It seems somewhat silly to publish a book filled with pictures of nothing but trademarks; after all, how useful can a book be that deliberately shows pictures of the things that already permeate everyday life? There are trademarks on the clothes I wear, on my coffee cup, and on nearly every product I see on store shelves. One would be hard-pressed to find a more ubiquitous subject matter.

You wouldn’t be wrong to ask such questions, however, Marks of Excellence is much more than a catalog of brand logos. Revised and expanded for its latest edition, the book is filled with over 1,000 color illustrations, each one carefully selected to be an object lesson on some aspect of trademarks the purpose they serve. Used as a launching pad, this collection of trademarks is able to draw connections and bring insight to almost every aspect of their use. Read more…

If they are to be believed, designers cherish their computers, their books, and their cameras. At least, that’s what Frank Phillipin and Billy Kiosoglou were told by most of the 50 designers they interviewed for their book I Used to Be a Design Student. The book, from Laurence King Publishing, lays out a series of profiles of designers, both the way they are now, and as they were as students. Compressed into one volume, it creates a frank look at nearly every aspect of a designer’s life that can be expressed on a page—their process, their inspirations, their projects, their favorite food, their weight. The list goes on.

With the goal of understanding how their processes and motivations have changed, the authors have catalogued the creative evolution of these designers from their days as students to their present careers. There’s no road map to success here, but a trove of interesting insights and, for the aspiring designer, it is full of sound advice that will lead in the right direction. Read more…

“Was James Stirling modernism’s last great prophet, or postmodernism’s original poster child?” If this question keeps you up at night you might not rest any more easily after you’ve finished the book that it launches, Amanda Reeser Lawrence’s James Stirling: Revisionary Modernist. But the fault would rest more with the intriguing excess of ideas that the author presents, rather than the absence of any comparably pithy, one-line answer.

Contemporary architectural taxonomy, when you narrow it down to subjects worth a book-length study, is difficult about as often as it is simple. No boundary is more suspect than one between modernism and postmodernism, where laws become undermined by endless inbred impulses, whether conscious or not. These classification debates can lead to oversimplified questions of whether a building’s appearance suggests doctrinaire rigidity or ironic quotation; that glib test of whether it looks like the Villa Savoye on the one hand or a clock, a buffalo, a tureen,  a Cistercian gristmill on the other. In the absence of other evidence, sometimes purely structural analyses are a fair foundation for these judgments.

Happily, however, Lawrence is engaged in quite a different, and far more rigorous pursuit. She’s concerned with a close analysis of Stirling’s own thinking about his projects and his idiosyncratic conception of modernism, as “a set of principles that transcended association with the contemporary or even with the twentieth century; they had nothing to do with any stylistic language, modern or remote. As Stirling was fond of saying, ‘There’s nothing fundamentally new about modern architecture,’ by which he meant that modern qualities could be found in buildings throughout all of history.”

This may not be a useful way of thinking about either modernism or postmodernism in the larger world, but it certainly is an interesting way to think about James Stirling. Lawrence advances the Harold Bloom-influenced thesis that Stirling’s invocation of the past bore a unique stamp, forsaking reference for its own sake in favor of a vital present-ness.

“’To revision’ something, as Bloom notes, is to literally ‘see’ it ‘again.’ This is a distinct idea from referencing, a more neutral act in which the element brought forward from the past is acknowledged as complete and left more or less intact. The Latin root of ‘reference’ defines an origin point—-in other words, a fixed and knowable beginning. Copying similarly implies that the original element is unmodified; the later version simply a repetition of the earlier incarnation. Re-visioning, on the other hand, acts more violently and more decisively on the precedent, violating its initial terms. The act of revision necessitates some kind of change—-a ‘correction,’ to use Bloom’s term.”

Lawrence takes as her focus only six of her subject’s significant works, those “focused on Stirling’s investigation of historical sources and their investigation to modernism,” a tour which affords a fascinating frame for her thesis but, just as valuably, the opportunity for a rigorous examination of several of Stirling’s greatest works.

An intriguing starting point: a list of Stirling’s declared favorite works while in architecture school featured Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture and Ouevre Complete but also A.E. Richardson’s Monumental Classic Architecture in Britain and Ireland, and Fritz Saxl and Rudolf Wittkower’s British Art and the Mediterranean, a volume I’ve never heard of, but which traces the seemingly very un-Stirlingesque “Mediterranean influence on English art, from prehistory to the nineteenth century.”

We start, unsurprisingly, with Corbusier. Stirling’s Flat at Ham Common (a collaboration with James Gowan) was an acknowledged response to Corb’s Maisons Jaoul, which Stirling repeatedly disparaged for its perceived turn from that architect’s earlier “rationalism.” And why revise a master’s undistinguished work?

Partly, Lawrence speculates, to distinguish the project from prewar modernism and, more importantly, to “rationalize” Corbusier’s precedent. Stirling and Gowan modeled a close accord between structural circumstance and visibility, bathrooms and bedrooms cluster along the structural cross walls, living rooms along the facades freed from load-bearing constraints. They jettisoned French vernacular features, such as the earth roof and the Catalan vault at Jaoul, while turning to English cheap and “messy” Londonstock brick. Later Stirling paired a photo of a window at Ham Common with one of a Liverpool dock, to emphasize a natural English connection; at the same time he was tidying the perceived irrationality of Jaoul. He referred to bricks as a “9-inch-by-4 ½ inch pre-cast-system” and used them precisely here, distinctly differentiating brick sections of the facade from concrete, another retort to the perceived subjective sloppiness of Corbusier’s treatment of these two materials at Jaoul.

Stirling and Gowan, Ham Common. The de Stijl–influenced stair volume of the two-story buildings. Photo: James Stirling/Michael Wilford fonds
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal © CCA

Stirling’s and Gowan’s game becomes subtler in the next example, the design for Churchill College at Cambridge. Here they embrace the traditional courtyard model, on a vast scale. “More broadly, symmetry at Churchill was put in the service of a very different ideological goal than it had been for the Neo-Palladians,” writes the author. “Rather than operating as any kind of idealizing or historicizing impulse, it instead became a means to distill the core attributes of the courtyard type into a pure form, to reduce the courtyard model to its essence. For example, the idiosyncratic outer walls of a typical Cambridge college that must respond to existing structures or sight constraints are here, in the absence of any context, made rectilinear; the ‘quadrangle,’ more often than not a five- or six-sided shape, with randomly angled sides of uneven lengths, its taken to its logical endpoint of a perfect square; the usually erratic paths across the courtyard are now straightened and evenly spaced. Symmetry, then, as employed at Churchill College, abstracts and ‘corrects’ the typical features of the Cambridge College…” Read more…

The view looking up nearly any avenue in Manhattan is more or less the same: buildings line a ruler-straight street all the way to the horizon. But the view up Park Avenue, south of 42nd Street is cut short. Grand Central Terminal, the city’s iconic train station sits over the avenue, which leads up to it like a grand boulevard. Its preeminence in the physical landscape accurately reflects the terminal’s preeminent place in New York’s cultural landscape as well. Grand Central has remained in this spot for one hundred years; it almost seems as though this is the only way it could have been.

But the longevity of Grand Central Station did not always appear so inevitable. When it was completed in 1913, Grand Central Terminal replaced the earlier Grand Central Station, itself built to expand the original Grand Central Depot. Three rail stations in under half a century? This made the new terminal seem likely to be as ephemeral as its predecessors had been. Yet, Grand Central has stood for one hundred years, and in New York City that is no small feat.

In commemoration of its centennial the New York Transit Museum has released a new book, Grand Central Terminal: 100 years of a New York Landmark. Rather than try to offer a comprehensive history, the book takes a close look at various moments in the terminal’s life. Through these vignettes, we’re reminded that it was not the functionality of the station, or the magnificent architecture alone that gave Grand Central its staying power. Rather, it was the Grand Central’s ability to carve its own special place in the city, and come to represent so many different things to different people. Imagining New York without Grand Central Terminal now is like trying to imagine it without a Central Park or a Wall Street. Read more…

The Campana brothers, Fernando and Humberto, are without a doubt two of the most prominent Brazilian designers out there. Until February 24^th, much of their work will be on display in North America as part of the traveling exhibition Antibodies: The Works of Fernando and Humberto Campana, at the Palm Springs Art Museum in southern California. The career-spanning show (provided by the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany) includes many of the brothers’ best known pieces, along with prototypes, artwork, interviews and other related material.

The Campanas’ Favela Chair, inspired by the favelas of their native Sao Paulo. Courtesy Edra.

The brothers have spent thirty years experimenting with designs that embody the colorful character of their home country. Their style of creating is best exemplified by their trademark use of found materials, which deliberately focuses on the possibilities of each material, only considering form and function secondarily.

The Sushi Chair. Courtesy Edra.

The 2010 book Campana Brothers: Complete Works (So Far) is another career-spanning collection of their work, and provides in one volume the most comprehensive look at this eccentric body of work available. Both collections prove that the most striking examples of the Campanas’ design were created through an improvisational approach to design. This has allowed them to experiment with and reinterpret the use of materials during the construction of each project. One notable creation, the sushi chair, began as an exploration of the use of upholstery. It is made out of discarded scraps of fabric, foam and carpet, which have been bundled together to form a seat, the beauty of the design originating in the chaos of its provenience.

Campana Brothers: Complete Works (So Far) book cover. Courtesy betterworldbooks.com. Read more…

“Wave Signal”                                                                                          Photo:  Joseph G. Brin © 2012

Sweeping ocean vistas display their obvious beauty but waves speak an arcane language all their own. Frederic Raichlen, professor emeritus at Caltech and an expert on coastal engineering and wave mechanics, has a new book Waves (MIT Press). He is a kind of wave whisperer.

A colleague once claimed that MIT Press could take any subject and make it boring. They failed here since this little pocket book, the latest in their “Essential Knowledge” series, is fascinating.

Raichlen presents a specific formula, then suggests measuring wave intervals with a stop watch, “it’s like taking the pulse of the ocean.” The book may not be for the math phobic. But you can still glean a more scientific appreciation of ocean wave phenomena and coastal transformation that will only increase your awe of 50 foot high tsunamis, 80 foot high rogue waves…and tiny ripples lifted by a gentle breeze across a pond.

Raichlen then converts your bathtub into a handy testing tank for wave generation, pushing down and lifting water with the palm of the hand making homemade tsunamis…at scale.

He discusses strategies and limitations of coastal breakwaters, seawalls and the like. His analysis of water and rock erosion by conceptual diagrams is intriguing. Additionally, as the best teachers do, he deftly applies analogy, illustrating an earthquake’s effects by way of a piano keyboard.

Waves gave me a more substantial understanding of the coastal impact of global warming. Surprisingly, though, I don’t think there was a single mention of the term in the entire book.

Photo: Han Singels. Uiterwaarden bij Graaf, 2005 colour print, collection artist

Sweet & Salt, an elegant tome by Tracy Metz & Maartje van den Heuvel, provides further illumination as they outline the history of Dutch attempts to tame the ocean. This is combined with a broad survey of the arts and water, inspiring creative use of landscape design and water. As pioneers and masters of water control and containment, the Dutch have “been there, done that” but are now moving towards a more zen-like philosophy of accommodation.

The cost to render invincible some 3,600 miles of U.S. eastern coastline in the face of impending oceanic doom is beyond both possibility and calculation. A recent, invaluable, short article (for the New Yorker) by Eric Klinenberg, “Adaptation,” provides other perspectives on the problem that may not make for dramatic headlines but is profound, nevertheless.

Social scientists have documented how relative social cohesion of one neighborhood allows its residents to survive natural disasters (like heat waves) as compared to adjacent populations of the same economic status, same demographic makeup facing the same forces of destruction – a prescriptive microcosm for a critically interdependent society.

As Klinenberg’s article indicates, even if the causes of climate change were halted today we’ve already bought decades of rising sea levels and fearsome atmospheric aberrations that will have to be faced.

Across the world, new strategies are cropping up including floating pavilions, smart power grids, wetland restoration, farming new oyster beds, retreating to higher ground, and so on. Debate rages over whether or not to build massively expensive “hard” solutions, that take too long to build and are only temporary defenses against surges, not rising sea levels. A growing “architecture of accommodation” is what Klinenberg anticipates. A more subtle point is that these responses should represent a duality of purpose, enhancing ordinary city life not just thwarting disaster.

Neptune, God of the Sea, just called. And he’s upset. His eternal rhythms are increasingly contorted by strange influences from man-made atmospheres. Those who have camped their civilization at water’s edge now face Neptune’s revenge.

Creativity has to answer his call with optimism across all borders technical, social, and political. Essentially, affirming interdependence, a gift we’ve been blessed with since, at least, the Stone Age.

“Neptune’s Reach”                                                                                    Photo: Joseph G. Brin © 2012

Joseph G. Brin is an architect, fine artist, and writer based in Philadelphia, PA.

Before his graphic commentary on the urban environment and its quirky denizens began to occupy the last page of Metropolis in 1998, we asked Ben Katchor to contribute to the magazine. His provocative visual-verbal narratives on urban manufacturing and sustainability grounded our preoccupation with these topics, still in the headlines. (Note President Obama’s second-term inauguration speech, in which the economy and climate change play important roles.)

On our May 1995 cover, Ben brought to life our story, Made in New York: The Art of Urban Manufacturing. He envisioned the look and feel of a many-layered city occupied by ordinary people, who are never quite so ordinary, making everything from Chinese food products to plywood shiva benches. When, in September 1996, we took a deep deep-dive into the subject of sustainability and the built environment, Ben showed what the city might look and feel like in 2030, if sustainable practices prevailed or if they didn’t. He saw a lively green city with bustling street life versus an abandoned pile of skyscrapers seen in the distance,  “From her concrete porch in her [subterranean] suburban home, Mrs. Levitt [wearing a gas mask] watches the sun set over a forsaken city.”

Each month for 15 years now, I look forward to reading Ben’s column as the magazine is being produced. And each month I chuckle at the foibles of teeming humanity negotiating the complex, friendly, awful, graceful urban environment where the new dukes it out with remnants of an ever-present past.  This is where we meet the architect who over-designs a light switch only to have a contractor install a cheap, noisy mechanism behind it, scaring the kids; or a man inside a Miesian skyscraper desperately trying to meet up with a woman on the windswept plaza below but she will have none of it. Modern architecture, it seems, can stifle romance.

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Phaidon Carrying Case

The largest book I own is the 20^th Century World Architecture: The Phaidon Atlas.  It’s 13.5 by 22 inches. Amazon indicates that its shipping weight is 18.2 pounds. The cardboard carrying case with handles helps. So yes, that’s a lot of architecture. “The most outstanding works of architecture built between 1900 ad 1999” means 757 buildings to the publisher, though some of your favorite buildings may be missing. But you get the distinct sense that if Phaidon had produced a more comprehensive volume the world may have run out of paper.  Those on offer are, of course, excellent.

Any comment about the selections is simply going to layer my cherry picking on top of that of the “expert industry panel with input from over 150 specialist advisors from every geographic region” that determined the book’s contents. So before getting to that part of the orchard, an overview. One interesting conceit is that all of the buildings in the book are still extant (find your Imperial Hotel in some other book) and even accompanied by coordinates of longitude and latitude, which might be practically useful if you happen to have a GPS and a native porter for carrying the book.

The buildings within are organized by regional groupings whose representation plays out around the way that these things normally do: about half of them are European, although more-frequently-unnoticed architectural continents aren’t quite glossed over. There are 72 pages on South America and 52 in Africa. The atlas doesn’t stop at that. Each subsection includes a breakdown of projects by local as opposed to foreign architects, which largely displays the ebbing of European global design hegemony. Additional early charts illustrate the movements of architects: There’s of course an influx to the US and the UK in the 1930s and 40s, but otherwise a riot of lines of intriguing origin and destination.

It’s difficult to detect a curatorial bias in terms of styles or years. Europe’s strongest decade was the 1930s. North America and Africa boast the largest relative number of buildings from the 1950s and 1960s.  Asia shows the greatest comparative strength in the 1980s. Aalto, Breuer, Le Corbusier, Mendelsohn, Van Der Rohe, and Wright lead the pack in individual selections represented; no surprise there.  Some entries stretch beyond the linear “building”. New Delhi and Brasilia are represented along with a few master plans that seem worthy of recognition even if their constituent structures had varied designers, such as Potsdamner Platz in Berlin or EUR in Rome.  It’s difficult to argue with these grand inclusions on any categorical ground.

Bank of Guatamela

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Mies Van Der Rohe’s 860-880 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago (c/o Wayne Andrews/Esto)

The subtitle of Matthew Gordon Lasner’s High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century might suggest a story of determined residential heterodoxy. Could this book be about the rare, defiantly urban souls opting for the sleek new high-rise as the rest of the old neighborhood packs up for the suburbs? Indeed, for a time that was true, but the real story is nowhere near as simple, and a good deal more interesting.

Co-operative housing’s (we don’t get to the actual term “condominium” for a while yet) pattern of growth roughly paralleled that of the schedule one controlled substance; pioneered by the rich, it soon caught on among the urban poor, and finally grew ubiquitous across income scales. It was considerably unusual for some time in the U.S., to be found mainly in pockets around New York and a preserve of the Edith Wharton-like gentry, and later of politically minded, often Jewish working classes. But long before the time, say, American Psycho came along to emblazon the cultural image of the condo, co-ops of some sort or another were just as likely to be found in Miami or in the San Fernando Valley as on the Upper East Side, and just as likely to be occupied by retirees or families as by necrophiliac yuppies.

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Stripes: Design Between the Lines
By Linda O’Keefe
The Monacelli Press, 224 pages, $50.00
Image courtesy of The Monacelli Press

Stripes, with their smooth and clean flow, may be the most straightforward of all decorative markings. Yet, for all their simplicity, stripes continuously create drama, both aesthetically and in societal terms.

Dramatically illustrated with photographs of the fashion, art, architecture, and furnishings that stripes have adorned over the centuries, Linda O’Keefe’s book tells a story that began thousands of years ago in ancient caves. The social context of stripes can be found as far back as biblical times when Matthew speaks of the privileged children of great men who “oft had their garments striped with divers colors.” Since then the markings have never ceased to cause controversy.

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