Maya Lin : boundaries
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Walking through this parklike area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth - a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site(...)
Maya Lin : boundaries
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Walking through this parklike area, the memorial appears as a rift in the earth - a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial, the ground slopes gently downward, and the low walls emerging on either side, growing out of the earth, extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial, we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial's walls. These names, seemingly infinite in number, convey the sense of overwhelming numbers, while unifying these individuals into a whole.... So begins the competition entry submitted in 1981 by a Yale undergraduate for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. - subsequently called "as moving and awesome and popular a piece of memorial architecture as exists anywhere in the world." Its creator, Maya Lin, has been nothing less than world famous ever since. From the explicitly political to the un-ashamedly literary to the completely abstract, her simple and powerful sculpture - the Rockefeller Foundation sculpture, the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial, the Yale Women's Table, Wave Field - her architecture, including The Museum for African Art and the Norton residence, and her protean design talents have defined her as one of the most gifted creative geniuses of the age. Boundaries is her first book : an eloquent visual/verbal sketchbook produced with the same inspiration and attention to detail as any of her other artworks. Like her environmental sculptures, it is a site, but one which exists at a remove so that it may comment on the personal and artistic elements that make up those works. In it, sketches, photographs, workbook entries, and original designs are held together by a deeply personal text. "Boundaries" is a powerful literary and visual statement by "a leading public artist" (Holland Carter). It is itself a unique work of art.
Contemporary Art Monographs
Absence : J. Meejin Yoon
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Both a book and a sculptural object, "Absence" is a memorial to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Yoon, an architect and designer who is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chose not to produce a traditional design proposal for the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. Instead she created a(...)
Absence : J. Meejin Yoon
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Both a book and a sculptural object, "Absence" is a memorial to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Yoon, an architect and designer who is currently an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chose not to produce a traditional design proposal for the World Trade Center Memorial Competition. Instead she created a non-architectural, non site-specific space of remembrance : a portable personal memorial in the form of book. At almost two pounds, "Absence" has a considerable physical presence, but it is in every way the ghost of a presence, and it is this ghostliness that gives it its particular emotional weight. A solid white block of thick stock cardboard pages, the book’s only "text" consists of one pinhole and two identical squares die-cut into each of its one hundred and twenty pages – one for each story of the towers including the antenna mast. These removed elements lead the reader floor by floor through the missing buildings towards the final page where the footprint of the entire site of the World Trade Center is die-cut into a delicate lattice of absent structures. Of all of the proposed monuments and grand designs for the twin towers to emerge in the last two years, "Absence" is remarkable for its employment of an under-used strategy : restraint. The simplicity of Yoon’s materials and her use of repetition speak, without words, about unspeakable loss. As a scale model of a vanished architectural site, it operates on a larger cultural level by commemorating the site itself. Unpaginated.
Contemporary Art Monographs
Heidegger's hut
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"This is the most thorough architectural 'crit' of a hut ever set down, the justification for which is that the hut was the setting in which Martin Heidegger wrote phenomenological texts that became touchstones for late-twentieth-century architectural theory." --from the foreword by Simon Sadler Beginning in the summer of 1922, philosopher Martin Heidegger(...)
Architectural Theory
October 2006, Cambridge / London
Heidegger's hut
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"This is the most thorough architectural 'crit' of a hut ever set down, the justification for which is that the hut was the setting in which Martin Heidegger wrote phenomenological texts that became touchstones for late-twentieth-century architectural theory." --from the foreword by Simon Sadler Beginning in the summer of 1922, philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) occupied a small, three-room cabin in the Black Forest Mountains of southern Germany. He called it "die Hütte" ("the hut"). Over the years, Heidegger worked on many of his most famous writings in this cabin, from his early lectures to his last enigmatic texts. He claimed an intellectual and emotional intimacy with the building and its surroundings, and even suggested that the landscape expressed itself through him, almost without agency. In Heidegger's Hut, Adam Sharr explores this intense relationship of thought, place, and person. Heidegger's mountain hut has been an object of fascination for many, including architects interested in his writings about "dwelling" and "place." Sharr's account--the first substantive investigation of the building and Heidegger's life there--reminds us that, in approaching Heidegger's writings, it is important to consider the circumstances in which the philosopher, as he himself said, felt "transported" into the work's "own rhythm." Indeed, Heidegger's apparent abdication of agency and tendency toward romanticism seem especially significant in light of his troubling involvement with the Nazi regime in the early 1930s. Sharr draws on original research, including interviews with Heidegger's relatives, as well as on written accounts of the hut by Heidegger and his visitors. The book's evocative photographs include scenic and architectural views taken by the author and many remarkable images of a septuagenarian Heidegger in the hut taken by the photojournalist Digne Meller-Markovicz. There are many ways to interpret Heidegger's hut--as the site of heroic confrontation between philosopher and existence; as the petit bourgeois escape of a misguided romantic; as a place overshadowed by fascism; or as an entirely unremarkable little building. Heidegger's Hut does not argue for any one reading, but guides readers toward their own possible interpretations of the importance of "die Hütte."
Architectural Theory
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1 online resource.
[Place of publication not identified] : Lateral Addition, 2018.
June 21, 2018 : Listening for Southwest Key in San Diego.
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1 online resource.
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[Place of publication not identified] : Lateral Addition, 2018.
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Construction on the Märkische Viertel in northern Berlin began in 1963 under the supervision of a team of nationally and internationally recognized architects. In the ensuing decades, under the management of the housing association GESOBAU AG, the Viertel evolved from a district that generated controversy throughout the Federal Republic into an exemplary large-scale(...)
Das Märkische Viertel : idee - wirklichkeit - vision
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Construction on the Märkische Viertel in northern Berlin began in 1963 under the supervision of a team of nationally and internationally recognized architects. In the ensuing decades, under the management of the housing association GESOBAU AG, the Viertel evolved from a district that generated controversy throughout the Federal Republic into an exemplary large-scale residential settlement. Architects Werner Düttmann, Hans Müller and Georg Heinrichs wanted to design a better world, with humane dwellings for both inner city residents displaced by redevelopment and evacuees from the east. The concept underlying their masterplan was to shape the landscape via architectural structures. They thought in large forms and proportions, designing a prototypical satellite town for northern Berlin that would contain 16,000 apartments for 40,000 residents, while doing justice to the varied requirements of occupants. Architects such as Oswald M. Ungers, Chen Kuen Lee, Ernst Gisel and René Gagès took part in the construction of this large-scale estate, which caused a furor simply by virtue of its immense scale, unusual for Western Europe. Already in 1964, just after the first residents moved in, the Märkische Viertel, nicknamed the "MV,” was deemed controversial. Some condemned it as a "concrete citadel launched from the drafting table,” a "stony nightmare,” or "the Parrot Estate,” while others celebrated it as a glowing example of a model large-scale settlement. Only recent years have seen an unprejudiced and discriminating appraisal of the project. The residents themselves have always seen their homes in a more positive light than outside observers. In 2003, a survey commissioned by the GESOBAU AG suggested they were perfectly comfortable in their neighborhood. And their children — and even children’s children — often remain in the district. What is the secret of the Maerkische Viertel? How was this once inhospitable bedroom community transformed into a coveted residential district, and how is the transition between generations to be accomplished? Can the Maerkische Viertel sustain itself under the altered economic situation affecting residential housing, or have drastic interventions into the existing architecture become a necessity?
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The Hive at Kew
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The Hive was the centrepiece of the gold medal winning UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo, and from June 2016 takes up its new home within Kew Gardens. Soaring 17 metres in the air, designed by Wolfgang Buttress and created by BDP, Simmonds Studio and Stage One, The Hive is an immersive, multi-sensory experience inspired by ground-breaking UK scientific research into the(...)
The Hive at Kew
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The Hive was the centrepiece of the gold medal winning UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo, and from June 2016 takes up its new home within Kew Gardens. Soaring 17 metres in the air, designed by Wolfgang Buttress and created by BDP, Simmonds Studio and Stage One, The Hive is an immersive, multi-sensory experience inspired by ground-breaking UK scientific research into the health of bees. Showcasing British creativity, innovation and leadership in overcoming global challenges, this magnificent aluminium structure draws visitors into the space via a wildflower meadow, as though they are worker bees returning to the hive. Hundreds of glowing LED lights bring this 40 tonne lattice structure to life, while a beautiful symphony of orchestral sounds fills the air, with an atmospheric undercurrent of buzzes and pulses. Triggered by vibration sensors within a real beehive, the sound and light intensity within the pavilion increases as the energy levels in the living hive surge, giving visitors an incredible insight into the ever-moving life of a bee colony.The Hive at Kew is a beautifully illustrated celebration of this fascinating project. The book is divided into three sections, with James Haldane, Design Editor for The Architectural Review focusing first on the origins and the architecture of the Hive and its creation led by artist Wolfgang Buttress. The central body of the book focusses on the immersion of the Hive at Kew and the surrounding wildflower meadow designed to attract a variety of bees. This section includes features on the team behind the Hive, as well as Kew's horticultural experts. Finally, Martin Bencsik of Nottingham Trent University and Kew's Phil Stephenson explain the pioneering research into bee health and communication that inspired the Hive, and how Kew is working to help bees in their vital role as pollinators. Beautifully illustrated throughout with photographs of the Hive itself, its construction, and the wildflower meadow surrounding it, as well as architectural plans of the structure.
Gardens