Pamphlet Architecture was begun in 1977 by William Stout and Steven Holl as an independent vehicle for dialogue among architects, and has become a popular venue for publishing the works and thoughts of a younger generation of architects. Small in scale, low in price, but large in impact, these books present and disseminate new and innovative theories. The modest format of the books in the Pamphlet Architecture Series belies the importance and magnitude of the ideas within.
In this volume, the latest addition to the award-winning Pamphlet Architecture series, the authors examine common architectural forms (chairs, doors, and walls) and programs (a cinema, a health club, a skyscraper) in order to dissect and reconfigure them. In the process they create ten new projects that draw their power from an oscillation between the recognizable and the surreal. Cleverly undermining the conventions and norms of contemporary architectural design, the authors pose a direct challenge to the seemingly endless search for new styles, arguing instead that the greatest potential for architecture in the twenty-first century rests on an imaginative examination of what we take for granted. Designed by authors, Situation Normal... weaves together text, photographs, and drawings. An introductory essay establishes the theoretical and historical position of the book.
Holl focuses on a collection of peculiarly American house types. These building forms exhibit a simplicity and integrity of construction and expression that link folk to modern architecture, and they offer a framework for thinking about alternatives to suburban tract housing.
The aim of this book is to expose readers to architecture’s pretexts that include literary narratives, film, theatre, painting, music, and ritual, as a bridge between diverse intellectual territories and architecture. It introduces a selection of seminal modern and contemporary architectural projects, their situation within the built environment, and their intellectual and formal situation/context as pretexts and design paradigms. Connections between diverse bodies of information will be cultivated along with the ability to posit consequential relationships for the production of architecture. Architecture’s Pretexts seeks to cultivate a vision for architecture that sponsors operative links between the discipline of architecture and those outside of architecture. Exploring the works of various architects including Guiseppe Terragni, Peter Eisenman, Peter Zumthor, Perry Kulper and Smout Allen, and Rem Koolhaas, this book provides the framework to understanding architecture through the lens of art. Key concepts discussed are: allegories, diagrams, form, material, montage, movement, musical ratios, narrative sequence and representation. A valuable tool, with over 75 black and white illustrations, for students and professionals interested in interdisciplinary methods of design thinking.
Tracing the connections between music making and built space in both historical and contemporary times, Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam brings together domains of intellectual reflection that have rarely been in dialogue to promote a greater understanding of the centrality of sound production in constructed environments in Muslim religious and cultural expression. Representing the fields of ethnomusicology, anthropology, art history, architecture, history of architecture, religious studies, and Islamic studies, the volume’s contributors consider sonic performances ranging from poetry recitation to art, folk, popular, and ritual musics—as well as religious expressions that are not usually labeled as “music” from an Islamic perspective—in relation to monumental, vernacular, ephemeral, and landscape architectures; interior design; decoration and furniture; urban planning; and geography. Underscoring the intimate relationship between traditional Muslim sonic performances, such as the recitation of the Qur’an or devotional songs, and conventional Muslim architectural spaces, from mosques and Sufi shrines to historic aristocratic villas, gardens, and gymnasiums, the book reveals Islam as an ideal site for investigating the relationship between sound and architecture, which in turn proves to be an innovative and significant angle from which to explore Muslim cultures.
In 1977 Steven Holl and William Stout created a grittier alternative to mainstream architectural publishing called Pamphlet Architecture. With Holl's Bridges, the landmark series was born, and for 30 years Pamphlet has served as soapbox and laboratory for such notable architects and theorists as Lebbeus Woods, Zaha Hadid, Lars Lerup, and Michael Sorkin. With its twenty-eighth installment, Pamphlet Architecture celebrates its thirtieth anniversary no less bold than when it began. Augmented Landscapes features a landscape architecture practice for the first time in Pamphlet history. London's Smout Allen presents five projects that respond to the way in which man has enlarged the landscape through architecture and infrastructure, manipulating and blurring perceptions of what is natural and what is artificial.
Ambiguous Spaces, the newest installment in the Pamphlet Architecture series and a return to Pamphlet's own progressive roots, features the architectural fictions "The Pregnant Island" and "Nuclear Breeding." These two projects develop alternative urban concepts that address the challenges presented by the specific situations and social dynamics described in controversial locations such as the Brazilian Tucurui Dam, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and former English nuclear test sites. Using narrative techniques, fictional programs, ambiguous spaces, and building devices, Ambiguous Spaces explores people, communities, and even entire cities oppressed by a lack of freedom.
War and Architecture is a timely and moving response by architect Lebbeus Woods to the bombing of Sarajevo. With text in both English and Croatian, accompanied by the author's exquisitely drawn, hauntingly beautiful proposals, the book is both dedicated and addressed to the citizens of this ravaged city. Lebbeus Woods has long been fascinated by the intimate ties between architecture and violence. He identifies the two predominant patterns for rebuilding cities following catastrophic destruction: restoring the city exactly to its previous, "historical" state; or "erasing" the remains of the city to construct a new utopia. These, he argues, are twin forms of denial. Woods draws an analogy to the process of biological and emotional healing, presenting architectural forms that act as "injections," "scabs," "scars," and "new tissue," within the complex organism of a city. "Only by facing the insanity of willful destruction," he argues, "can reason begin to believe again in itself."
Participants in the Pamphlet Architecture 30 competition were asked to respond to the theme "Investigations in Infrastructure," and propose new directions for architecture, transportation, energy, cities, and agriculture at a continental scale. The winning entry, Coupling, imagined six daring projects: a high-speed rail system across the Bering Strait that also collects freshwater from the seasonal iceshelf; a decommissioned airport transformed into a geothermal data farm and agriculture site; thickening on/off ramps around "big box" stores into circular parking lots; a call to include landfills in the list of preserved open spaces; and a saline terminal lake turned into a water farm, recreational retreat, and habitat haven. Coupling argues that infrastructures behave as artificially maintained natural systems. Rather than a New Deal approach of massive engineering or iconic infrastructure, Coupling employs adaptable, responsive, small-scale interventions whose impacts are global in scale.
Architects Ken Kaplan and Ted Krueger present a blunt criticism of present social and political conditions. In response to the "dogmatic gas" that they perceive as invading today's architectural ideology, they attempt to find an antidote to the "deluded blather" through architectural experimentation.
