Architecture and Objects
Architecture and Objects

Author: Graham Harman

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1452962359

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Thinking through object-oriented ontology—and the work of architects such as Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid—to explore new concepts of the relationship between form and function Object-oriented ontology has become increasingly popular among architectural theorists and practitioners in recent years. Architecture and Objects, the first book on architecture by the founder of object-oriented ontology (OOO), deepens the exchange between architecture and philosophy, providing a new roadmap to OOO’s influence on the language and practice of contemporary architecture and offering new conceptions of the relationship between form and function. Graham Harman opens with a critique of Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze, the three philosophers whose ideas have left the deepest imprint on the field, highlighting the limits of their thinking for architecture. Instead, Harman contends, architecture can employ OOO to reconsider traditional notions of form and function that emphasize their relational characteristics—form with a building’s visual style, function with its stated purpose—and constrain architecture’s possibilities through literalism. Harman challenges these understandings by proposing de-relationalized versions of both (zero-form and zero-function) that together provide a convincing rejoinder to Immanuel Kant’s dismissal of architecture as “impure.” Through critical engagement with the writings of Peter Eisenman and fresh assessments of buildings by Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid, Architecture and Objects forwards a bold vision of architecture. Overcoming the difficult task of “zeroing” function, Harman concludes, would place architecture at the forefront of a necessary revitalization of exhausted aesthetic paradigms.

Situated Objects
Situated Objects

Author: Stanley T. Allen

Publisher: Park Publishing (WI)

Published: 2021-03-15

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9783038602040

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Stan Allen is an architect and educator who has won global acclaim, primarily for his work in town planning and his influential 1996 essay "Field Conditions." His new book Situated Objects shows a unique facet of his creative process: a selection of small buildings and projects on rural sites, most of them situated within the landscape of the Hudson Valley, New York. They demonstrate an approach to architecture that engages in a dialogue with this partly wild and wholly non-urban environment that lies just outside the gates of New York City. The projects are presented in drawings and a rich array of images by celebrated photographer Scott Benedict. They are arranged in three thematic categories: Outbuildings, Material Histories, and New Natures, supplemented by the architect's writings and essays contributed by Helen Thomas and Jesús Vassallo. The first book on Stan Allen's buildings, Situated Objects highlights Allen's personal engagement with American material traditions, the conventions of architectural drawing, and the challenge of building with nature.

Printing Architecture
Printing Architecture

Author: Ronald Rael

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Published: 2018-05-22

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1616897473

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Although 3D printing promises a revolution in many industries, primarily industrial manufacturing, nowhere are the possibilities greater than in the field of product design and modular architecture. Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, of the cutting-edge San Francisco–based design firm Emerging Objects, have developed remarkable techniques for "printing" from a wide variety of powders, including sawdust, clay, cement, rubber, concrete, salt, and even coffee grounds, opening an entire realm of material, phenomenological, and ecological possibilities to designers. In addition to case studies and illustrations of their own work, Rael and San Fratello offer guidance for sourcing alternative materials, specific recipes for mixing compounds, and step-by-step instructions for conducting bench tests and setting parameters for material testing, to help readers to understand the process of developing powder-based materials and their unique qualities.

Extinct
Extinct

Author: Barbara Penner

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2021-11-11

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1789144531

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Blending architecture, design, and technology, a visual tour through futures past via the objects we have replaced, left behind, and forgotten. So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simply forgotten. Extinct gathers together an exceptional range of artists, curators, architects, critics, and academics, including Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll, Deyan Sudjic, Tacita Dean, Emily Orr, Richard Wentworth, and many more. In eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world. Extinct is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never came to pass. It is also a visual treat, full of interest and delight.

Drawing on Architecture
Drawing on Architecture

Author: Jordan Kauffman

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-06-01

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 0262037378

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How architectural drawings emerged as aesthetic objects, promoted by a network of galleries, collectors, and institutions, and how this changed the understanding of architecture. Prior to the 1970s, buildings were commonly understood to be the goal of architectural practice; architectural drawings were seen simply as a means to an end. But, just as the boundaries of architecture itself were shifting at the end of the twentieth century, the perception of architectural drawings was also shifting; they began to be seen as autonomous objects outside the process of building. In Drawing on Architecture, Jordan Kauffman offers an account of how architectural drawings—promoted by a network of galleries and collectors, exhibitions and events—emerged as aesthetic objects and ultimately attained status as important cultural and historical artifacts, and how this was both emblematic of changes in architecture and a catalyst for these changes. Kauffman traces moments of critical importance to the evolution of the perception of architectural drawings, beginning with exhibitions that featured architectural drawings displayed in ways that did not elucidate buildings but treated them as meaningful objects in their own right. When architectural drawings were seen as having intrinsic value, they became collectible, and Kauffman chronicles early collectors, galleries, and sales. He discusses three key exhibitions at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York; other galleries around the world that specialized in architectural drawings; the founding of architecture museums that understood and collected drawings as important cultural and historical artifacts; and the effect of the new significance of architectural drawings on architecture and architectural history. Drawing on interviews with more than forty people directly involved with the events described and on extensive archival research, Kauffman shows how architectural drawings became the driving force in architectural debate in an era of change.

Geometrical Objects
Geometrical Objects

Author: Anthony Gerbino

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-07-21

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 331905998X

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This volume explores the mathematical character of architectural practice in diverse pre- and early modern contexts. It takes an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, which unites scholarship in early modern architecture with recent work in the history of science, in particular, on the role of practice in the “scientific revolution”. As a contribution to architectural history, the volume contextualizes design and construction in terms of contemporary mathematical knowledge, attendant forms of mathematical practice, and relevant social distinctions between the mathematical professions. As a contribution to the history of science, the volume presents a series of micro-historical studies that highlight issues of process, materiality, and knowledge production in specific, situated, practical contexts. Our approach sees the designer’s studio, the stone-yard, the drawing floor, and construction site not merely as places where the architectural object takes shape, but where mathematical knowledge itself is deployed, exchanged, and amplified among various participants in the building process.

Atmospheres
Atmospheres

Author: Peter Zumthor

Publisher: Birkhaüser

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13:

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What really constitutes an architectural atmosphere," Peter Zumthor says, is this singular density and mood, this feeling of presence, well-being, harmony, beauty ... under whose spell I experience what I otherwise would not experience in precisely this way." Zumthor's passion is the creation of buildings that produce this kind of effect, but how can one actually set out to achieve it? In nine short, illustrated chapters framed as a process of self-observation, Peter Zumthor describes what he has on his mind as he sets about creating the atmosphere of his houses. Images of spaces and buildings that affect him are every bit as important as particular pieces of music or books that inspire him. From the composition and presence" of the materials to the handling of proportions and the effect of light, this poetics of architecture enables the reader to recapitulate what really matters in the process of house design.

Installations by Architects
Installations by Architects

Author: Sarah Bonnemaison

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Published: 2009-08-12

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 9781568988504

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Over the last few decades, a rich and increasingly diverse practice has emerged in the art world that invites the public to touch, enter, and experience the work, whether it is in a gallery, on city streets, or in the landscape. Like architecture, many of these temporary artworks aspire to alter viewers' experience of the environment. An installation is usually the end product for an artist, but for architects it can also be a preliminary step in an ongoing design process. Like paper projects designed in the absence of "real" architecture, installations offer architects another way to engage in issues critical to their practice. Direct experimentation with architecture's material and social dimensions engages the public around issues in the built environment that concern them and expands the ways that architecture can participate in and impact people's everyday lives. The first survey of its kind, Installations by Architects features fifty of the most significant projects from the last twenty-five years by today's most exciting architects, including Anderson Anderson, Philip Beesley, Diller + Scofidio, John Hejduk, Dan Hoffman, and Kuth/Ranieri Architects. Projects are grouped in critical areas of discussion under the themes of tectonics, body, nature, memory, and public space. Each project is supplemented by interviews with the project architects and the discussions of critics and theorists situated within a larger intellectual context. There is no doubt that installations will continue to play a critical role in the practice of architecture. Installations by Architects aims to contribute to the role of installations in sharpening our understanding of the built environment.