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Essays, plans and projects by various artists,including Max Bill, Heinrich Dunst, Helmut Federle, Per Kirkeby, Katarina Fritsch, Erwin Heerich, Gerhard Merz, Gottfried Honegger, Walther Pichler, Ulrich Rückriem, Bernar Venet, Daniel Buren, Christoph Haerle, Peter Wigglesworth, Donald Judd, Markus Lüpertz, Arnulf Rainer, Richard Serra among others showing their ideas for(...)
Museum architecture : texts and projects by artists
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Essays, plans and projects by various artists,including Max Bill, Heinrich Dunst, Helmut Federle, Per Kirkeby, Katarina Fritsch, Erwin Heerich, Gerhard Merz, Gottfried Honegger, Walther Pichler, Ulrich Rückriem, Bernar Venet, Daniel Buren, Christoph Haerle, Peter Wigglesworth, Donald Judd, Markus Lüpertz, Arnulf Rainer, Richard Serra among others showing their ideas for how museums should be constructed. When discussing the increasing number of museums and exhibition spaces for modern art which have come into being in recent years, the deep-seated differences of opinion between architects and artists keep coming to the fore. The discussion seems to be almost exclusively dominated by the point of view of the architect and defined by his/her interests. The needs of the art itself are being widely neglected and the voice of the artist is simply not being heard. Donald Judd, the American sculptor and minimalist artist, once noted that museums are so rarely built on functional lines these days, the trend being more towards the creation of a showpiece for the architect. Why are painters and sculptors not asked for their input? The very obvious question was addressed by the Espace de l’art concret when in 1997, it asked a number of well-known artists to come up with ideas and projects for a museum for concrete art. They were invited to submit their ideal utopian suggestions as well as very concrete and architectural proposals and written statements. These are documented in this publication, supplemented with the material for the collection owned by the Kunsthaus in Bregenz and expanded with an extensive anthology of texts by artists on this subject. The résumé of the contributions presents a searing criticism of contemporary museum architecture by its most important users. Their voice will at last find an ear in the current architectural discussion about the new cathedrals of the post-industrial society.
Museology
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The gray cloth
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The German expressionist, architectural visionary, author, inventor, and artist Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) wrote several fictional utopian narratives related to glass architecture. In "The Gray Cloth", the first of his novels to be translated into English, Scheerbart uses subtle irony and the structural simplicity of a fairy tale to present the theories of coloured glass(...)
The gray cloth
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The German expressionist, architectural visionary, author, inventor, and artist Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) wrote several fictional utopian narratives related to glass architecture. In "The Gray Cloth", the first of his novels to be translated into English, Scheerbart uses subtle irony and the structural simplicity of a fairy tale to present the theories of coloured glass outlined in his well-known treatise "Glass Architecture". The novel is set forward in time to the mid-twentieth century. The protagonist, a Swiss architect named Edgar Krug, circumnavigates the globe by airship with his wife, constructing wildly varied, colored-glass buildings. His projects include a high-rise and exhibition/concert hall in Chicago, a retirement complex for air pilots on the Fiji Islands, the structure for an elevated train across a zoological park in northern India, and a suspended residential villa on the Kuria Muria Islands off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea. Fearing that his architecture is challenged by the colourfulness of women’s clothing, Krug insists that his wife wear all gray clothing with the addition of ten percent white. This odd demand brings him notoriety and sensationalizes his international building campaign. For the reader, it underlines the confluence of architecture with fashion, gender, and global media. In his introduction John Stuart surveys Scheerbart’s career and role in German avant-garde circles, as well as his architectural and social ideas. He shows how Scheerbart strove to integrate his spiritual and romantic leanings with the modern world, often relying on glass architecture to do so. In addition to discussing the novel’s reception and its rediscovery by contemporary architects and critics, Stuart shows fiction to be a resource for the study of architecture and places "The Gray Cloth" in the context of German Expressionism.
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October 2003, Cambridge / London
Architectural Theory
Minka, my farmhouse in Japan
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In 1959 the journalist John Roderick joined the Tokyo bureau of the Associated Press. There, he befriended a Japanese family, the Takishitas. After musing offhandedly that he would like to one day have his own house in Japan, the family unbeknownst to John set out to grant his wish. They found Roderick a 250-year-old minka, or hand-built farmhouse, with a thatched roof(...)
Minka, my farmhouse in Japan
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In 1959 the journalist John Roderick joined the Tokyo bureau of the Associated Press. There, he befriended a Japanese family, the Takishitas. After musing offhandedly that he would like to one day have his own house in Japan, the family unbeknownst to John set out to grant his wish. They found Roderick a 250-year-old minka, or hand-built farmhouse, with a thatched roof and held together entirely by wooden pegs and joinery. It was about to be washed away by flooding and was being offered for only fourteen dollars. Roderick graciously bought the house, but was privately dismayed at the prospect of living in this enormous old relic lacking heating, bathing, plumbing, and proper kitchen facilities. So the minka was dismantled and stored, where Roderick secretly hoped it would stay, as it did for several years. But Roderick's reverence for natural materials and his appreciation of traditional Japanese and Shinto craftsmanship eventually got the better of him. Before long a team of experienced carpenters were hoisting massive beams, laying wide wooden floors, and attaching the split-bamboo ceiling. In just forty days they rebuilt the house on a hill overlooking Kamakura, the ancient capital of Japan. Working together, they renovated the farmhouse, adding features such as floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors and a modern kitchen, bath, and toilet. From these humble beginnings, Roderick's minka has become internationally known and has hosted such luminaries as Senator Hillary Clinton. John Roderick's architectural memoir "Minka" tells the compelling and often poignant story of how one man fell in love with the people, culture, and ancient building traditions of Japan, and reminds us all about the importance of craftsmanship and the meaning of place and home in the process.
Contemporary Asian Architecture
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Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement--the deep-rooted belief that things could be done in a better way. What Friedel calls the "culture of(...)
A culture of improvement : technology and the western millennium
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Why does technology change over time, how does it change, and what difference does it make? In this sweeping, ambitious look at a thousand years of Western experience, Robert Friedel argues that technological change comes largely through the pursuit of improvement--the deep-rooted belief that things could be done in a better way. What Friedel calls the "culture of improvement" is manifested every day in the ways people carry out their tasks in life--from tilling fields and raising children to waging war. Improvements can be ephemeral or lasting, and one person’s improvement may not always be viewed as such by others. Friedel stresses the social processes by which we define what improvements are and decide which improvements will last and which will not. These processes, he emphasizes, have created both winners and losers in history. Friedel presents a series of narratives of Western technology that begin in the eleventh century and stretch into the twenty-first. Familiar figures from the history of invention are joined by others--the Italian preacher who described the first eyeglasses, the dairywomen displaced from their control over cheesemaking, and the little-known engineer who first suggested a grand tower to Gustav Eiffel. Friedel traces technology from the plow and the printing press to the internal combustion engine, the transistor, and the space shuttle. Friedel also reminds us that faith in improvement can sometimes have horrific consequences: improved weaponry makes warfare ever more deadly and the drive for improving human beings can lead to eugenics and even genocide. The most comprehensive attempt to tell the story of Western technology in many years, engagingly written and lavishly illustrated, A Culture of Improvement documents the ways in which the drive for improvement has shaped our modern world.
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May 2007, Cambridge / London
Engineering Structures
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"Groundswell : constructing the contemporary landscape" presents 23 projects that reveal the surge of creativity and discussion surrounding the designed landscape in a broad, principally urban, international context. In the last 20 years, many significant new public spaces have been created for sites that have been reclaimed from conflict, environmental degradation, and(...)
Groundswell : constructing the contemporary landscape
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"Groundswell : constructing the contemporary landscape" presents 23 projects that reveal the surge of creativity and discussion surrounding the designed landscape in a broad, principally urban, international context. In the last 20 years, many significant new public spaces have been created for sites that have been reclaimed from conflict, environmental degradation, and abandonment. The projects, found throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, were selected for their design, and for their variety of contexts, materials, scale, and types of spaces. This fully illustrated volume includes an essay by Peter Reed, Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, that demonstrates how these innovative projects expand the definition of the modernist landscape while responding to a variety of conditions such as program, social function, and the transformation and reclamation previously industrial areas. The essay is followed by a full-color plate section featuring the selected projects. Catalogue entries for each project provide a succinct description of the site, its transformation, and design concepts illustrated by photographs, drawings, and models.
Urban Landscapes
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Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, "A Japanese Constellation" focuses on the work of a small group of architects and designers influenced by and gravitating around the architect Toyo Ito and the architectural firm SANAA. Beginning with an overview of Ito’s career and his influence as a mentor to a new generation of Japanese(...)
Contemporary Asian Architecture
March 2016
A Japanese constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA and beyond
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Published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, "A Japanese Constellation" focuses on the work of a small group of architects and designers influenced by and gravitating around the architect Toyo Ito and the architectural firm SANAA. Beginning with an overview of Ito’s career and his influence as a mentor to a new generation of Japanese architects, the catalogue presents an illustrated portfolio of recent works by three generations of internationally acclaimed designers, including Sou Fujimoto, Akihisa Hirata and Junya Ishigami. "A Japanese Constellation" reveals a network of influence and cross-pollination that has become particularly relevant at the start of the 21st century. Essays by curators, architectural historians and critics reflect on the transmission of an architectural sensibility, and suggest an alternative model to what has been commonly described as an individuality-based "star-system" in architecture. Offering a panorama of interlinked, settled or up-and-coming stars, the publication reveals how shared architectural themes travel across generations of architects, creating a strong identity for a regional practice with global impact.
Contemporary Asian Architecture
Judging architectural value
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When it comes to determining the relative quality of architecture, who is best equipped to make the distinctions? Is it the public who lives in and among the buildings? The people who commission and pay for the buildings? Art historians? Or architects themselves? These provocative essays take up the questions of what people value in architecture and how changing(...)
Architectural Theory
April 2007, Mineapolis London
Judging architectural value
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When it comes to determining the relative quality of architecture, who is best equipped to make the distinctions? Is it the public who lives in and among the buildings? The people who commission and pay for the buildings? Art historians? Or architects themselves? These provocative essays take up the questions of what people value in architecture and how changing values influence opinions about it. In the intriguing opening essay, Michael Benedikt makes an argument for the role of architects in the delineation of value in architecture. He discusses the differences between icon and canon, a theme threaded through many of the essays. In addition to unexpected analyses of buildings such as Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Paul Rudolph’s Art and Architecture Building at Yale University, and the work of Antoni Gaudí and Frank Gehry, the collection includes a clear-eyed look at the role of architecture in addressing social problems. Ultimately, these essays assert that judging architecture requires more than a refined sensibility. Buildings also need to be evaluated by their impact on the people living within and around them. Contributors: John Beardsley, Harvard Design School; Michael Benedikt, U of Texas, Austin; Tim Culvahouse, California College of the Arts; Lisa Finley, California College of the Arts; Kurt W. Forster, Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar, Germany; Kenneth Frampton, Columbia U; Diane Ghirardo, U of Southern California; Charles Jencks; David Leatherbarrow, U of Pennsylvania; Nancy Levinson; Hélène Lipstadt; Juhani Pallasmaa, Helsinki U of Technology; Timothy M. Rohan, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Roger Scruton; Daniel Willis, Pennsylvania State U. William S. Saunders is editor of Harvard Design Magazine and assistant dean for external relations at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. He is the author of Modern Architecture: Photographs by Ezra Stoller and editor of three other Harvard Design Magazine Readers. Michael Benedikt is Hal Box Chair in Urbanism and director of the Center for American Architecture and Design at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.
Architectural Theory
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Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s renowned series, ‘Beyond Caring’, was made in the waiting rooms and corridors of the Social Security and Unemployment offices around the UK, documenting the long waits, queues and poor conditions of an overburdened system, to produce a powerful series of photographs conveying the hardship people experienced. Denied official(...)
Paul Graham: Beyond caring, New edition
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Originally self-published in 1985, Paul Graham’s renowned series, ‘Beyond Caring’, was made in the waiting rooms and corridors of the Social Security and Unemployment offices around the UK, documenting the long waits, queues and poor conditions of an overburdened system, to produce a powerful series of photographs conveying the hardship people experienced. Denied official permission to make the work, Graham’s photographs were taken discreetly, usually without looking through the camera, resulting in a spatial disorientation that emphasised the unmoored distress of vulnerable citizens. The work shocked many on its release – leading Magnum photographers were outraged by its use of colour in a classic documentary topic, while others celebrated how it straddled the world of activism and art (it was exhibited at both Trade Union conferences and the Museum of Modern Art, New York). Graham forged a fresh form of engaged photography, mixing elements of social documentary, ‘new colour’ and reportage to create a striking body of work that endures to this day. Many decades have passed since their making in 1984, but these images have grown not only in photographic importance, but also as a unique historic record of the mid-1980s unemployment crisis in the UK.
Photography monographs
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"Memoryscapes," the second volume in the "Architecture Connecting" series, co-published with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, examines the role of human narratives in shaping the spaces of tomorrow. Focusing on the intersections of architecture with anthropology, archaeology and geology, the book presents the work of two studios whose practices engage deeply with the(...)
Architecture ecologies
April 2026
Architecture connecting: Xu Tiantian & Tsuyoshi Tane
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"Memoryscapes," the second volume in the "Architecture Connecting" series, co-published with the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, examines the role of human narratives in shaping the spaces of tomorrow. Focusing on the intersections of architecture with anthropology, archaeology and geology, the book presents the work of two studios whose practices engage deeply with the past through both broad investigative research and precise architectural responses. Bound back-to-back, the publication comprises two volumes presenting the distinct approaches of DnA Architecture and Design (Beijing) and Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects (ATTA, Tokyo and Paris). DnA’s practice of "architectural acupuncture" focuses on the social and economic regeneration of rural Chinese communities through targeted interventions that revive long-standing cultural practices, while ATTA’s "Archaeology of the Future" draws on the layered memories of places to create future possibilities across architecture, urban planning and exhibition design, in an international context. Led by Xu Tiantian and Tsuyoshi Tane, respectively, the two studios share an approach that connects social traditions, cultural heritage, craftsmanship and production conditions within complex, site-specific frameworks. Through illustrated essays and project dossiers, the publication traces how these practices draw on lived histories and place-based knowledge to generate new architectural narratives, bridging the past and the future in response to contemporary needs.
Architecture ecologies
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Exploring America's material culture, "Common Places" reveals the history, culture, and social and class relationships that are the backdrop of the everyday structures and environments of ordinary people. Examining America's houses and cityscapes, its rural outbuildings and landscapes from perspectives including cultural geography, decorative arts, architectural history,(...)
History until 1900
January 1900, Athens, Georgia
Common places : readings in American vernacular architecture
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Exploring America's material culture, "Common Places" reveals the history, culture, and social and class relationships that are the backdrop of the everyday structures and environments of ordinary people. Examining America's houses and cityscapes, its rural outbuildings and landscapes from perspectives including cultural geography, decorative arts, architectural history, and folklore, these articles reflect the variety and vibrancy of the growing field of vernacular architecture. In essays that focus on buildings and spaces unique to the U.S. landscape, Clay Lancaster, Edward T. Price, John Michael Vlach, and Warren E. Roberts reconstruct the social and cultural contexts of the modern bungalow, the small-town courthouse square, the shotgun house of the South, and the log buildings of the Midwest. Surveying the buildings of America's settlement, scholars including Henry Glassie, Norman Morrison Isham, Edward A. Chappell, and Theodore H. M. Prudon trace European ethnic influences in the folk structures of Delaware and the houses of Rhode Island, in Virginia's Renish homes, and in the Dutch barn widely repeated in rural America. Ethnic, regional, and class differences have flavored the nation's vernacular architecture. Fraser D. Neiman reveals overt changes in houses and outbuildings indicative of the growing social separation and increasingly rigid relations between seventeenth-century Virginia planters and their servants. Fred B. Kniffen and Fred W. Peterson show how, following the westward expansion of the nineteenth century, the structures of the eastern elite were repeated and often rejected by frontier builders. Moving into the twentieth century, James Borchert tracks the transformation of the alley from an urban home for Washington's blacks in the first half of the century to its new status in the gentrified neighborhoods of the last decade, while Barbara Rubin's discussion of the evolution of the commercial strip counterpoints the goals of city planners and more spontaneous forms of urban expression. The illustrations that accompany each article present the artifacts of America's material past. Photographs of individual buildings, historic maps of the nation's agricultural expanse, and descriptions of the household furnishings of the Victorian middle class, the urban immigrant population, and the rural farmer's homestead complete the volume, rooting vernacular architecture to the American people, their lives, and their everyday creations.
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January 1900, Athens, Georgia
History until 1900