Building Brasilia
$82.00
(available to order)
Summary:
‘From nothing; from nothing to construction.’ Thus Marcel Gautherot, the ideal architectural photographer, recalled his epic undertaking in the late 1950s – photographing every step of the construction of the city of Brasilia, from untouched grassland to modern capital. Gautherot had studied architecture and design, and was influenced by Le Corbusier and other(...)
Building Brasilia
Actions:
Price:
$82.00
(available to order)
Summary:
‘From nothing; from nothing to construction.’ Thus Marcel Gautherot, the ideal architectural photographer, recalled his epic undertaking in the late 1950s – photographing every step of the construction of the city of Brasilia, from untouched grassland to modern capital. Gautherot had studied architecture and design, and was influenced by Le Corbusier and other modernist architects as well as the political radicalism of the interwar period. Postwar, however, he devoted his life to travel and photography, taking with him the formal rigour of modernism but also a sympathy for ordinary people that was to help him in his work. After moving to Brazil in 1940, he forged many friendships and partnerships, most notably with Oscar Niemeyer, the chief architect of Brasilia. Indeed, Gautherot recorded most of Niemeyer’s work as his photographer of choice. It was, however, in Brasilia – the high point of the careers of both Niemeyer and chief urban planner Lucio Costa – that the photographer’s art of light and shadow reached its zenith. Gautherot repeatedly visited Brasilia, photographing not only every stage of construction, but also the faces and homes of the workers who worked on the construction sites and satellite cities in the making. The result is a monumental photo essay on this triumph of urban planning and architecture. Here, for the first time, the photographs are collected to form a portfolio of Gautherot’s work in Brasilia, and it pays due tribute to this great Franco-Brazilian artist in the centenary of his birth and on the fiftieth anniversary of Brasilia’s inauguration.
Photography monographs
$80.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Photographer Frédéric Chaubin reveals 90 buildings sited in fourteen former Soviet Republics which express what he considers to be the fourth age of Soviet architecture. His poetic pictures reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These(...)
Photography monographs
September 2010
Cosmic communist constructions photographed
Actions:
Price:
$80.95
(available to order)
Summary:
Photographer Frédéric Chaubin reveals 90 buildings sited in fourteen former Soviet Republics which express what he considers to be the fourth age of Soviet architecture. His poetic pictures reveal an unexpected rebirth of imagination, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no “school” or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Their diversity announced the end of the Soviet Union. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, the holes in the widening net, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Palace of Weddings, Tbilisi). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to Suprematist influence (Prometheus youth camp, Bogatyr). Then comes the "speaking architecture" widespread in the last years of the USSR : a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Institute of Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like Big Brother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad). This puzzle of styles testifies to all the ideological dreams of the period, from the obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity. It also outlines the geography of the USSR, showing how local influences made their exotic twists before the country was brought to its end.
Photography monographs
The minimum dwelling
$96.00
(available in store)
Summary:
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
Actions:
Price:
$96.00
(available in store)
Summary:
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
$39.95
(available to order)
Summary:
As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices--"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons--how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the(...)
The virtual window : from Alberti to Microsoft
Actions:
Price:
$39.95
(available to order)
Summary:
As we spend more and more of our time staring at the screens of movies, televisions, computers, and handheld devices--"windows" full of moving images, texts, and icons--how the world is framed has become as important as what is in the frame. In The Virtual Window, Anne Friedberg examines the window as metaphor, as architectural component, and as an opening to the dematerialized reality we see on the screen. In De pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti famously instructed painters to consider the frame of the painting as an open window. Taking Alberti's metaphor as her starting point, Friedberg tracks shifts in the perspectival paradigm as she gives us histories of the architectural window, developments in glass and transparency, and the emerging apparatuses of photography, cinema, television, and digital imaging. Single-point perspective--Alberti's metaphorical window--has long been challenged by modern painting, modern architecture, and moving-image technologies. And yet, notes Friedberg, for most of the twentieth century the dominant form of the moving image was a single image in a single frame. The fractured modernism exemplified by cubist painting, for example, remained largely confined to experimental, avant-garde work. On the computer screen, however, where multiple "windows" coexist and overlap, perspective may have met its end. In this wide-ranging book, Friedberg considers such topics as the framed view of the camera obscura, Le Corbusier's mandates for the architectural window, Eisenstein's opinions on the shape of the movie screen, and the multiple images and nested windows commonly displayed on screens today. The Virtual Window proposes a new logic of visuality, framed and virtual: an architecture not only of space but of time.
Architectural Theory
books
$58.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The Pan Am Building and the reaction to it signalled the end of an era. Begun when the modernist aesthetic and the architectural star system ruled architectural theory and practice, the completed building became a symbol of modernism's fall from grace. In “The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream”, Meredith Clausen tells the story as both history and(...)
Architecture since 1900, Europe
December 2004, Cambridge, Mass.
The Pan Am building and the shattering of the modernist dream
Actions:
Price:
$58.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The Pan Am Building and the reaction to it signalled the end of an era. Begun when the modernist aesthetic and the architectural star system ruled architectural theory and practice, the completed building became a symbol of modernism's fall from grace. In “The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream”, Meredith Clausen tells the story as both history and cautionary tale -- a case study of how not to plan and execute a large-scale urban project that seems especially relevant in light of the World Trade Center and the ongoing discussions over what should be built in its place. The Pan Am Building was despised by many as soon as the plans were announced in 1958. The star power of the celebrity architects -- those deans of modernism, Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi -- overrode critics' objections. When construction was completed in 1963, it became more than an architectural question; this "mute, massive, over-scaled octagonal slab," as Clausen describes it, built over Grand Central Terminal, blocked the view down Park Avenue, created deep shadows where there had been sunlight, and poured 25,000 office workers on the sidewalks each morning and evening. As Clausen tells it, the story of the building -- which was undistinguished architecturally but important because of its location and its moment in history -- encompasses the end of modernism's social idealism, the decline of Gropius's and Belluschi's reputations, the victory of private interests over public good, the revival of architectural criticism in the press (both Ada Louise Huxtable and Jane Jacobs emerged as prominent and influential critics), the birth of the historic preservation movement, and the changing culture and politics of New York City.
books
December 2004, Cambridge, Mass.
Architecture since 1900, Europe
Louis I. Kahn
$115.00
(available to order)
Summary:
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
Actions:
Price:
$115.00
(available to order)
Summary:
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
$75.95
(available to order)
Summary:
More than one hundred exhibitions of Frank Lloyd Wright's work were mounted between 1894 and his death in 1959. Wright organized the majority of these exhibitions himself and viewed them as crucial to his self-presentation as his extensive writings. He used them to promote his designs, appeal to new viewers, and persuade his detractors. Wright on Exhibit presents the(...)
Wright on exhibit: Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural exhibitions
Actions:
Price:
$75.95
(available to order)
Summary:
More than one hundred exhibitions of Frank Lloyd Wright's work were mounted between 1894 and his death in 1959. Wright organized the majority of these exhibitions himself and viewed them as crucial to his self-presentation as his extensive writings. He used them to promote his designs, appeal to new viewers, and persuade his detractors. Wright on Exhibit presents the first history of this neglected aspect of the architect’s influential career. Drawing extensively from Wright’s unpublished correspondence, Kathryn Smith challenges the preconceived notion of Wright as a self-promoter who displayed his work in search of money, clients, and fame. She shows how he was an artist-architect projecting an avant-garde program, an innovator who expanded the palette of installation design as technology evolved, and a social activist driven to revolutionize society through design. While Wright’s earliest exhibitions were largely for other architects, by the 1930s he was creating public installations intended to inspire debate and change public perceptions about architecture. The nature of his exhibitions expanded with the times beyond models, drawings, and photographs to include more immersive tools such as slides, film, and even a full-scale structure built especially for his 1953 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Placing Wright’s exhibitions side by side with his writings, Smith shows how integral these exhibitions were to his vision and sheds light on the broader discourse concerning architecture and modernism during the first half of the twentieth century. Wright on Exhibit features color renderings, photos, and plans, as well as a checklist of exhibitions and an illustrated catalog of extant and lost models made under Wright’s supervision.
Architecture Monographs
books
Description:
119 pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 26 x 30 cm
Ostfildern, Germany : Hatje Cantz Verlag ; [2015], ©2015
Glass/Wood : Erieta Attali on Kengo Kuma / editor: Erieta Attali ; translation: Gary Dyck (Kengo Kuma's text).
Actions:
Holdings:
Description:
119 pages : chiefly illustrations (some color) ; 26 x 30 cm
books
Ostfildern, Germany : Hatje Cantz Verlag ; [2015], ©2015
books
Description:
236 pages ; 21 cm.
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press ; London : Whitechapel Gallery, 2017.
books
Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press ; London : Whitechapel Gallery, 2017.
$59.95
(available to order)
Summary:
"The Artist as Producer" reshapes our understanding of the fundamental contribution of the Russian avant-garde to the development of modernism. Focusing on the single most important hotbed of Constructivist activity in the early 1920s - the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscow - Maria Gough offers a powerful reinterpretation of the work of the first group of(...)
The artist as producer : Russian Constructivism in revolution
Actions:
Price:
$59.95
(available to order)
Summary:
"The Artist as Producer" reshapes our understanding of the fundamental contribution of the Russian avant-garde to the development of modernism. Focusing on the single most important hotbed of Constructivist activity in the early 1920s - the Institute of Artistic Culture (INKhUK) in Moscow - Maria Gough offers a powerful reinterpretation of the work of the first group of artists to call themselves Constructivists. Her lively narrative ranges from famous figures such as Aleksandr Rodchenko to others who are much less well known, such as Karl Ioganson, a key member of the state-funded INKhUK whose work paved the way for an eventual dematerialization of the integral art object. Through the mining of untapped archives and collections in Russia and Latvia and a close reading of key Constructivist works, Gough highlights fundamental differences among the Moscow group in their handling of the experimental new sculptural form - the spatial construction - and of their subsequent shift to industrial production. "The Artist as Producer" upends the standard view that the Moscow group's formalism and abstraction were incompatible with the sociopolitical imperatives of the new Communist state. It challenges the common equation of Constructivism with functionalism and utilitarianism by delineating a contrary tendency toward non-determinism and an alternate orientation to process rather than product. Finally, the book counters the popular perception that Constructivism failed in its ambition to enter production by presenting the first-ever case study of how a Constructivist could, and in fact did, operate within an industrial environment. "The Artist as Producer" offers provocative new perspectives on three critical issues - formalism, functionalism, and failure - that are of central importance to our understanding not only of the Soviet phenomenon but also of the European vanguards more generally.
Architecture since 1900, Europe