Book Review: Two Photography Books

Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography by John Comazzi
Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
Hardcover, 192 pages

Construction by Brian Finke
Decode Books, 2012
Hardcover, 80 pages



At first glance the title to this biography of Balthazar Korab is a bit confusing, but learning that Korab considers himself "an architect who makes pictures rather than a photographer who is knowledgeable about architecture," it makes perfect sense. Comazzi traces Korab's life from Budapest to Paris (École des Beaux-Arts) to Michigan (Eero Saarinen's office and independent practice), where he still resides. Three visual sections follow the biography: Case studies of Saarinen projects that Korab documented (TWA Flight Center in New York and Miller House in Indiana); "Inflected Modernism" and "Beyond Modernism," which include more Saarinen projects but also buildings by other modern architects (Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Minoru Yamasaki, Louis Kahn, etc.) and later architects (Steven Holl, Frank Gehry, Williams Tsien, etc.); and "Additional Portfolios" of photos taken on trips (Florence, Rome) and places in and around his Michigan home (vernacular buildings, "car culture," etc.). An emphasis on Midwestern buildings and places prevails throughout the whole book, which arises both from circumstance and an appreciation of what he grew to understand. The portfolio that ends the book is the "Presidential Portfolio," a selection of photos he took when upon request of the U.S. State Department. The images capture some familiar landmarks, but as a whole they paint a complex portrait of the country and reflect a person able to find beauty in life's contradictions.

Balthazar Korab:
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Brian Finke's Construction is the photographer's third book, following Flight Attendants (2008) and 2-4-6-8: American Cheerleaders and Football Players (2003). Like the first two books, the most recent one focuses on a group of people distinguished by a profession/activity. As the cover makes abundantly clear, the construction worker's place of work—the job site—is probably the profession's most defining characteristic. The photographs veer between two extremes: long shots of buildings and sites under construction, and close-ups of construction workers, with some gradients in between. Many of the former do not include humans within their frames, yet they clearly convey the effects of people—excavations, erections of structures (like the cover), or even something as mundane as stacks of construction materials. The latter, in a similar vein, are often removed from the job site, yet they are clearly portraits of construction workers—men sitting in their wood-grain-panel trailers, a man sitting in his van, or a man cracking open a can of beer in front of a backhoe. Only one woman is photographed in the book, but given Finke's documentarian eye, this is a fact of the construction industry rather than a commentary on things. What is perhaps most fascinating is the way Finke has documented job sites without making it clear where they are: One photograph near the middle of the book has the Empire State Building as a backdrop, but most backgrounds are occupied by skies and generic buildings that reveal how construction takes place anywhere and everywhere.

Brian Finke:
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Book Review: The Architect Says

The Architect Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom compiled and edited by Laura S. Dushkes
Princeton Architectural Press, 2012
Hardcover, 160 pages



Even though architecture is a spatial, tactile, and visual medium, and architects naturally convey their ideas primarily through visual means (drawings, models, renderings), they still have a need for writing. And some architects have a knack for creating catchy phrases, many of which have been handed down (more or less accurate to the original) for generations, such as Mies van der Rohe's "Less is more" or Robert Venturi's response, "Less is a bore."

Laura Dushkes, appropriately a librarian at NBBJ in Seattle, has compiled a number of gems both familiar and otherwise in this small book. Actually she has crafted less a book than a pocketbook of inspiration. Even the design (hardcover, rounded edges, ribbon marker, large type with various fonts) makes The Architect Says resemble what can best be described as a sketchbook/textbook hybrid. It's as if the "quotes, quips, and words of wisdom" were jotted down like in a sketchbook, and the architects are speaking to us as if they are our teachers.

Beyond the actual selection of quotes, the most intentional aspect of Dushkes' editing is their ordering. They work together to give a cover-to-cover read of the book a nice flow, with certain takes, topics, and themes grouped together. Contradictions and disagreements abound, most obviously with the above lines by Mies and Venturi facing each other on one spread. Another important element is the way the type design emphasizes certain parts of each quote; given their brevity I find the blue highlights unnecessary, but they do affect the reading of the various quotes.

Reading the whole book is fairly quick, but it's clearly meant to be a book to browse; a lack of an index and sources for the quotes (outside the architect who wrote it) means it doesn't really work as a reference. Coming across unexpected quotes or ones that hit a nerve makes a flip through the book great. A couple of my favorites includes Jan Kaplicky: "It's not a sign of creativity to have sixty-five ideas for one problem. It's just a waste of energy." and Frank Gehry: "I don't know why people hire architects and then tell them what to do." These and other quotes make the book a great gift, especially for that architect who'd rather read the good parts instead of a whole book.

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Book Review: Precedents in Architecture

Precedents in Architecture: Analytic Diagrams, Formative Ideas, and Partis (Fourth Edition) by Roger H. Clark and Michael Pause
Wiley, 2012
Paperback, 352 pages



My first exposure to Clark and Pause's Precedents in Architecture was during a semester in Italy in the mid-1990s, where studio was a mix of analysis and design. An earlier edition of the book was in the small but quality library at the study center, and in its pages was the church we were analyzing. Like any student, I copied the diagrams into my sketchbook and showed them later to my professor, only to be berated for going that route, of making the analysis too simplistic. For him, analysis was not just diagramming circulation, hierarchy, symmetry, geometry, and so forth; it was a creative process, like design, that resulted in each student having his or her own take on the building. In other words, Precedents in Architecture was objective analysis and our work was subjective.

A decade and a half later, finding myself teaching a second-year design studio that included a two-week building analysis, I was confronted with the decision to use Clark and Pause's book. While I did not require that students use it, I noticed that many of them did, given that by the fourth edition the book's line weights and shadings were unmistakable. But traces of my professor's comments lingered in my mind, so for me and my students the diagrams became a step toward realizing a deeper analysis of a particular building, not an end in themselves.

The book's consistent approach to the various issues of analysis (the author's define those as structure, natural light, massing, plan to section or elevation, circulation to use-space, unit to whole, repetitive to unique, symmetry and balance, geometry, additive and subtractive, hierarchy) allows students to see a building as abstractions akin to their own design partis, as if they're seeing the project in its design stage. This is helpful in terms of cross referencing the various buildings (118 are included in the fourth edition) and finding the essences of the designs, but the tactic must be balanced by a prolonged look back at the building itself. For what is gained in the diagrams is lost in the fact that all but a few of the projects in the book are actual buildings; they exist and are made of materials and light, they sit on the earth and change a landscape. Analysis must also take these and other conditions of the built reality into account. So for students heading back to school, go ahead and pick up this new edition of the classic book, but realize that architects have dealt with issues beyond what Clark and Pause define, so there is much, much more to be discovered.

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Book Review: Peter Zumthor: Hortus Conclusus

Peter Zumthor: Hortus Conclusus: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011
Serpentine Gallery | Koenig Books, 2012
Hardcover, 104 pages



Every summer since 2000 (minus 2004) Kensington Gardens in London has been the site of the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, a temporary structure designed by a superstar architect. For a few days around the unveiling of the built work, this part of London is the focus of the world of architecture as journalists, architects, and the curious flock to see the newest thing. Removed in the fall, the pavilions live on in photographs and in documentation of the events taking place within them. This year's design actually picks up on the temporary nature of the buildings, aiming to unearth the previous foundations and incorporate them into the pavilion (not finding any foundations, architects Herzog & de Meuron and Ai Weiwei rebuilt them as cork surfaces instead).

Last year's pavilion, Hortus Conclusus, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor with Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf, is documented in this handsome catalogue. Most of the roughly 100 pages are devoted to color photographs of the pavilion's outside and inside, making the theme of "a garden within the garden" very clear. Zumthor's essay, which comes after a lovely watercolor of the design's plan and section, makes as much clear as well. But what makes the book worth the price of admission -- what takes it beyond just an assemblage of the same photos that can be found online anyways -- is the documentation of Oudolf's design of the garden, which takes up about about a dozen pages, most of them photos and descriptions of plant species. It may be strange that a book on a program that charts the progress of contemporary architecture on a yearly basis is most valuable in terms of landscape design, but that follows from Zumthor's design. The heart of the built project was the enclosed garden, and the plants that comprised it defined the short-lived experience. In this book that experience lives on.

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Review: The Sleepwalkers Box

The Sleepwalkers Box by Doug Aitken
Princeton Architectural Press and DFA Records, 2012
Box Set: 96-page book, poster, vinyl disc, two flipbooks, cd, dvd



How does one document an artwork that is temporary, fleeting? Artist Doug Aitken's 2007 Sleepwalkers installation projected on the facades of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is a good example. Photos, like the ones I captured on my chilly visit, give a sense of the scale and imagery, but they fail to convey many of the important aspects of the piece: timing, movement, narrative, juxtaposition. As well, MoMA's book on Sleepwalkers gives plenty of background and insight into the film installation, but those same aspects are missing. Enter the handsome Sleepwalkers Box, a limited edition, multimedia "remix" produced with the artist, Princeton Architectural Press, and DFA Records, and inspired by Andy Warhol's 1960s journal Aspen.



Sleepwalkers Box arrives just as Aitken fuses film and architecture in another city: Song 1 covers the drum-shaped Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC until the middle of next month. Both Sleepwalkers and Song 1 project various images upon a building's facade, yet in very different ways. At MoMA, the seven clips are projected on different flat facades, so each clip preserves its respective rectangular frame. The architecture is merely a surface for projected light; the glass and metal are a backdrop for images that don't relate to the interior of the building, even as the spaces behind the glass facades spill through the film to complicate the division between the two realms. At the Hirshhorn, Aitken sets up the projectors to seamlessly merge seven films around the whole perimeter of the concrete drum. From any vantage point, the impression is that architecture and image are one. What Sleepwalkers and Song 1 share is the inability to be grasped in their entirety; MoMA's surfaces are disconnected, and the Hirshhorn's cylinder is 360 degrees. Perception in fragments unite the two pieces, perhaps a commentary on the fragmentary nature of cities and their inhabitants.




When I experienced Sleepwalkers in 2007, the narrative -- or lack thereof, depending on one's interpretation -- was not evident to me, stemming from it being cold and not wanting to hang around too long, and the fact that the disconnected projections kept one moving around to experience the other clips. On the DVD that comes with the box set, a specially produced edit of the film makes this narrative clear. Needless to say, the title is apt for the way the film portrays the various characters in their disconnected urban milieus. What stood out for me -- while taking in the various images, texts, and sounds included in the box set -- is how carefully planned and produced are the different clips. In some cases they appear to be straight out of a high-budget Hollywood movie, but at other times the images resemble music videos or the painted films of Stan Brakhage; seen all together, their timing is exquisite.

Sleepwalkers is a multifaceted work that deserves a similar archival treatment. Sleepwalkers Box captures the beauty and poetry of the images and music (the latter I don't remember from the 2007 visit, but I was impressed by a number of the tracks on the CD), sparking one's interest for the next iteration of Sleepwalkers next year when the Miami Museum of Art opens its Herzog & de Meuron-designed building.

Book Review: Straphanger

Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe
Times Books, 2012
Hardcover, 336 pages



Taras Grescoe's international tour of cities where public transportation works -- and some cities where it doesn't work -- is a very good format for exploring various ways of incorporating mass transit into urban areas in the United States. This structure, which bounces from New York to Paris to Tokyo and back to the US, reminds me of Anthony Tung's excellent book Preserving the World's Great Cities, which culls ideas from a different sort, but also aims those towards application in an American context.

Ultimately Grescoe's goal is an attempt to persuade people that public transportation is the key to the survival of American cities in the 21st century. As a fellow straphanger (actually I'd never call myself one, since I dislike labels -- straphanger, driver, pedestrian -- that displace the fact we're all mobile individuals; but I will admit our psychological make-up changes in these roles), he is preaching to the choir. Nevertheless I did learn about transit in some places that I was not familiar with (Phoenix, where most people might ask, "what public transit?"), though the majority is fairly common knowledge for people who pay attention to transportation issues, be it the Bus Rapid Transit in Colombia, bicycles and pedestrian streets in Copenhagen, or Portland's growth boundary. To separate himself from other urbanists, Grescoe takes the stance that mid-sized cities like Philadelphia are ideal for incorporating mass transit at the local and regional scales. Of course, as Grescoe's tour of a dozen cities around the world attests, each city is different, not every mid-sized US city is like Philly. Therefore one-size-fits-all solutions don't exist. This makes his tour that much more valuable: Readers can see the links between urban form and public transportation, getting a better idea of what may work where they live.

American cities are easily the most difficult canvas for incorporating public transportation, but Americans are increasingly becoming aware that dependency on oil for a sprawling urban fabric is not sustainable. Rising gas prices are just one indicator; they will not magically come down in the future to continue the "American Dream" in its current form, they will only continue to rise over time, pricing people out of suburbs and exurbs. Investment in public transportation is one of the keys to cities in 21st-century America, and Grescoe has given us plenty to consider.

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Journal Review: CLOG: Apple

CLOG: Apple, edited by Kyle May (Editor-in-Chief), Julia van den Hout, Jacob Reidel, Human Wu, PlayLab (Design)
February 2012
Paperback, 152 pages



The first issue of CLOG focused on BIG, exploring the firm, its designs, and its main personality across about 50 contributions, including some responses from Bjarke Ingels himself. The second installment of the periodical that "explores, from multiple viewpoints and through a variety of means, a single subject particularly relevant to architecture now" takes aim at Apple, spurred by the June 7, 2011 presentation by Steve Jobs to the Cupertino City Council for "Apple Campus 2." Not surprisingly, renderings of the spaceship-like design were everywhere last summer, one of those rare moments when architecture takes center stage in popular media. But the 40-odd contributions to CLOG do not limit themselves to discussing the Norman Foster-designed project; there is plenty in Apple's oeuvre -- computers, devices, stores, etc. -- to shine a light on.

Like the first issue of CLOG this one is aided by a recognizable flow to the short pieces, such that related takes are placed adjacent to each other. It starts with the suburban house and garage where Jobs lived and started Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne (the last is interviewed by CLOG, one of the last pieces in the issue), and then moves on to Apple Stores (360 and counting), the design of devices, glass in the design of stores like the Apple Cube, the Cupertino campus, and finally the death of Steve Jobs. The majority of the issue is about the campus, both in essays and in graphic documentation. Some of the latter include helpful diagrams that compare the ring of the building with structures like the Olympic Stadium in Beijing, the World Trade Center site, and the Great Pyramid of Giza -- all fit within the landscaped center.

Other highlights include graphic depictions of the various stores inserted into malls, the patent Apple pulled for the design of their Upper West Side store, the various takes on glass (such an important element in their stores, devices, and eventually the campus), the one-sentence responses by well-known architects to CLOG's question on the campus's design, and various replies to CLOG editor Kyle May's emails to various stakeholders on the Cupertino project (it goes without saying that no help is offered). Not all of the contributors are so smitten as everybody (in the world) seems to be with Apple in its various design guises, so it's refreshing to get some criticism about the supposed originality of their campus architecture, the questionable practice of recycling batteries and other electronics by Apple, and the effects of glass facades on birds, among other short stabs.

From the first to second issue CLOG departed from an office/personality popular in architectural circles to a subject known and embraced by millions of people around the world. An unwitting layperson may be put off by some of the more theoretical arguments in the issue, but there is still plenty of accessible writing and enticing imagery to open it to a larger audience. There is an apparent momentum from the first issue that is part publicity and part being the right idea at the right time: people still want print publications and the single topic format in short bites works in a world with digital distractions. We'll see if that momentum holds with the third issue on Data Centers, a step towards the digital realm but away from the striking architecture of the first two issues.

Two Magazines

Recently I received a couple magazines that are both fairly new, albeit completely new to me. Based out of Italy, Boundaries: International Architectural Magazine is "a quarterly international journal on contemporary architecture, with texts in English and Italian, that offers a critical view over the architectures that today deal, in many different ways, with the challenges of the contemporariness and of sustainability intended as a balance between cultural, environmental, economic and social matters." And then there is the Chicago-based Design Bureau (published by ALARM Press), which "delivers an honest and inspirational global dialogue on design from diverse disciplines and points of view. ...[towards] discovering great design and the people who make it happen." Below are some thoughts on a recent issue of each magazine.



Boundaries:
Unlike many architecture publications put out a few or more times a year, Boundaries gives each issue a theme and strictly makes the content fit the topic. The first issue (July-September 2011), for example, is called "Contemporary Architecture in Africa" and does an excellent in job in presenting buildings, projects, books, and histories on the continent. Each issue is structured into sections: News, Perspective, Architecture, Ideas, That Was the Year..., and Book Reviews. The Architecture section makes up the bulk of each issue and highlights particular types of buildings or related strands within the theme. In this regard, issue 2 -- "Architecture for Emergencies" -- collects buildings but also monuments, theories/research, and reporting around the timely and complex theme. That Was the Year is a great part of the magazine, as it features flashbacks usually decades back (a reprinted article or some such piece) that of course fit the issue's theme: Aldo van Eyck's 1959 essay on the Dogon is one found in the first issue, and Jean Prouve's 1956 "House Built in Less Than Seven Hours" is one of the old projects highlighted in the second issue.

These first two themes make it clear that Boundaries is not concerned with the same issues as other architecture magazines; the editors prefer to focus on the under-served and the places of crisis today. This is evident not only in the themes but in the projects included in each issue (only the ultra-modern houses in "Contemporary Architecture in Africa" stand out...as designs that would probably be in other magazines but don't really belong in this one) and the position that "Boundaries receives no public funding, and has no advertising." The only "ads" to be found are for the Italian Red Cross and other emergency organizations. This makes me hope the magazine gains enough following to continue its exploration of architecture that is timely and relevant but often overshadowed by the usual big names and commissions that value form over social concerns. Boundaries may not be as photogenic as other magazines, owing to its dealing with the "social awareness of the profession," but it makes up for that small defect (for lack of a better word) in its thorough coverage on a topic, varied viewpoints on the same, and a strong sense of history that makes one realize our problems are not new and neither may be the solutions.

Design Bureau:
Before moving to New York City from Chicago I was a contributing editor to TENbyTEN, a now defunct magazine on art, fashion, design, and architecture. I was sad to see it go some years ago, but when I recently heard about Design Bureau (DB) that frown was turned upside down, as now the Windy City has a magazine on design (in its varied facets) to call its own. (MAS Context is another Chicago publication that I'm glad exists, but it is print-on-demand where DB is available on newsstands.) Issue 08 (November/December 2011) features "Renegade Architecture" on the cover, but that is an anchor to the magazine not a theme, a long piece on architectural designers, those that can't legally call themselves architects but nevertheless shape spaces and cities. The rest of the issue is thick on architecture -- be it Austin, Seattle, New York City, DC, Kentucky, Mexico, California -- but other types of design make it into the magazine's tripartite sections: Informer (brief coverage), Design Thinking (Q&A with a designer), and Features (pretty self explanatory).

DB should be commended for a sharp curatorial eye that highlights a wide range of designs and designers. As well their choices of buildings and architects show that they are not concerned with the latest and greatest; it is more about quality and insight rather than the same projects and personalities covered ad nauseum elsewhere. DB should also be praised for the sharp layout of the magazine and the eye towards the illustrations that make up the pages. It seems that even the advertisements, like Wallpaper*, are selected for their attention to graphic detail. Speaking of advertisements, one curious aspect of DB is the way ads for players within an article are found alongside it, such as one for a home builder at the end of a piece on houses in Austin, Texas. Not only is the company mentioned in the article, but they also have ad space on half a page. Did their ad pay for the article? Did their ad drive the content? Or did DB find the right advertiser for the right spot? I'm not sure, but in some cases the relationship between ad and editorial content was a little too close for comfort.

Book Review: 100 Ideas that Changed Architecture

100 Ideas that Changed Architecture by Richard Weston
Laurence King Publishing, 2011
Paperback, 216 pages



Laurence King Publishing's 100 Ideas series has to date covered fashion and architecture, with soon-to-be-released titles tackling film and graphic design. It is a simple format: chronicle the most important influences on an art/design field with one idea per spread, 100 total. I'm surprised it hasn't been done before (I don't think it has). It serves to reflectively look at the state of contemporary architecture, in the case of Richard Weston's contribution to the series, and straddles the line between history and theory by tracing architecture in a roughly chronological order and by focusing on the ideas that have shaped it. Yet the book is more history than theory because, as the author asserts in his introduction, an "architectural idea" is not necessarily one that is philosophical or theoretical, since all creations exist as ideas before realization. Therefore the 100 ideas encompass building elements, materials, technologies, styles, as well as the occasional theoretical concept. 

With each idea given one spread, just under half is devoted to Weston's description,  the rest is taken over by illustrations -- photographs mainly -- and these dominate the book visually and in terms of how one understands the ideas. Weston is a capable architectural writer and historian -- evidenced by his monograph on Alvar Aalto -- but the size and quantity of the illustrations means the choice of subject works to influence one's consideration of an idea. For example, "Form Follows Function" discusses Pugin, Sullivan, Mies, Le Corbusier, and Aalto, but the illustrations are limited solely to the last; this might indicate a personal preference on the author's part but it also implies that the expression of function in form is strongest in Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium or a similar building. Regardless, this reliance on large illustrations (most ideas have one large photo or drawing with one or two smaller ones) works towards making the book accessible to a larger audience and offering the potential for multiple readings, be it the full text, illustrations and captions, or a combination thereof.

A minor quibble is the means of cross-referencing ideas, good in theory but not in practice: ideas found elsewhere are highlighted in bold text, but since they are in roughly chronological order, not alphabetical, and since the ideas in the index refer to various locations in the book, it's quite difficult to find another idea when it is referenced. An alphabetical list for reference would easily remedy this and offer yet another way of reading the book -- a "choose your own adventure" through the ideas based on relevance.

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Book Review: ARCHIZINES

ARCHIZINES edited by Elias Redstone
Bedford Press/AA Publications, 2011
Paperback, 152 pages



Compared to market and professional publications, 'zines are more personal in nature, reflecting an individual or small group's passion for a particular topic. Driven by a love for a subject and the desire to explore it in ways not afforded by other publications, 'zines are as diverse as the people making them. In the realm of architecture these "little magazines" -- as they were called in the 2010 exhibition and book Clip, Stamp, Fold -- are going strong today, as is evidenced by the website, exhibition, and publication ARCHIZINES, curated and edited by London-based Jack-of-all-trades Elias Redstone.

The book is the third installment for ARCHIZINES, following on the heels of a recent exhibition at the Architectural Association and the website that has been online since early last year, and which continues to catalog the growing number of 'zines produced internationally since 2000. The website is the most comprehensive of the archives, presenting snapshots of some of the of spreads inside the various 'zines, not just their covers. The latter is how the various publications are illustrated in the slim book; each 'zine occupies one page, described through a short paragraph, the cover of a recent issue and its stats -- page size, number of pages, and print run.

Interspersed throughout the alphabetical catalog of 60 titles are essays by producers of 'zines: Pedro Gadanho (Beyond), Iker Gil (MAS Context), Adam Murray (Preston is my Paris), Rob Wilson (Block), Mimi Zeiger (Maximum Maxim MMX/loudpaper), and Matthew Clarke, Ang Li & Matthew Storrie (PIDGIN). These essays serve to make the book a unique piece of the ARCHIZINES triumvirate, and they are worth it. Each contribution gives a unique perspective on a different aspect of 'zines, while giving background on how they are made, obviously stemming from them all having done so.

As Redstone recounts in his introduction to the book, ARCHIZINES began as a personal interest, as he started collecting fanzines about architecture some five years before the website. I've had a fondness for 'zines, but never enough to amass more than a few, Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films being the most recent. Nevertheless, being passionate for printed matter in various shapes and sizes (magazines, books, newsprints, maps), I am certainly sympathetic towards a desire to collect something like architectural fanzines. (It should be noted that many of the publications that Redstone catalogs are peer-reviewed academic titles and magazines with advertising, extending the reach of ARCHIZINES beyond 'zines in the limited sense of the term.) ARCHIZINES contributor Mimi Zeiger has opined about collecting collections in the digital realm, but bits and bytes are no replacement for actual 'zines. So Redstone's website and book only whets our appetite for getting our hands on the real things.

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Book Review: New York Dozen

New York Dozen: Gen X Architects by Michael J. Crosbie
Images Publishing, 2011
Hardcover, 224 pages

The following review appears in slightly edited form in Yale School of Architecture's Constructs, Fall 2011 issue.



A June 2011 report by the Center for an Urban Future on the economic impact of New York City’s architecture and design fields asserts, not surprisingly, that the city has “the largest collection of architecture firms of any city in the U.S.” With 8 percent of the nation’s architects, over 1,300 architecture firms call NYC home; as well the number of designers working in the city has almost doubled in the last decade. This density and diversity of talent make singling out particular architects above the rest a difficult task, but Michael J. Crosbie, Chair of the Department of Architecture at the University of Hartford, has taken it upon himself to highlight a dozen young offices that are emblematic of their generation in these still early days of the 21st century.

Inspired by the popular 1972 book Five Architects: Eisenman, Graves, Gwathmey, Hejduk, Meier—what then New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger called the “New York Five,” a moniker that has stuck—Crosbie’s “New York Dozen” includes Andre Kikoski Architect, Architecture in Formation, Arts Corporation, Christoff:Finio Architecture, Della Valle Bernheimer, Leroy Street Studio, LEVENBETTS, MOS, nARCHITECTS, Studio SUMO, Work Architecture Company (WORKac), and WXY Architecture. In a different way Crosbie is also inspired by another former Times critic, Nicolai Ouroussoff, who asserted, when Charles Gwathmey of the New York Five passed away in mid-2009, that in the ensuing decades since the New York Five the country’s creative energy shifted to Los Angeles to nurture a younger generation of architects without equal in New York. (The next day New York Dozen’s Andrew Bernheimer penned an open letter to Ouroussoff at Design Observer, challenging the critic’s assertion.) This collection of 50 projects by 12 firms clearly shows that some of the best architecture of their generation is being created in New York, be it installations, interiors, houses, apartment buildings, or ambitious unbuilt projects of various types. Crosbie’s list, like any, is definitely open to debate, but his semi-objective methods (referencing MoMA PS1’s Young Architects Program and AIANY’s Oculus journal, in particular) have yielded a diverse yet representative crop of architects who embrace collaboration, social and environmental responsibility, and experimentation.

In his introduction Crosbie calls Five Architects “the first self-promotional publication to appear in the new age of media attention to architecture.” Self-promotion in architecture is at an apparent saturation point today, with print and online media encompassing monographs, contemporary collections (of which New York Dozen is a part), magazines, blogs, and architects’ own web pages. In essence, Crosbie’s book resembles the last, in the way it collects photographs, drawings, and the architects’ own words, sometimes adding more than a firm’s own online documentation. Concise statements by the Dozen on their values, philosophies, and practices are helpful lead-ins to the projects, but pushing the content even further beyond what can be found online would have been appreciated; of course, in the print-to-digital content shift underway, that is becoming harder every day.

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Book Review: Dynamics & De-realisation and eVolo Skyscrapers

Dynamics & De-realisation by Margot Krasojevic
Springer, 2011
Paperback, 104 pages

eVolo Skyscrapers edited by Carlo Aiello
eVolo, 2011
Hardcover, 1,224 pages



The permeation of the computer in architectural production these days is undeniable, be it CAD (Computer Aided Drafting), BIM (Building Information Modeling), CNC (Computer Numerical Control) fabrication, or parametric modeling. These pieces of software (ACAD, Revit, Rhino, etc.) purport to speed up the process of design and development, make an architect's time more efficient, and lead to new explorations not capable of being envisioned with traditional design methods, such as hand drawings, models, and the like. In general I'm not easily convinced about arguments for efficiency and speed, but like many people I'm easily (if skeptically) wooed by computer-generated renderings that envision fantastical constructions or even worlds, even if their reality doesn't yield the qualities of the images. But when computer-generated imagery stays in the computer -- or on the page, as in these two recent books -- they work on their own terms and can be seductively immersive.

Margot Krasojevic's second book -- following Spatial Pathology-Floating Realities -- assembles about ten of her projects in a slim volume that is completely saturated with renderings like that which graces the cover. Interspersed among the projects are theoretical essays that are actually layered over the images, a tactic that at times makes reading them a bit of a challenge. Philosophy unites the text and images, as the projects respond to the ideas of Baudrillard, Heidegger, Barthes, and others. This approach points to attempts on the part of Krasojevic to actually deal with the philosophical implications of her design approach, rather than using philosophy as a rationalization for it. Regardless, the links are not always explicit or understandable. Partly this stems from the difficulty I had with situating myself within the rendered environments, even though lanky supermodels can be found as scale figures in a number of them. Also, while her projects are all situated in real places -- London, Ordos, Antarctica -- only in the case of the latter does an engagement with the place occur (albeit with a fairly generic, snow-covered context); otherwise the boundary between project and place is a blurred zone that disconnects the two.

While I'm enamored by many of Krasojevic's projects as pure imagery -- I could see a few gracing my walls in a larger format -- her text is particularly enjoyable at times, even with the philosophical weight of her approach. For example, she asserts that "the onslaught of the gaming generation will be responsible for a liberating and non-patronizing relationship to the urban fabric...this new generation will adapt faster, reflexes ready to engage with a dynamic architecture knowing no boundaries between reality and fantasy. My jealousy is extreme." Later she pines for "a progressive society that, instead of patronizing, [allows processes and work] to evolve at a fast-enough rate to not only integrate technology but influence its direction." The gist of this argument is clear. In other places Krasojevic discusses the importance of narrative in her work. I could see her designs acting as a backdrop for a graphic novel set in the not-too-distant future. In that sense the narrative(s) would come to the fore and make the environments that much more tangible.

On the other extreme -- more than 1,100 pages longer and with 299 more authors -- but exhibiting the same fascination with computer-generated design as the above title is the limited-edition book (click this link for glimpses inside the book) documenting the first six years of eVolo's Skyscraper Competition. Three hundred submissions were selected from more than 4,000 entries from this period; both numbers attest to the glut of quality projects and the popularity of the annual competition. Six chapters are used to organize the projects in this massive book -- somewhere between S,M,L,XL and the Phaidon Atlas, as pointed out elsewhere -- Technological Advances, Ecological Urbanism, New Frontiers, Social Solutions, Morphotectonic Aesthetics, and Urban Theories and Strategies. Not surprisingly, projects in one chapter still exhibit qualities that could have placed them elsewhere in the book, but overall the organization adroitly grasps the main ideas of each. Personally I'm drawn to the Social Solutions and the Urban Theories and Strategies, but in the context of this review the most forward-thinking in terms of computer processes are Technological Advances and Morphotectonic Aesthetics.

Having served on the 2011 competition jury, I came across many of the winners and other submissions that I grew familiar with in that process. Most of the entries are new to me, making the book a great stroll through the ideas and imagery that are occupying students and young architects today. Divorced from the realities of client, code, construction, and even gravity in some cases, entrants are free to explore their own takes on building tall. One thing that strikes me as I flip through the pages is not the permeation of computer renderings -- the norm in this and other competitions -- but the visual darkness of the entries, the apparent gloom that seems to accompany thinking about the future. This could be symptomatic of our current environmental situation, which tinges any optimism. But it also stems from the way science fiction and popular culture present a vertical future as one that is dark, depressing, often rainy, and more violent and crowded than our current state. Does this mean that optimism for the future is lacking? No, it's just often cloaked in imagery that belies a positive approach towards vertical living in the future. If the eVolo Skyscraper Competition exhibits anything, it is a belief that building tall is an integral part of our future and therefore one to experiment with and explore now. Here are 300 reasons to ponder that belief and be inspired in the process.

Dynamics & De-realisation:
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eVolo Skyscrapers:
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Book Review: The Heights

The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper by Kate Ascher
Penguin, 2011
Hardcover, 208 pages



In 2005's The Works, Kate Ascher presented the "Anatomy of a City" through an abundance of explanatory diagrams, details, and other illustrations alongside her thorough yet readable text. The book described how something as complex as a city actually works by dissecting one in particular: New York City. It is an exceptional book for being both educational and beautiful, a combination that makes the information understandable for a general audience. Her follow-up, The Heights, follows the formula of its predecessor, and it can be seen to pick up where the infrastructure of the city leaves off: at its buildings, specifically skyscrapers.


[Supertall building diagram from the Introduction to The Heights by Kate Ascher]

While The Works used a specific metropolis to discuss cities in general, The Heights inverts that and presents general information so readers can understand what skyscrapers as a typology have in common. So Ascher does not dissect just the Burj Khalifa (far right in the above diagram), for example, as a case study in skyscrapers. By describing the systems, components, and other considerations that go into the design and construction of tall buildings, the idiosyncrasies of a single skyscraper can be either set aside or touched upon in a sidebar. This approach is helpful, for it enables the book to be structured via these various pieces (structure, construction, elevators, sustainability, etc.), and it results in a broader understanding of what it takes to build tall; or even to build in general, such is the extensive range of the information. Of course some aspects of design and construction, liked tuned mass dampers (below), are so specific to tall buildings that some architects have exploited them in their designs, and Ascher has presented them as such.


[Excerpt from Dampers diagram in "Building It" chapter in The Heights by Kate Ascher]

Ascher closes the book with a chapter on the future, which looks at building taller, greener, more sculpturally, and as cities within cities. Like anything this future is partially written by what has already happened, be it from decades ago (Chicago's John Hancock Tower is an example of a city within a city from the 1970s) or even millennia. Yes, millennia. Ascher presents a couple projects that imagine pyramid-like forms for building taller and taller for more and more people. The inclusion of these projects ultimately brings into question the defining characteristics of skyscrapers, namely the height-to-width ratio. Is it just about pushing humanity further and further up, regardless of form? Whatever the case may be, these pyramidal designs are so big and populous, they are such a strong break from the prevailing skyscraper typology, that a lot of what Ascher presents would need to be reconsidered. They would more literally become cities within cities, or to put it another way, they would synthesize The Works and The Heights.

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(On a side note, having worked on the design of tall buildings, I must admit that while reading the book I relived some of the arguments, setbacks, errors, and other problems that happened in the coordination of something so complex, something with such a large number of players. Headaches are par for the course in all architectural projects, but frustration can be amplified with tall buildings because repetition of floor plates should help simplify things; it doesn't. I'm guessing twisting towers and other formal strategies that add variation to just about every floor will change this to migraines. Regardless, Ascher's book has such a strong logic to it -- in the details as well as in the big picture -- that this frustration does not come across.)