Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age

“Kamin, the Pulitzer Prize–winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, has constructed an elegant and thought-provoking book out of 51 of his timely yet timeless columns. He begins not with the creation of structures but, rather, with their destruction: the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers and Katrina’s assault on New Orleans. In the wake of each catastrophe, Kamin examines reactions predictable and counterintuitive. There’s the ugly and dampening impact of clumsy security measures on architecture, travel, and public life, and the reckless building boom, which stoked the foreclosure epidemic and a plague of generic, bloated commercial and residential buildings, and left two massive skyscraper projects, the Spire and the Waterview Tower, in limbo in Chicago (“the first city of American architecture”). But he also writes of such buoyant successes as Santiago Calatrava’s winged addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum and Jeanne Gang’s “singular” Aqua Tower and celebrates the “blooming of green architecture.” Crisp and colorful, expert and witty, Kamin’s involving essays address the complexities of architecture and how the built world affects every aspect of life.”

— Donna Seaman ― Booklist

“In the time Blair Kamin has served as the Chicago Tribune’s architectural critic, building has gone bananas. The Twin Towers fell and the Trump Tower rose, historic preservationists have had to fight tooth and nail for significant buildings, Dubai has gone mile high and the Chicago Spire became the Chicago Pit. His new book, Terror and Wonder, collects his writing from the Trib and elsewhere . . . about everything from McDonald’s to Mies.”—TimeOut Chicago
 

— Jonathan Messinger ― TimeOut Chicago

“A highly informative and accessible survey of the architecture and planning of the past decade. . . .(Kamin’s) critique is one that extends beyond the physical facades he analyzes into the broader context of socio-economic activity. Poignant and timely.”
  — Jeremy Stephen Shedd ― The Architect’s Newspaper

“Blair Kamin, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, thoughtfully and provocatively defines the emotional and cultural dimensions of architecture. He is one of the nation’s leading voices for design that uplifts and enhances life as well as the environment. His new book, Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age, assembles some of his best writing from the past ten years.”

— Guy Horton ― Huffington Post

“Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age, a collection of [Kamin’s] essays and reviews from 2001 to 2010, takes on subjects as fraught as the rebuilding effort at Ground Zero and the architecture of public housing. But it does so in a style that is approachable, clear-eyed and—perhaps above all—eminently reasonable. If the age was tumultuous, in other words, Kamin’s prose never is.”

— Christopher Hawthorne ― Urban Design Review

“[Kamin] spotlights architecture’s central role in the decade’s main events and trends. . . . [He] is, in the end, our most deeply-humane critic.” — Guy Horton ― Architectural Record

“When it comes to architecture criticism in the United States, no one does it better than Blair Kamin of the Chicago Tribune. A 1999 winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Kamin has written eloquently, intelligently and passionately about everything from the Chicago lakefront to the National September 11 Memorial in Manhattan. . . . [Terror and Wonder] is an excellent overview of Kamin’s recent work, and of the state of architecture worldwide.” — Steven Litt ― Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Prescient. . . . colourful. . . . Kamin’s criticism is sharp and readable, more so because he places ordinary people before architects, planners or developers in his appraisal of the changes he has witnessed to the urban environment over the last 10 years.”

— Rakesh Ramchurn ― The Architects ’ Journal

“[The book’s] organisational format, combined with Kamin’s addition of a postscript for most columns, provides a sense of depth and continuity to what might otherwise appear to be a collection of brief snapshots. . . . Kamin’s text enacts its own form of historical contextualization and it is one with considerable explanatory power.”
— Joel McKim ― Oxford Art Journal

“Chicago is lucky to have Kamin, whose architectural criticism in that city’s Tribune continues the spirited tradition of Allan Temko and Ada Louise Huxtable. This collection from the past decade shows a deft eye for the latest Windy City tower but also the larger weave of culture and design.”
  — John King ― San Francisco Chronicle

“Kamin writes with insight, sensitivity, and balance. His collection is a vivid, memorable, wide-angled panorama of the decade. It is a refresher we need right now.”
  — Stanley Stark ― Oculus

“Kamin is a keen, trenchant observer of the contemporary urban scene, and his engaging criticism enjoys a welcome second life in this anthology…Recommended.”
  — R.T. Clement ― Choice

“An excellent collection of articles.” ― Design Observer

“Best books of 2010”
  — Kai Ryssdal ― Marketplace

Blair Kamin is the author or editor of several books, including Why Architecture Matters: Lessons from Chicago and Terror and Wonder: Architecture in a Tumultuous Age. The Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic for 28 years, Kamin was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1999.