"Cool Construction examines four architects in whose work the tactility of craftsmanship and the luminosity of understatement are combined and refined to an unprecedented degree." "Although the architects - David Chipperfield (London), Waro Kishi (Kyoto), Eduardo Souto de Moura (Lisbon) and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (New York) - are based in very different cultures, their architecture exhibits a rare vision of purity and serenity that is independent of time and place. From Chipperfield's sensitive reinterpretations of historical forms to the exquisite restraint in Kishi's breathtaking work, and from Souto de Moura's robust but elemental use of the vernacular to Williams and Tsien's planar experimentation, each finds maximum expression through the ingenious use of materials and the rigorous manipulation of form." "Against the excesses of postmoderism and reimaging the spirit of modernism, cool construction is an architecture that is finely honed and carefully wrought, sublime and resonant."--Jacket.