Category: reviews
Drawing Architecture: Conversations on Contemporary Practice (2022) – Review
14 April 2023
Drawing Architecture: Conversations on Contemporary Practice (2022) – Review14 April 2023
Flipping through the book for the first time, I discover its contents with a feeling of true ignorance and great excitement. The drawings are both very familiar and yet totally foreign. I am plunged into an intense atmospheric world of fantastical stories, cosmic adventures, archaeological excavations, and biological investigations in… Read More
Avant-Garde as Method, Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920 – 1930 (2020) – Review
12 April 2023
Avant-Garde as Method, Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920 – 1930 (2020) – Review12 April 2023
Much of the research for this book was consolidated for Anna Bokov’s PhD at Yale, but it is clear that she had been exploring the issues throughout her career, from the Moscow Architectural Institute to Syracuse University to Harvard, before Yale. The acknowledgments include many well-known luminaries in the USA,… Read More
The City in Dispute (2023) – Review
10 April 2023
The City in Dispute (2023) – Review 10 April 2023
Climbing the majestic double staircase of the Palau de la Virreina, a building that hovers somewhere between the Baroque and the Rococo, one arrives at a small but intense exhibition on show at [La Virreina] Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona. Curated by María García Ruiz and Moisés Puente, it presents… Read More
Vitruvius Without Text (2022) – Review
20 March 2023
Vitruvius Without Text (2022) – Review20 March 2023
This provocative book raises many questions about books themselves, including through the way in which it is published. As the first in a gta Verlag series that works the grain of open access by presenting a combined digital and analogue publication simultaneously, it is an interesting choice. The printed book,… Read More
Homegrown: Building a Post-Carbon Future (2023) – review
6 March 2023
Homegrown: Building a Post-Carbon Future (2023) – review6 March 2023
‘Homegrown: Building a Post-Carbon Future’ is an exhibition which, despite being in the small window gallery of the Building Centre in London, offers the visitor a chance to rethink the sources and uses of contemporary construction materials. Developed by curators Summer Islam, George Massoud, and Paloma Gormley of research-based architectural studio… Read More
Caruso St John Collected Works: Volume 1, 1990 – 2005 – Review
21 February 2023
Caruso St John Collected Works: Volume 1, 1990 – 2005 – Review21 February 2023
Collected Works opens with a lecture that Adam Caruso and Peter St John gave at the Architecture Foundation in London, in 1998. The text sets the tone of the publication. As a reader, one is invited to enter the universe of two architects who are searching for their position in the… Read More
Architecture in Archives: The Collection of the Akademie der Künste (2016) – Review
10 February 2023
Architecture in Archives: The Collection of the Akademie der Künste (2016) – Review10 February 2023
Archives, particularly architecture archives, are having a moment. Writers of postcolonial histories increasingly wrangle with their neatly preserved and selected records. Predominantly, documentary evidence under archival care formed the basis for official histories – histories that are by now largely exhausted, if not downright discredited. As traditional sites of hegemonic… Read More
Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders 1960s to 1980s – Review
30 January 2023
Forecast and Fantasy: Architecture without Borders 1960s to 1980s – Review30 January 2023
This carefully curated and beautifully displayed exhibition brings together 150 drawings with numerous publications and films to display a wave of rebellion and research by architects across the European continent, with a focus on the east, over three decades. The abundance of visionary thinking that followed the boom of post-war… Read More
Neighbours in Space and Time: Grafton Architects at the Soane Museum – Review
25 January 2023
Neighbours in Space and Time: Grafton Architects at the Soane Museum – Review25 January 2023
Between 19th October 2022 and 8th of January 2023, the calm galleries and vitrines at no.12 Lincoln’s Inn Fields were host to an exhibition called Neighbours in Space and Time: Grafton Architects at the Soane Museum. Organised around a dramatic comparison between the thoughts and work of two architects –… Read More
Johan Celsing Buildings Texts (2021) – Review
6 December 2022
Johan Celsing Buildings Texts (2021) – Review6 December 2022
‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the handing on of the fire’ Gustav Mahler quoted in Johan Celsing Buildings Texts The work of Johan Celsing represents the continuation of a tradition of significant twentieth century Swedish architects into the present. While the influence of Gunnar Asplund, Sigurd Lewerentz… Read More
Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review
2 December 2022
Alberto Cruz: Observation, Act, Form – Review2 December 2022
Alberto Cruz (1917–2013) was an architect and theorist who devoted most of his professional life to education. In 1952, he played an important role in revitalising the School of Architecture at the Universidad Catolica de Valparíso, Chile, founding the Instituto de Arquitectura de Valparaíso with eight of his colleagues, including… Read More
The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models (2021) – Review
24 November 2022
The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models (2021) – Review24 November 2022
A book like The Routledge Companion to Architectural Drawings and Models cannot be read with speed. Each chapter is finite, and although linked by others into sections, each forms a stand-alone reading event. It also cannot be seen as a book about architectural drawing. The photographic reproduction is poor, often… Read More