The eminent architect Edward Larrabee Barnes is a member of the generation of influential modernists that emerged in America after World War II. After studying architecture at Harvard University under Bauhaus masters Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius, Barnes set up his own practice in New York in 1949. Since then, over the course of a long and varied career, he has worked in a modern vocabulary shaped by his own approach to geometry, composition, and siting. Barnes is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects and has received the AIA Twenty-Five-Year Award, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture, the Harvard University 350th Anniversary Medal, and some forty other awards for design excellence.

The projects in this monograph present the full range of Barnes' work: office buildings, museums, botanical gardens, private houses, churches, schools, camps, colleges, campus planning, and housing. The extraordinary Dallas Museum of Art and the much-admired Walker Art Center in Minneapolis are among the museums shown. The houses include his best known, among them the Osborn, Hecksher, and Dallas houses. Office buildings presented include the dramatic IBM Building at Madison Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street with its popular interior bamboo garden, the office tower at 599 Lexington Avenue, both in New York, and the Federal Judiciary Building in Washington, D.C. Among the academic projects are the early, widely influential Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Camp Hidden Valley for the Fresh Air Fund, dormitories at St. Paul's School, arts facilities at the Emma Willard School and Bowdoin College, and several campus plans, including those for the State University of New York at Purchase and the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis.

Peter Blake's introduction presents Barnes' work in both its architectural and cultural contexts. Blake also discusses Barnes' background and the evolution of his designs over the years, closely analyzing particular built works. Barnes' personal comments on each project provide further insight.