Abstract

Sex and Architecture

The article focuses on the book "Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work," by Robert Twombly. This book is an excellent biography of Louis Sullivan by Robert Twombly. Twombly's assessment of Sullivan's achievement is the conventional one. Although not a structural innovator, Sullivan is conceded to have defined the tall building in an eminently coherent manner. By dividing it into base, midsection and top, Sullivan made the skyscraper . The three-part organization was hardly novel, hailing been the basic definition of most large buildings from the Renaissance onward, but Sullivan skillfully adapted this classical formula to the new utilitarian skyscraper, and at the same time pushed that building beyond its commercial origins with his inimitably artful compositions.