This generously illustrated examination of architectural photography from the 1930s to the present shows how the medium has helped shape familiar views of iconic buildings. Photography has both manipulated and bolstered our appreciation of modern architecture. With beautiful photographs of private and public buildings by Julius Shulman, Candida Höfer, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and others, this book examines the central and active role that photography plays in defining and perpetuating the iconic nature of buildings and places. This volume shows how different photographers represent the same building, offers commentaries on the "American dream," and explores changes in commercial architectural photography. Placing decades-old images alongside modern ones, Image Building depicts the idea of the comfortable middle-class home and the construction of suburbia as an ironic ideal. It presents the ways that public spaces such as libraries, museums, theaters, and office buildings are experienced differently as photographers highlight the social, cultural, psychological, and aesthetic conditions to reveal the layered meanings of place and identity. Looking at how photography shapes and frames our understanding of architecture, this volume offers thought-provoking points of view through an exploration of social and cultural issues. Published in association with the Parrish Art Museum
An account of the life and work of the architect Minoru Yamasaki that leads the author to consider how (and for whom) architectural history is written. Sandfuture is a book about the life of the architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), who remains on the margins of history despite the enormous influence of his work on American architecture and society. That Yamasaki’s most famous projects—the Pruitt-Igoe apartments in St. Louis and the original World Trade Center in New York—were both destroyed on national television, thirty years apart, makes his relative obscurity all the more remarkable. Sandfuture is also a book about an artist interrogating art and architecture’s role in culture as New York changes drastically after a decade bracketed by terrorism and natural disaster. From the central thread of Yamasaki’s life, Sandfuture spirals outward to include reflections on a wide range of subjects, from the figure of the architect in literature and film and transformations in the contemporary art market to the perils of sick buildings and the broader social and political implications of how, and for whom, cities are built. The result is at once sophisticated in its understanding of material culture and novelistic in its telling of a good story.
Formed by a group of young architects, photographers, and psychologists in the Venice Beach of the late 1960s, Environmental Communications honed an image practice that constituted a new visual syntax for the late twentieth century city. The group speculated that their "environmental photography" would alter architecture and transform the consciousness of architecture students by way of the ubiquitous architecture slide library. Through their media experiments, events, and slide catalogs, they positioned themselves as interpreters and purveyors of new trends, assembling a lively body of populist and radical design imagery that undermined the canons defined by the prevailing institutions of architectural design. In reproducing the group's photography, booklets, and ephemera, Environmental Communications: Contact High records and critically reflects upon the work of this West Coast media collective.
In this exceptional book on the London based studio 6a architects, architecture critic Irenee Scalbert looks at the role of narrative, history, appropriation and craft in the work of Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald. The book traces an architectural approach avoiding style, signature, theory and even concept in favour of metis, an ancient form of intelligence combining 'flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, varied skills, and experience.' Structured around notions of situation, intervention, making, comedy, bricolage, chance and anthropology, the text is mirrored in a visual essay of archive photographs, artworks, film stills and recent projects by the practice.
The great Frank Lloyd Wright taught us that form and function are forever bound in spiritual union; that design is eternally emotive; and that architecture structures society. Inspired by this depth of being, 20 modern architectural greats and their most extraordinary feats are celebrated in the illustrious pages of New View: A Curated Visual Gallery -- 20 Magnificent Homes by Architects of California. Designed to enchant, this third volume of a historic book series overflows with aesthetically stunning portraits of real California homes by celebrity and world-renowned architects. Awe-inspiring photography is balanced with engaging editorial interludes expressing the architects' varied creative philosophies, design perspectives, and transformational experiences. In New View: California you'll meet top California architects who present their finest California home designs: Josh Blumer, William Hayer, Jeff Zimmerman, Michael Ferguson and Kirby Smith, Robert Swatt and George Miers, Greg Faulkner, Ryan Marsden, Todd Gordon Mather, Mark English, Neal J.Z. Schwartz, Joanne Koch, Antonina Markoff and Bruce Fullerton, Cynthia Wang and Brendan Canning, Mary Ann Gabriele Schicketanz, Michael Holliday, Timothy Chappelle, Philip Liang, Nick Noyes, Chad Dorsey, Geddes Ulinskas. A meticulously curated collection, New View: California delves into the making of a wide variety of homes, each designed to express a sense of place. Whether along the Pacific coast, nestled in the mountains, or in the heart of an acclaimed cityscape. Part anthropological and part declarative, New View: California is an enlightening, inspired story of how architecture shapes our civilization.
Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of museum building around the world and the subsequent publication of multiple texts dedicated to the subject. Museum Architecture: A new biography focuses on the stories we tell of museum buildings in order to explore the nature of museum architecture and the problems of architectural history when applied to the museum and gallery. Starting from a discussion of the key issues in contemporary museum design, the book explores the role of architectural history in the prioritisation of specific stories of museum building and museum architects and the exclusion of other actors from the history of museum making. These omissions have contemporary relevance and impact directly on the ways in which the physical structures of museums are shaped. Theoretically, the book places a particular emphasis on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Henri Lefebvre in order to establish an understanding of buildings as social relations; the outcome of complex human interactions and relationships. The book utilises a micro history, an in-depth case study of the ‘National Gallery of the North’, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, to expose the myriad ways in which museum architecture is made. Coupled with this detailed exploration is an emphasis on contemporary museum design which utilises the understanding of the social realities of museum making to explore ideas for a socially sustainable museum architecture fit for the twenty-first century.
Contemporary Museum Architecture and Design showcases 18 diverse essays written by people who design, work in, and study museums, offering a variety of perspectives on this complex building type. Throughout, the authors emphasize new kinds of experiences that museum architecture helps create, connecting ideas about design at various levels of analysis, from thinking about how the building sits in the city to exploring the details of technology. With sections focusing on museums as architectural icons, community engagement through design, the role of gallery spaces in the experience of museums, disability experiences, and sustainable design for museums, the collected chapters cover topics both familiar and fresh to those interested in museum architecture. Featuring over 150 color illustrations, this book celebrates successful museum architecture while the critical analysis sheds light on important issues to consider in museum design. Written by an international range of museum administrators, architects, and researchers this collection is an essential resource for understanding the social impacts of museum architecture and design for professionals, students, and museum-lovers alike.