$49.00
(available to order)
Summary:
From the onset of her career, Charlotte Perriand was a maverick who believed in good design as a force for the betterment of society. Many young designers would be devastated by a rejection from Le Corbusier’s studio, but when the great architect told her they had no use for a female furniture designer, Perriand only became more determined to prove her mettle as an(...)
Charlotte Perriand: the modern life
Actions:
Price:
$49.00
(available to order)
Summary:
From the onset of her career, Charlotte Perriand was a maverick who believed in good design as a force for the betterment of society. Many young designers would be devastated by a rejection from Le Corbusier’s studio, but when the great architect told her they had no use for a female furniture designer, Perriand only became more determined to prove her mettle as an artist. Under Le Corbusier, and long after she left his studio, Perriand’s contributions to both furniture design and architecture demonstrated a unique attention to the organic artistry of nature as well as the egalitarian possibilities of the machine age. Her leftwing populist politics motivated much of her work, from modular furniture systems to major architectural projects. This monograph explores Perriand’s most famous interiors, original furniture and architectural projects, as well as her never-before-seen sketchbooks, shedding new light on her creative process and place in design history.
Design Monographs
Michael Gessner: Masse
$65.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Michael Gessner’s Masse sheds sharp new light on the signifiers of surveillance embedded in everyday life. Conceived as a sociological exploration of mass behaviour in the digital age, the photo book invites contemplation on the myriad ways in which individuals are monitored – and in which they monitor themselves – as they transition through the blurred boundaries between(...)
Michael Gessner: Masse
Actions:
Price:
$65.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Michael Gessner’s Masse sheds sharp new light on the signifiers of surveillance embedded in everyday life. Conceived as a sociological exploration of mass behaviour in the digital age, the photo book invites contemplation on the myriad ways in which individuals are monitored – and in which they monitor themselves – as they transition through the blurred boundaries between the digital and the physical. Scattered throughout, a series of six abstract works depicts shards of a circuit board splintering into ever smaller fragments – as traces of the surveillance society come into focus, so too does the digital copy of the self become increasingly nuanced. Across Gessner’s works, the restrained seduction of his visual language, executed with unfaltering precision, contrasts starkly with the complexity of the subject his camera examines. Lured into a conceptual panopticon, the viewer looks in from the edge and gazes out from the centre of the mass; at once the observer and the observed.
Photography monographs
$38.50
(available to order)
Summary:
The People’s Action against the Nordic Áltá-Guovdageaidnu Waterway (c. 1978-82) radically shook the course of history in the region. Its call to ''let the river live'' clamored against the construction of a large dam across the Alltáeatnu river in Norway. The action grew to an unexpectedly broad movement of solidarity across civil society—Sámi and Norwegian, as well as(...)
Art Theory
February 2021
Let the river flow: An eco-indigenous uprising and its legacies in art and politics
Actions:
Price:
$38.50
(available to order)
Summary:
The People’s Action against the Nordic Áltá-Guovdageaidnu Waterway (c. 1978-82) radically shook the course of history in the region. Its call to ''let the river live'' clamored against the construction of a large dam across the Alltáeatnu river in Norway. The action grew to an unexpectedly broad movement of solidarity across civil society—Sámi and Norwegian, as well as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples internationally—in which Sámi artists played a pivotal role. ''Let the river flow'' takes this eco-Indigenous rebellion, the first in Europe and inspirational worldwide, to reflect on events at the time and their correlations with international artists’ eco actions today. It is conceived as a reader, and addresses innovations in political organizing, new influences of Indigenous thinking on contemporary politics and the centrality of artists within the constellation of these activities. It also considers other Indigenous artists’ protests that happened in parallel to the actions mentioned.
Art Theory
$38.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In this book, Timothy Hyde considers the role of aesthetic judgment in architectural debates and their resulting social effects across three centuries of British architectural history. From eighteenth-century ideas about Stonehenge to Prince Charles’s opinions about the National Gallery, Hyde uncovers a new story of aesthetic judgment, where arguments about architectural(...)
Ugliness and judgment: On architecture in the public eye
Actions:
Price:
$38.95
(available to order)
Summary:
In this book, Timothy Hyde considers the role of aesthetic judgment in architectural debates and their resulting social effects across three centuries of British architectural history. From eighteenth-century ideas about Stonehenge to Prince Charles’s opinions about the National Gallery, Hyde uncovers a new story of aesthetic judgment, where arguments about architectural ugliness do not pertain solely to buildings or assessments of style, but intrude into other spheres of civil society. Hyde explores how accidental and willful conditions of ugliness have been debated in parliamentary committees, courtrooms, and public inquiries. He recounts how architects such as Christopher Wren, John Soane, James Stirling, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe have been summoned by tribunals of aesthetic judgment. With his novel scrutiny of lawsuits for libel, changing paradigms of nuisance law, and conventions of monarchical privilege, he shows how aesthetic judgments have become entangled in wider assessments of art, science, religion, political economy, and the state.
Architectural Theory
$37.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Ron Thom came of age in the mid-20th century, just as the modern movement and an impending building boom were about to reshape the country. Talented in music and art as well as design, he rejected sleek austerity in favor of modern architecture that is warm, intimate, and beautiful. He worked from coast to coast, and his most renowned buildings-Massey College, Trent(...)
Ron Thom, architect. The life of a creative modernist
Actions:
Price:
$37.95
(available in store)
Summary:
Ron Thom came of age in the mid-20th century, just as the modern movement and an impending building boom were about to reshape the country. Talented in music and art as well as design, he rejected sleek austerity in favor of modern architecture that is warm, intimate, and beautiful. He worked from coast to coast, and his most renowned buildings-Massey College, Trent University, the Shaw Festival Theatre, and landmark houses-continue to inspire generations of architects, as well as the legions of people who work, study, visit, and live in them. In this new biography, Ron Thom emerges as a complex figure, gifted with creative genius but pursued by demons. More than just the life story of one man, this book is a portrait of the society that shaped him. His world included Jack Shadbolt, Arthur Erickson, the Massey family, Barbara and Murray Frum, and many other luminaries of 20th-century Canada.
Canadian Architects
$63.50
(available to order)
Summary:
A collection of timely new scholarship, ''Repair: Sustainable design futures'' investigates repair as a contemporary expression of empowerment, agency, and resistance to our unmaking of the world and the environment. Repair is an act, metaphor, and foundation for opening up a dialogue about design’s role in proposing radically different social, environmental, and economic(...)
Repair: Sustainable design futures
Actions:
Price:
$63.50
(available to order)
Summary:
A collection of timely new scholarship, ''Repair: Sustainable design futures'' investigates repair as a contemporary expression of empowerment, agency, and resistance to our unmaking of the world and the environment. Repair is an act, metaphor, and foundation for opening up a dialogue about design’s role in proposing radically different social, environmental, and economic futures. Thematically expansive and richly illustrated, with over 125 visuals, this volume features an international, interdisciplinary group of contributors from across the design spectrum whose voices and artwork speak to how we might address our broken social and physical worlds. Organized around reparative thinking and practices, the book includes 30 long and short chapters, photo essays, and interviews that focus on multiple responses to fractured systems, relationships, cities, architecture, objects, and more. ''Repair'' will encourage students, academics, researchers, and practitioners in art, design and architecture practice and theory, cultural studies, environment and sustainability, to discuss, engage, and rethink the act of repair and its impact on our society and environment.
Design Theory
$33.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Caroline Constant examines diverse approaches to landscape in the work of architects practicing in Europe and the United States between 1915 and the mid-1980s. Case studies highlight landscapes in the public realm rather than the private garden, which had been a primary focus of much Western landscape theory and practice during the early decades of the century. These(...)
The modern architectural landscape
Actions:
Price:
$33.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Caroline Constant examines diverse approaches to landscape in the work of architects practicing in Europe and the United States between 1915 and the mid-1980s. Case studies highlight landscapes in the public realm rather than the private garden, which had been a primary focus of much Western landscape theory and practice during the early decades of the century. These landscapes do more than accommodate the functional needs of the evolving mass society in parks, playgrounds, and places of assembly; they give formal expression to Modern Movement social and political ideologies, engaging the symbolic potential of the modern landscape—particularly in its ability to take on new, more democratic forms of social organization. Approaching landscape as an essential component of modern architecture’s constructive endowment of material with social value, The Modern Architectural Landscape focuses on the precise material forms and ideological underpinnings of landscapes conceived by architects, revealing them as salient to the formulation of both modern architecture and the modern landscape.
Landscape Theory
House and home in modern Japan : architecture, domestic space, and bourgeois culture, 1880-1930
$31.50
(available to order)
Summary:
A house is a site, the bounds and focus of a community. It is also an artefact, a material extension of its occupants' lives. This book takes the Japanese house in both senses, as site and as artefact, and explores the spaces, commodities, and conceptions of community associated with it in the modern era. As Japan modernized, the principles that had traditionally(...)
History until 1900, Asia
September 2005, Cambridge, Massachusetts
House and home in modern Japan : architecture, domestic space, and bourgeois culture, 1880-1930
Actions:
Price:
$31.50
(available to order)
Summary:
A house is a site, the bounds and focus of a community. It is also an artefact, a material extension of its occupants' lives. This book takes the Japanese house in both senses, as site and as artefact, and explores the spaces, commodities, and conceptions of community associated with it in the modern era. As Japan modernized, the principles that had traditionally related house and family began to break down. Even where the traditional class markers surrounding the house persisted, they became vessels for new meanings, as housing was resituated in a new nexus of relations. The house as artefact and the artefacts it housed were affected in turn. The construction and ornament of houses ceased to be stable indications of their occupants' social status, the home became a means of personal expression, and the act of dwelling was reconceived in terms of consumption. Amid the breakdown of inherited meanings and the fluidity of modern society, not only did the increased diversity of commodities lead to material elaboration of dwellings, but home itself became an object of special attention, its importance emphasized in writing, invoked in politics, and articulated in architectural design. The aim of this book is to show the features of this culture of the home as it took shape in Japan.
History until 1900, Asia
Murakami Takashi
$84.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Takashi Murakami is one of contemporary art’s most innovative and important figures. Drawing from street culture, high art, and traditional Japanese painting, Murakami takes the contemporary art trend of mixing high and low to an unprecedented level (critics call him the new Warhol), producing original paintings and sculptures as well as mass-produced consumer objects(...)
Contemporary Art Monographs
October 2007, Los Angeles, New York
Murakami Takashi
Actions:
Price:
$84.00
(available to order)
Summary:
Takashi Murakami is one of contemporary art’s most innovative and important figures. Drawing from street culture, high art, and traditional Japanese painting, Murakami takes the contemporary art trend of mixing high and low to an unprecedented level (critics call him the new Warhol), producing original paintings and sculptures as well as mass-produced consumer objects such as toys, books, and most famously, a line of handbags for Louis Vuitton. A committed supporter and spokesperson for Japanese artists and a powerful commentator on postwar culture and society, Murakami has organized influential exhibitions of Japanese art as well as a biannual art fair in Tokyo. Murakami has positioned himself as a new type of artist for the twenty-first century: a hybrid of creator, entrepreneur, and cultural ambassador.In conjunction with the first major retrospective of his work, Murakami traces Murakami’s global impact socially, culturally, and art historically. Essays focus on Murakami’s early works, which were based on a social critique of Japan’s rampant consumerism; the development of his characters; his work with anime, fantasy; otaku culture; and his engagement with global pop culture. Representing output from original works of art to mass-produced multiples, the catalogue also considers the implications of Murakami’s working methods within the tradition of the Western avant-garde.
Contemporary Art Monographs
books
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The Hamptons, New York's fashionable summer beach resorts, are well known as weekend havens for city-dwellers who relish their idyllic setting on the Atlantic shore. Once quiet agricultural land, Eastern Long Island first became popular among artists,(...)
Weekend utopia : modern living in the Hamptons
Actions:
Price:
$49.95
(available to order)
Summary:
The Hamptons, New York's fashionable summer beach resorts, are well known as weekend havens for city-dwellers who relish their idyllic setting on the Atlantic shore. Once quiet agricultural land, Eastern Long Island first became popular among artists, architects, writers, and society patrons in the 1920s, when it served as a breeding ground for modernism. From the avant-garde influence of luminaries like Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, and Willem de Kooning, to the high modernism of Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, and Richard Meier, new ideas about art, architecture, and modern living transformed the Hamptons and ultimately made it the destination of choice for those seeking respite from the battles of Wall Street and Madison Avenue. In "Weekend Utopia" Alastair Gordon traces this fascinating and complicated trajectory, both in architectural terms--looking at modest beach houses and modern mansions alike--and in the life stories of the world-famous artists and designers, whose influence is felt on "The Island" even today. Over 175 photographs and illustrations detail the architecture, interiors, and nuances of these beautiful weekend homes, and provide an intimate portrait of the people who inhabit them. This book combines architectural history with a broad social perspective and paints a comprehensive picture of an area that in many ways shaped modern American culture.
books
May 2001, New York
Residential Architecture