Milford, Pennsylvania, United States
"Gordon's eye for the convergence of art, architecture and commerce is unerring." -Publisher’s Weekly Alastair Gordon is an award-winning critic, curator, artist, 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 2021 launched the Poetics of Place Podcast series on Spotify. In addition to his critical journalism, Gordon has published more than 30 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. In 2016, he launched “Poetics of Place,” 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 writing and scholarship, including research fellowships from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and 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.
Host Alastair Gordon explores the healing impact of good design in an increasingly complex and troubled world. He conducts spirited, in-depth interviews with some of the leading figures in the world of design, art, architecture and environmental awareness. AG's responsibilities: research, write, interview guests as on-air host, produce, edit & help market a series of weekly podcasts aired on Spotify, Apple, Google, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Pandora and other major platforms.
Gordon de Vries Studio (GdeV) was founded by Alastair Gordon and Barbara de Vries in 2010 as an independent publishing imprint. We specialize in illustrated books about visual culture and a wide range of related subjects from architecture, art and design to lifestyle, pop culture and fashion. Gordon de Vries Studio is committed to publishing works that are socially responsible and environmentally aware. We believe that a well-written, beautifully designed book can change public opinion and become a powerful tool for advocacy, a kind of spectacle in its own right. We represent a diverse range of authors and works that examine alternative modes of behavior, trends and customs. We also believe that an illustrated book should be as intellectually stimulating as a great work of literature and ensure that every Gordon de Vries title has a provocative, elegantly composed text to compliment its imagery.
Writing feature stories on architecture, art, landscape, urbanism, design, etc. Selected Articles: “Reframing the Migrant Experience,” The Sanctuary, Tijuana, New York Times, Sept. 5, 2021 “Working all the Angles”, New York Times, July 16, 2014 “War Shelters, Short-Lived Yet Living On,” Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Deployment Units re-discovered in New Jersey, New York Times, Dec. 31, 2013 "In Her Own World," Morgan Puett's experimental compound, PA , New York Times, May 29, 2008 "The Dome Gains Weight and Settles Down," New York Times, Jan. 11, 2007 “Heavy-Metal Jacket, Luxe Lining: Adam Kalkin’s Push Button House,” New York Times, Dec. 1, 2005 "Green Acres, One Piece at a Times," The New York Times, Dec. 9, 2004 “Absolutely Prefab,” New York Times Magazine, April 18, 2004 “Factory Fresh: Interstately Homes,” New York Times, April 1, 2004 “Out of Africa, a House Fit for a Kit Bag,” New York Times, July 1, 2004 “Julian Neski, Beach House Pioneer,” New York Times, Jan. 18, 2004 “The Straight Lines that Came Full Circle,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2004 “Waxing Brazilian,” New York Times Magazine, Oct. 10, 2004 “Designing for the Dispossessed,” New York Times, Aug. 28, 2003 “Ward Bennett Made it Modern,” New York Times, Aug. 21, 2003 “In Vienna, ‘Matrix’ Meets ‘Sound of Music’,” New York Times, May 29, 2003 “From Dockyard to Your Yard,” New York Times, Dec. 19, 2002 “Putting the Fab in Prefab,” New York Times, Sept. 26, 2002 “The Man Who Dared the City to Think Again,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 2002 “A Slightly Immodest Proposal,” New York Times, Aug. 19, 2002 "Invention Steps in Where Nature Neglects to Tread," New York Times, July 2002 "In Old Austria, The Shock of the New," New York Times, June 30, 2002 "Where Bigger Was Better, Small Wonders," New York Times, Sept. 6, 2001 "Deep in the Desert, No Longer Far Out," Paolo Soleri, New York Times, July 26, 2001 "Old University Incubates Next Wave of Architects," Utrecht, NL, New York Times, April 26, 2001
"Island Follies" is the first book to explore the work of Henry Melich (1924–1999), a Czech-born architect who brought a beguiling form of neoclassicism to the Caribbean. The main text was written by Alastair Gordon. The foreword is by Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records and a close friend of the architect. The principle photography is by Michael Mindy and Robin Hill. While Melich built projects in the United States and England, he’s best remembered for the romantic houses he designed in sunny island retreats like Lyford Cay, Harbour Island, and Windermere Island in the Bahamas. Melich created an architecture of escape with a softly cushioned whimsy and discrete air of tranquility. His signature motifs included faux-marbled walls, seasoned wood, colonnades, and tent-like interiors with striped ceilings. Melich’s interiors suited the playful mood of the moment documented in this book with the warm touch of Slim Aarons, who came to the Bahamas in the 1960s and 1970s to capture high-society figures in their homes. Gardens with bougainvillea-draped pergolas, ivy-clad alcoves, and palm-lined allées are just some of the features that extend the architecture into the tropical landscape and embrace the indoor-outdoor lifestyle of these houses.
A major new evaluation of the trailblazing Miami-based architecture firm upon the advent of its fortieth anniversary. Arquitectonica is the design firm that put Miami on the map for the cool, hip, very now architecture that was first celebrated on TV in Miami Vice. Since their founding four decades ago, the firm has grown exponentially in stature, and its energies have only increased. Arquitectonica is a major presence on the world architectural stage, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, Dubai, Lima, and São Paulo. Founded in 1977, the firm received critical and popular attention and acclaim almost from its inception, thanks to a bold modernism that was immediately identified with a renaissance in Miami’s urban landscape. Principals Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear continue to this day exploring and pushing the limits of materials and design with their innovative use of geometry, pattern, and color. The first book on this major international architectural design firm since Rizzoli’s own Arquitectonica (2004), this volume is a retrospective of the firm’s forty-year history, considering its earliest projects—the archetypal and hugely influential Pink House and Babylon Apartments—to Regalia Condominium tower, its twenty-first-century masterwork of undulant glass and steel.