A Builder's Life Done Well: The Story of Prutting + Co.
Custom homebuilder David Prutting pulls back the curtain on what it truly takes to construct some of the most architecturally ambitious private residences in the United States. It's a rare thing, a builder writing a book. Rarer still when the result is this absorbing. Based in New Canaan, Connecticut, Prutting + Co. has spent decades working in a region steeped in modernist history. Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, and Eliot Noyes all left their mark here, and that legacy runs visibly through the award-winning homes Prutting has since brought into existence. The firms he's collaborated with read like a who's who of serious contemporary architecture: Steven Holl Architects, Toshiko Mori Architects, Olson Kundig, KieranTimberlake, and others. The resulting residences, showcased generously throughout this handsome volume, are striking by any measure. Yet the book's real appeal lies somewhere more practical. Prutting is candid about the builder's role as the crucial link between an architect's vision on paper and the physical structure a client will actually inhabit. Tricky sites, complex structural demands, competing expectations. He addresses all of it with the calm authority of someone who has spent fifty years solving problems before anyone else notices them. For clients, architects, and contractors alike, his accumulated wisdom is offered without pretence. Short on ego, long on insight, this is a grounded and genuinely useful account of a career spent building beautifully and running a business with quiet integrity.
- Author: David L. Prutting
- Publisher: Images
- Genre: Home Improvement
- ISBN: 978-1923094277
- Pages: 248 pages