Building Eden

Building Eden  is Matthys Levy's first novel, a thriller with subject matter he is intimately familiar with. A gifted architect, Philip Corta, has the opportunity of a lifetime, the design of a major office/residential complex on New York’s West Side, The Eden Center. The project endures many major setbacks resulting from the arrogance and shallow-minded behavior of the developer, corruption in City Hall, sabotage and murder by organized criminals, and recurring uncertainties about financing. Despite these and other setbacks, the project advances on schedule through 2001 until the events of 9/11 lead to personal tragedy and a change of direction that affects the project and all of the members of the design/construction team.

Matthys Levy

Matthys Levy is the designer of many iconic buildings and other structures throughout the world, and author of several books.

His previous books include the best-selling classic Why Buildings Fall Down, which established his public reputation for expertise on the causes of major structural failures, including the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. He also wrote (or in some cases co-authored) Structual Designs in Architecture, Why the Earth Quakes, Why the Wind Blows, Earthquake Games, and Engineering in the City.

Building Eden  is Levy's first novel, a thriller with subject matter he is intimately familiar with, the design and construction of major buildings in New York City, and the many things that can go wrong. New York structures he has designed and supervised include the Javits Convention Center, the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, and the Marriott Marquis Hotel. He emphasizes that the book and all of his characters are ficticious, and that any similarity to prominent people in the news "is purely coincidental."

Levy currently resides in Burlington, Vermont.