Strange details
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Confronted with the intricate construction details of Italian architect Carlo Scarpa's Querini Stampalia Gallery--steel joined at odd intervals, concrete spilled out of concatenated forms, stone cut in labyrinthine patterns--Michael Cadwell abandoned his attempts to categorize them theoretically and resolved instead to appreciate their idiosyncrasies and evoke their(...)
Strange details
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Confronted with the intricate construction details of Italian architect Carlo Scarpa's Querini Stampalia Gallery--steel joined at odd intervals, concrete spilled out of concatenated forms, stone cut in labyrinthine patterns--Michael Cadwell abandoned his attempts to categorize them theoretically and resolved instead to appreciate their idiosyncrasies and evoke their all-embracing affects. What he had dismissed as a collection of fetishes he came to understand as a coherently constructed world that was nonetheless persistently strange. In Strange Details, Cadwell looks at the work of four canonical architects who "made strange" with the most resistant aspect of architecture--construction. In buildings that were pivotal in their careers, Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Louis Kahn all created details that undercut our critical and analytical terra firma. Cadwell explores the strangeness in the material menagerie of Scarpa's Querini Stampalia, the wood light frame construction of Wright's Jacobs House, the welded steel frame of Mies's Farnsworth House, and the reinforced concrete of Kahn's Yale Center for British Art. Each of these architects, he finds, reconfigures the rudimentary facts of construction, creating a subtle but undeniable shift in a building’s physicality. And for each of them, nature is strange, and its strangeness infects; nature unmoors exhausted cultural ideas, constricted analytical procedures, and outmoded production techniques. An awakening to nature's strangeness forces a new sense of the world, one that we can detect in these architects' configurations of the world's materials--their strange details.
Architectural Theory
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C'est à Berlin, en 1926, que le réalisateur russe S. M. Eisenstein découvre l'utilisation architecturale du verre et la place qu'il occupe dans un certain nombre d'utopies de réconciliation sociale (Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier…). C'est alors qu'il envisage de réaliser Glass House, un projet inabouti dont il ne reste aujourd'hui que ses notes de travail,(...)
Glass house: du projet de film au film comme projet S. M. Eisenstein
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C'est à Berlin, en 1926, que le réalisateur russe S. M. Eisenstein découvre l'utilisation architecturale du verre et la place qu'il occupe dans un certain nombre d'utopies de réconciliation sociale (Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier…). C'est alors qu'il envisage de réaliser Glass House, un projet inabouti dont il ne reste aujourd'hui que ses notes de travail, publiées dans cet ouvrage. Un projet pourtant tenté à Hollywood lorsqu'Eisenstein imagina la conception d'un gratte-ciel en verre où tous seraient soumis au regard de tous, où chacun serait renvoyé à sa solitude par soumission aux valeurs capitalistes, et où la question de l'aliénation sociale se mêlerait à celle du «trouble dans le genre» au travers de personnages venus tout droit de la tradition berlinoise du cabaret. Charlie Chaplin, fasciné par cette anti-utopie où lumière et transparence aboutissent à la coercition et à la mort, avait alors soutenu le réalisateur russe. Ce n'est donc pas un hasard si, dans Le Dictateur, Hinckel avoue à Napaloni être amateur de «moderne» et vouloir mettre partout des parois et plafonds en verre. Mais Glass House fut également un projet de cinéma : un cinéma échappant aux lois de la pesanteur, à l'héritage de la peinture naturaliste et à l'architecture traditionnelle, qui conduisit Eisenstein à une réflexion esthétique sur les thèmes du polycentrisme et de l'hétérotopie – thèmes que l'art moderne et contemporain ne cesseront jamais de travailler.
Architecture and Film, Set Design
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In this book, David Brown locates jazz music within the broad aesthetic, political, and theoretical upheavals of our time, asserting that modern architecture and urbanism in particular can be strongly influenced and defined by the ways that improvisation is facilitated in jazz. Improvised music consists of diverse properties that fail to register in the(...)
Noise orders : jazz, improvisation, and architecture
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In this book, David Brown locates jazz music within the broad aesthetic, political, and theoretical upheavals of our time, asserting that modern architecture and urbanism in particular can be strongly influenced and defined by the ways that improvisation is facilitated in jazz. Improvised music consists of diverse properties that fail to register in the object-oriented understanding of composition. As a result, it is often dismissed as noise — an interfering signal. However, Brown asserts, such interference can bear meaning and stimulate change. "Noise orders" identifies how architecture can respond to the inclusive dynamics of extemporaneous movements, variable conceptions of composition, multiple durations, and wide manipulation of resources found in jazz to enable outcomes that far exceed a design’s seeming potential. By exploring overlapping moments between modernism and the cultural dimensions of jazz, "Noise orders" suggests that the discipline of improvisation continues to open and redefine architectural theory and practice, creating a world where designers contribute to emerging environments rather than make predetermined ones. Comparing modern and avant-garde artists and architects with individuals and groups in jazz—including Piet Mondrian and boogie-woogie, John Cage and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Le Corbusier and Louis Armstrong, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM)—Brown examines how jazz can offer alternative design ideas and directions, be incorporated in contemporary architectural practices, and provide insight on how to develop dynamic metropolitan environments. Interdisciplinary in its approace, "Noise orders" argues for a deeper understanding of the infinite potential inherent in both music and architecture.
Acoustics
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Aalto's career overlapped both chronologically and ideologically with those of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but his commitment to a humanitarian ideal, inspired by nature, set him apart from his purist Modernist contemporaries. His beautiful buildings, including the Paimio Sanatorium, Villa Mairea, Jyvaskla Worker's Club, Church of the Three Crosses and Baker House(...)
Architecture Monographs
April 2007, London
Alvar Aalto : trough the eyes of shigeru ban
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Aalto's career overlapped both chronologically and ideologically with those of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but his commitment to a humanitarian ideal, inspired by nature, set him apart from his purist Modernist contemporaries. His beautiful buildings, including the Paimio Sanatorium, Villa Mairea, Jyvaskla Worker's Club, Church of the Three Crosses and Baker House Dormitory, with their curving facades, careful interaction of wood, concrete and brick, and innovative uses of emerging technologies, show the touch of a true master. With contributions from Colin St John Wilson (architect of the British Library), Juhani Pallasmaa (Aalto specialist at the University of Technology, Helsinki), as well as an exclusive interview with Shigeru Ban, Alvar Aalto: Through the Eyes of Shigeru Ban offers a refreshing new take on Aalto's architecture and design. Added to this, three new translations of Aalto's own writings provide an insight into the workings of his mind, and the theoretical and philosophical discussions that he was engaging with in the 1920s and 30s. Beautifully illustrated, Alvar Aalto: Through the Eyes of Shigeru Ban features stunning new images by photographer Judith Turner, whose abstract interpretation of Aalto's work brings out the poetry of his buildings, and shows them in a whole new light. Hitherto unseen archive images from the Aalto foundation are also published for the first time, making this a truly unique publication. The environmental concerns of the twenty-first century mean that Aalto’s legacies have become ever more apparent. This timely retrospective pays tribute to one of the great masters of architecture and is essential reading for architects, designers and anyone interested in the origins of contemporary architecture and culture.
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April 2007, London
Architecture Monographs
The minimum dwelling
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Karel Teige (1900–1951), one of the most important figures of avant-garde modernism of the 1920s and 1930s, influenced virtually every area of art, design, and urban thinking in his native Czechoslovakia. His "Minimum dwelling", originally published in Czech in 1932, and appearing now for the first time in English, is one of the landmark architectural books of the(...)
The minimum dwelling
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Karel Teige (1900–1951), one of the most important figures of avant-garde modernism of the 1920s and 1930s, influenced virtually every area of art, design, and urban thinking in his native Czechoslovakia. His "Minimum dwelling", originally published in Czech in 1932, and appearing now for the first time in English, is one of the landmark architectural books of the twentieth century. "The minimum dwelling" is not just a book on architecture, but also a blueprint for a new way of living. It calls for a radical rethinking of domestic space and of the role of modern architecture in the planning, design, and construction of new dwelling types for the proletariat. Teige shows how Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and others designed little more than new versions of baroque palaces, mainly for the new financial aristocracy. Teige envisioned the minimum dwelling not as a reduced version of a bourgeois apartment or rural cottage, but as a wholly new dwelling type built on the cooperation of architects, sociologists, economists, health officials, physicians, social workers, politicians, and trade unionists. The book covers many subjects that are still of great relevance. Of particular interest are Teige’s rejection of traditional notions of the kitchen as the core of family-centered plans and of marriage as the foundation of modern cohabitation. He describes alternative lifestyles and new ways of cohabitation of sexes, generations, and classes. The detailed programmatic chapters on collective housing remain far ahead of current thinking, and his comments on collective dwelling presage communal living experiments of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the communal facilities in contemporary condominium buildings and retirement communities. Translated and introduced by Eric Dluhosch.
Architectural Theory
Louis I. Kahn
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Born in Estonia in 1901, Louis Isidore Kahn was to become one of the United States’ most important architects of the post-war period, alongside the Modern masters Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Although renowned for a number of seminal modern works, he came to question many of the precepts of the Modern Movement. In particular, he questioned the(...)
Louis I. Kahn
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Born in Estonia in 1901, Louis Isidore Kahn was to become one of the United States’ most important architects of the post-war period, alongside the Modern masters Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. Although renowned for a number of seminal modern works, he came to question many of the precepts of the Modern Movement. In particular, he questioned the ability of the International Style of Modernism to house the social spaces required by the latter half of the century. In 1947 Kahn was appointed Professor at Yale University. He was to continue teaching throughout his architectural career, influencing a younger generation of architects along the way. His teaching enabled him to further develop his own concepts and to inform his ever-evolving definition of design. He was drawn to investigate monumentality in architecture, creating buildings out of heavy, solid materials and forms and incorporating vivid plays of light, in complete contrast to the lightweight glass and steel structures being created elsewhere by his peers. This monumentality was also imbued with his concern for the ritual of human experience. His career, although extending to just over twenty years, was a rich and varied one, where he continually readdressed the issues of light, mass, structure, monumentality, geometry and materials. This monograph follows a predominantly chronological order, identifying major themes and examining key works according to these themes. A comprehensive list of projects by Kahn spanning his lifetime and drawn from the Louis I Kahn Collection at the University of Pennsylvania Archives is also included, listing over 231 projects, of which at least 30 were previously unattributed.
Architecture Monographs
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From total look to total living: Alchimia, Tadao Ando, Armani, Vanessa Beecroft, Benetton, Pierre Cardin, CP Company, Courrèges, Diesel, Diller & Scofidio, Droog Design, Final Home, Dan Flavin, Tom Ford, Future Systems, Eileen Gray, Gucci, Andreas Gursky, Halston, Herzog & De Meuron, Tommy Hilfiger, Damien Hirst, Ikea, Philip Johnson, Rei Kawakubo, Calvin Klein, Rem(...)
Interior Design
January 1900, Milan
Total living : fashion, architecture, design, art, communication
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From total look to total living: Alchimia, Tadao Ando, Armani, Vanessa Beecroft, Benetton, Pierre Cardin, CP Company, Courrèges, Diesel, Diller & Scofidio, Droog Design, Final Home, Dan Flavin, Tom Ford, Future Systems, Eileen Gray, Gucci, Andreas Gursky, Halston, Herzog & De Meuron, Tommy Hilfiger, Damien Hirst, Ikea, Philip Johnson, Rei Kawakubo, Calvin Klein, Rem Koolhaas, Helmut Lang, Le Corbusier, Levi's, Mandarina Duck, Marni, Steven Meisel, Alessandro Mendini, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Issey Miyake, Moschino, Helmut Newton, Nike, NL Architects, Ora-Ito Studio, John Powson, Prada, Emilio Pucci, Ralph Lauren, Claudio Silvestrin, Hedi Slimane, Paul Smith, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck, Versace, Louis Vuitton, Bruce Weber, Yves Saint Laurent. Styles and lifestyles are fast becoming uniform under labels and definitions of fashion, and as an industry and a cultural form. Total Living is the point of no return in a project which, step-by-step, develops strategies whose goal it is to offer an even more sophisticated and targeted lifestyle. It is a place where there are definitions for clothes, behavior modes, and even the atmoshpheres and spaces in which one moves. Assuming the contours of a landscape of the future, this scenario raises topical themes and problems connected with the overwhelming power of consumerism. Accompanying scholarly essays consider the thematic universes of fashion designers and brands; models of total living in 20th century history; references to total living in mass culture; living and eating; arty fashion and fashionable art; the world of fashion design; the languages of shopping; urban fashion districts; and advertising as a narrative. A rich and interconnected iconographic passage visually narrates the various forms and ramifications of total living today and in the recent past through a succession of utopias, life-projects, urban visions, architecture, special homes, stores, art galleries, museums, and editorial pages and ads from fashion and lifestyle magazines. With texts by Papla Antonelli, Francesco Bonami, Michele Ciavarella, Emanuela de Cecco, Riccardo Dirindin, Roberto Monelli, Herbert Muschamp, Chee Pearlman, Michele Sernini, Dietmar Steiner, and Deyan Sudjic.
Interior Design