ROGER SHEPHERD, CHAIR OF PARSONS SCHOOL OF DESIGN'S
FINE ARTS DEPARTMENT, RELEASES NEW BOOK
SKYSCRAPER: THE SEARCH FOR AN AMERICAN STYLE: 1891 – 1941

(New York, NY – August 13, 2002) Parsons School of Design's Fine Arts Chair, Roger Shepherd, will release a new book, Skyscraper: The Search for an American Style 1891–1941 (McGraw-Hill Publisher), in September 2002. More than a history of the tall building, Skyscraper is the story of America's struggle to find meaning and express national identity through its most original architectural form. Shepherd has collected highly influential articles and rare photographs from the first fifty years of Architectural Record and fashioned them into an unusual textual and visual document. The magazine's importance cannot be overstated as a forum of critical debate—the writers include Montgomery Schuyler, Russell Sturgis, Louis Sullivan, Lewis Mumford, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Henry-Russell Hitchcock.

The book's featured buildings, some well known and many less well known, include the Wainwright Building, the Flatiron Building, the Metropolitan Life Tower, the Chicago Tribune Building, Rockefeller Center, and the Empire State Building. Shepherd has woven all this together with commentary, copious annotations, and additional images. The book is particularly timely now as we consider collective identity and meaning in redeveloping lower Manhattan.

The book will be available in bookstores in September 2002. For further information, call McGraw-Hill Customer Service at 1-800-262-4729.

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Roger Shepherd is the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Chair of Fine Arts at Parsons School of Design. He has exhibited widely both here and abroad, including: Pace Editions, NY; the Jersey City Museum and the Trenton, NJ; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. His works range from small prints to wall-size murals and also include entire architectural settings, such as the garden of the American UNESCO Ambassador's residence in Paris, or the lobby of 588 Broadway, New York City. His Web designs include Internet-based archives for BOMB Magazine with a grant from the NEA; a Web site for Architectural Record Magazine. His awards include Design Advancement Grant for Artist/Architect Collaborations, NEA; a painting fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. His last book was Structures of Our Time: 31 Buildings That Changed Modern Life (December 2001). He holds a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union.

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Parsons School of Design, a division of New School University, is one of the largest degree-granting colleges of art and design in the nation. Currently enrolled are about 2,400 undergraduate students, 380 graduate students, and 2,500 non-degree students from all 50 of the United States and from 60 countries. Parsons' main campuses are located in New York City's Greenwich Village and Midtown Manhattan. In addition, Parsons has affiliate schools in Paris, France; Kanazawa, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and the Dominican Republic. Undergraduate degrees are offered in Architectural Design, Communication Design, Design and Management, Fashion Design, Fine Arts, Illustration, Integrated Design Curriculum, Interior Design, Photography, and Product Design. Graduate degrees are granted in Architecture, Design and Technology, Lighting Design, Painting, Sculpture, and the History of Decorative Arts. For further information on Parsons, call 212/229-8910 or go to the Web site at www.parsons.edu.