50 great adventures

Architecture meets biography in this highly personal exploration of some of the world's most provocative, revealing, and beautifully built structures. This unique and visually stimulating volume explores fifty buildings from around the world and the people who created them. Organized according to the idea that architecture is the result of basic human desires to live, work, pray, play, and stay, 50 Great Adventures traces architecture back to the people who made it happen. Offering a global spectrum of illuminating architectural destinations, the book journeys from Lanzarote, Spain, home of Cesar Manrique's Jameos del Agua grotto, a James Bond-style fantasy for its creator, to India, the site of Nek Chand's Rock Garden of Chandigarh, a realization of the architect's childhood dream; and from Arizona, where Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti, a vision for a utopian community, shimmers in the desert, to China's Forbidden City, conceived by the Ming emperor Yong-le to assert his authority over a vast empire. Useful travel advice accompanies each piece, giving readers all the information they need to experience these extraordinary places for themselves. Stunningly designed and filled with information for lovers of architecture as well as international travel, this collection of extraordinary places testifies to the staying power of true inspiration and the force of the individual imagination.