To photograph avant-garde architecture is its own particular art, requiring careful attention to geometry, composition, lighting, and the ineluctable feel of a created space. In his famous photographs of modern architectural marvels, Marcel Chassot doesn’t merely capture a building’s appearance; he transports us to the space, recreating both its ambience and its grandeur.

This volume assembles buildings designed by the giants of modern architecture—from Frank Gehry’s surrealist twists and stacks to Zaha Hadid’s formal speed and fluidity, from Beijing National Stadium to the Sony Center in Berlin and the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York—offering a wealth of scenes from international contemporary architecture. Wolfgang Meisenheimer sheds light on the fundamental principles of Chassot’s photographic worldview and distinguishes between three layers of thought in which the work is rooted: the Euclidean orders, echoes of the modern philosophy of the lived body, and the legacy of Cubism from the beginnings of modern painting. With its felicitous interplay of brilliant architectural photography, exquisite design, and thoughtfully researched essays, this book is a total work of art.

Wolfgang Meisenhammer is an architect and university professor and the founder and coeditor of the magazine Daidalos. He lives and works in Düren, Germany. Marcel Chassot has a doctorate in economics and is an autodidactic photographer. Publications, lectures, and exhibitions soon made his photographs known beyond the borders of Switzerland. Today Chassot is admired as one of the best photographers of architecture in the world.