This book provides a fascinating history of the planning, design, and construction of the six-building Getty Center in Los Angeles, one of the great cultural complexes to be built in our time. Writing with wit and passion, Richard Meier takes us behind the scenes of the thirteen-year-long, one-billion-dollar project.

Richard Meier has received the highest honors in architecture, including the 1997 Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects and the Pritzker Architecture Prize. His award-winning buildings include the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Canal + Television Headquarters in Paris, and the acclaimed Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.

"The book accurately portrays the kinds of problems that even eminent architects face as a matter of course but that in this case were magnified by the scope of the project."—Martin Filler, New York Review of Books

"It is instructive to read Meier's own account . . . the constant struggle to keep control of the essence of the project as the demands of the client for the most elaborate innovative technical equipment were set against the urgency to reduce budgets, to depress mounting costs as inflation and litigation extended the construction timetable. Now that it is all in place . . . it seems almost a bargain."—Joseph Rykwert, Times Literary Supplement

"A fascinating and surprisingly candid account of the architect's thirteen-year struggle to complete the six-building complex."—Mary Abbe, Minneapolis Star Tribune