Description

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The first comprehensive monograph on the acclaimed American artist and architect, known for her environmental works and memorials that distill a tranquil yet texturally rich minimalism. Maya Lin is one of the most important public artists of this century. As an architecture student at Yale, Lin designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a class project, entering it in the largest design competition in American history. Her winning proposal, a V-shaped wall of black stone etched with the names of 58,000 dead soldiers, has since become the most visited memorial in the nation’s capital.
This visually rich volume presents 50 projects from the last three decades that demonstrate the scope of Lin’s creative process, featuring her own sketches and drawings and linked by her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape. With her environmental works Storm King Wavefield, Eleven-Minute Line (Sweden), and Pin River–Yangtze (Beijing), Lin maintains a balance between art and architecture, drawing inspiration from culturally diverse sources.  
From the moment she entered the national spotlight with her design for the Vietnam Memorial, Lin has been proposing ways of thinking and imagining that resist categories, genres, and borders.

About the Author

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John McPhee has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1965. Michael Brenson is a critic, scholar, and teacher. William L. Fox is director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art. Paul Goldberger is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair. He was previously the architecture critic for The New Yorker. Philip Jodidio has written numerous books on architecture and art. Lisa Phillips is director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. Dava Sobel is a writer of popular expositions of scientific topics.

Praise For…

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"[Maya Lin: Topologies] presents 50 projects from the last three decades that demonstrate the scope of Lin’s creative process, featuring her own sketches and drawings and linked by her ideal of making a place for individuals within the landscape. With her environmental works like Storm King Wavefield, Eleven-Minute Line (Sweden), and Pin River–Yangtze (Beijing), Lin maintains a balance between art and architecture, drawing inspiration from culturally diverse sources and has been proposing new ways of thinking and imagining that resist categories, genres, and borders."
-HAMPTONS ART HUB

"Having achieved success as an artist, whose best work abstracts forms drawn from nature, and as the designer of buildings with sculptural aspirations (as well as the creator of several more memorials), [Maya Lin] is beginning to embrace the connections among her diverse bodies of work. . . One of the best reasons to buy Topologies is to see Lin’s architecture, including several private homes that can be visited only in photos and two somewhat more public buildings for a Children’s Defense Fund camp in a remote part of Tennessee."
-1stdibs.com

"[May Lin] is both proof of Lin's massive influence and a celebration of her environmentally minded, deeply impactful projects. . . Lin's work subtly connects to landscape, language, history, and memory - all with respect to the natural world." 
-SURFACE MAGAZINE 

"This stunning Rizzoli-published book (the layered cover simulates mist over her 'Wave Field') is worthy of the range of this mesmerizing interdisciplinary artist."  
-SWEET via snapchat 

"This stunning Rizzoli-published book is worthy of the range of this memerizing interdisciplinary artist." 
-HEARST DESIGN GROUP 

"In this first comprehensive monograph on American architect and artist Maya Lin, the astounding scope of her last three decades is considered through photographs, sketches, a foreword by John McPhee, and compelling essays from Paul Goldberger, Dava Sobel, and Lin herself, among others. While the 50 projects featured in Maya Lin: Topologies range from sculptural earth forms to memorials, institutional structures, and residences, Lin’s wonder at and respect for the natural world shine through in each."
-ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST

"This luxurious volume, the first retrospective of Lin's 30-year-long career as an artist and dedicated conservationist, is a keepsake compendium of her art, architecture, and memorials, beginning with her much-celebrated Vietnam veterans' memorial (1982) and concluding with her ongoing and—according to Lin, last—memorial chronicling the disappearing species and habitats on earth. . .[Maya Lin: Topologies] is a comprehensive volume showcasing an extraordinary artist who transcends language, time, history, and categorization."
-PUBLISHERS WEEKLY