Artist and architect Matteo Pericoli is famous for his creative and detailed drawings of cityscapes and landscapes. In this entertaining and engaging volume, he has gathered 63 images of New York City as framed by the windows of ordinary and well-known inhabitants. They write about what they see from their special perches.
We live in the heart of New York City and have a fabulous view of the big sky and the roofs of other buildings with their water tanks. We never tire of looking out our large windows at the city that never sleeps, and we consider the water towers to be our African village. That's why we can identify with Nathan Englander who writes:
"My favorite New York feature, one of the things I'm most attached to, is the wooden water tower. There's one on every roof. And I look out on a bunch. When I first moved to the city, a friend pointed them out as things of great majesty. He was obsessed with them. I'm not sure I would have noticed the water towers without help, or that I've decided they were some kind of wonder. But I've long since come to agree. Now I wouldn't trade them for mountains in the distance. They are very much the city to me."
Among the distinguished people who write about their "window views" of New York City are Tom Wolfe, Tony Kushner, Stephen Colbert, Nora Ephron, David Byrne, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The drawings by Pericoli are enchanting celebrations of architecture, place, and the relationship between buildings, trees, and sky. In his introduction, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Paul Goldberger writes:
"Is a city dwelling a perch, a vantage point from which to view the world? Or is it a cave, an escape? Is the view from the window something to connect you to what you see, or something to inspire you to contemplation? Ideally it is some of both, and allows you to face both outward and inward."
