert Richardson, who described the school as ‘one of the most superb modern structures inspired by Athenian models’ by an architect who ‘ordered his masses like a giant, arranging them as an integral part of the cognate rock which forms their setting, and employing a subtle curved frontage to employ the whole grouping’ [extract ends]

    The following piece I wrote for The Guardian might be of interest.

    http://www.theguardian.com/travel/2015/feb/11/why-edinburgh-should-be-stripped-of-unesco-world-heritage-status

    I’m wondering if there’s any way I can tempt you to become engaged in this little drama – or simply if you might be good enough to offer advice (other than ‘go away and stop bothering me!!!’) All views gratefully received

    all best wishes David Black

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  20. Pingback: Art House (a documentary) | Atlas & Aeris

  21. Dear Alastair Gardon

    We’re a french production company, developing an editorial focus on Art, History and Culture documentaries. Here is our website, unfortunately not in english yet : tamtamsoie.net/

    We’re currently coproducing with Iliom for Arte channel (the biggest cultural channel in Europe) a documentary film about the french american designer Raymond Loewy, who forged part of the visual identity of the 50’s.

    You wrote a piece about Betty Reese, who had a major influence on Loewy’s career.
    We’d be very glad to discuss that, among other subjects regarding Loewy’s work, with you, and I hope we could fix a former filmed interview.
    Director Jérôme de Missolz, will be scouting in LA and NY at the end of the month, you may have plans to come to Paris sometimes … Could we fix a meeting ?

    Please feel free to contact me for any question at
    tamtamsoie@tamtamsoie.net

    Respectfully yours

    Nicole Levigne
    Head of production

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  22. My name is. Jim Groves in London and would very much like to chat with Alistair Gordon
    about his father at Chung Kai pow camp. I am in my ninth decade and just returned from visiting Kanchanaburi. Will it be possible? With kind regards Jim G

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    • Hello Jim Groves,
      Yes, would very much like to chat with you. I am in USA (New York area) on tel: 570-296-2233 or mobile: 646-732-1330. Or I can call you if you send me your number. I just finished writing a book about my father’s war experiences. We went to Kanchanaburi together in January of 2000. They made a Hollywood movie based on my father’s book. It’s called “To End all Wars” and you can watch on Netflix or get it on DVD.
      Looking forward to talking to you… Alastair Gordon

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  23. Hi Alastair, I have a design and architecture practice in NY and recently purchased an early Barnes Coy home in Amagansett. I read in the EH Star this week that you’re publishing a book on their work. Let me know if you’d be interested in seeing the property.

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  25. Hi Alastair,
    I’ve just been reading the big spread in the So. Press about “Assembled in Light,” which I’m eager to read. I’m in charge of the research center at the History Museum here in Southampton and I’ll urge them to buy it for the library. You’re still making the eloquent case for the modern houses we love and it’s great to see things happening in their favor. Although, as you no doubt know, a Jaffe on the beach here looks soon to be a victim of an epidemic of tear-downs. Ironically, at the same time the Press wrote of its threatened state there was an ad for another Jaffe on the market, in Westhampton I think, for $18 million. Two years ago we were worried because Southampton had become a ghost town, our footsteps echoing on Main Street in winter. Then came the pandemic and this summer the village is a madhouse–people everywhere, Teslas clogging the roads and bidding wars for every million-dollar chicken coop that goes on the market. Thank god for the beach! I’m happily employed, still writing–I published my book “Saving Sin City” a couple years ago–and we managed to dodge Henri, so can’t complain. I hope you’re well and staying out of trouble. Mary

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    • Interesting….

      Warm regards

      Tim

      Timothy Godbold Ltd.

      348 Millstone Brook Rd
      Southampton NY 11968

      timothygodbold.com
      917-225-0339

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