The spectacular Getty Center in Los Angeles boasts commanding views of the Pacific Ocean, the city of Los Angeles, and the Santa Monica Mountains. Designed by internationally acclaimed architect Richard Meier, the complex manifests Meier’s aim to “search out a precise and exquisitely reciprocal relationship between built architecture and natural topography.”

This book documents the making of that architecture. Meier, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable, and key Getty administrators reflect on the construction effort and on the meaning of the Center complex itself. Images from several photographers capture the many facets of the Getty campus during construction and as completed, while Robert Irwin’s drawings illustrate his vision for the Center’s Central Garden. Making Architecture, then, serves as both a record of the building process and a visual commentary on the drama of the architecture.

• Introduction
  Harold M. Williams
• Project Chronology
• The Clash of Symbols
  Ada Louise Huxtable
• A Concert of Wills
  Stephen D. Rountree
• Site Diagrams. Models, and Plans
• Construction
• The Getty Center, Spring, 1997
• Project Credits

• “A winner for anyone fascinated with how these things take shape.”
  Buzz Weekly