The Willis Faber & Dumas Building, which caused a considerable sensation when first built, has since become recognized as a classic modern design, widely liked and respected. When completed, it set new standards in workplace design. In 1990 it won the first Royal Institute of British Architects' Trustees' Medal as the "finest work by a British designer anywhere in the world completed between 1965 and 1983". It is a building capable of dramatic transformations; by day its glass facade acts as a huge facetted mirror; by night it becomes completely transparent so that the office floors hang in space like suspended pavilions. A decade and a half after its completion, it is again attracting growing attention.
'Architecture In Detail' is a superbly photographed and technically informative series of monographs which embraces a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, drawn predominantly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Each sixty-page volume contains a lucid text by a respected author; a sequence of large-format, high-quality colour and black and white photographs; a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details; and a complete bibliography and chronology, thus making these books the definitive work on the subject. They are essential purchases for enthusiasts, practitioners and students alike.
