a rare exemplar of clarity in architectural writing

books:


	• Atlas of Novel Tectonics Jesse Reiser Princeton Architectural Press, 2006 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Difficult Writing vs Clear Expression

This book gets lots of play right now in (big "A") Architecture schools. I'm a firm believer that if your thoughts are clear, your writing is clear. This book embarks on many dialectical examples that are explained with too much "difficult writing" for its own good. Grad students of the world, beware the three DDDs that inspire some of this writing: Deleuze, Derrida and Delanda. They plow enormous fields in complicated patterns and only yield a kernel or two. Ironically, I admire Reiser + Umemoto as architects and am looking forward to a book on their more recent work.

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The Sinews of Design

An unxpectedly fine book on architectural theory that's rooted not in politics or aesthetics or lit-crit theory, but in the worlds of physics and engineering-- a look at architecture and architectural possibilities based on the sinews of buildings rather than the ideology of architects. I'm an historian by training, and an aficionado of architecture and design theory. Reiser + Umemoto have created a small book that offers a view of postmodern architecture seen through the lens of the physically possible. Anyone who wants to imagine new cities and new styles of building needs to consider the sheer physical constraints of design, and this book is a fine place to start.

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hook, line and sinker

maybe I was once again fooled by how sexy this book is, but I pandered to every word Jesse and Nakano had for me inside. The short entries are well composed and illustrated, have great arguments, and the entire thing can be gobbled up in an afternoon or two.

Currently the book is in my bag, and goes pretty much wherever I do.

a rare exemplar of clarity in architectural writing

Reiser and Umemoto (henceforth R&U) have put together a wonderful role model of a textbook in a field that erroneously prides itself on having NO textbooks -- that is, by having far too many "must-read" books that remain disconnected and often irrelevant to the problem of learning HOW TO GO ABOUT wrapping one's head around this thing called Architecture. Without turgidity, mysticism, pedantry, or pretentious narcissism, the authors elegantly demonstrate one version of architectural head-wrapping: THEIRS. But make no mistake: to call it 'theirs' is only to specify the site of the (unavoidable)subjectivity that propels this kind of demonstration. And the clarity with which this demostration is done is yet another demonstration of the refinement of their subjectivity.

This book, along with those by George L. Hersey, is one of the very few books in the field that can actually help one in reducing the confusion in trying to understand what Architecture as a DISCIPLINE really deals with, so overcrowded it is today with so many extra-architectural issues/agendas. After all, it was never Architecture as such that was confusing or difficult to understand. People with clubby exclusionary motives, aided and abetted by academic survivalists -- the small sort of people Dryden derided as 'criticules'(teeny weeny critics) -- have made the topic into the unnecessarily convoluted intestine that it is today. And given the paucity of well-paying or creatively challenging work for architects in the real world, this nefarious practice of obfuscation will likely continue since "all forms of power are always accompanied by some form of mysticism."
But I digress.

I mentioned George L. Hersey's books earlier as exemplars of clarity. I was thinking of his `Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque'. There you see what actually qualified AS an architectural problem for architects like Borromini and Guarini. You also see the INTENSITY and COMPLEXITY in the SIMPLICITY of the problems they chose to deal with. This kind of architectural cathexis (focus of interest) is something that got lost a while ago with people wasting their vital fluids arguing over possibly important but ultimately extra-architectural issues like low-income housing, importance of having porches, evils of capitalism, etc -- issues that are really a matter of political will, compassion, self-control, and/or common sense.

Enter R&U:
Knowledgeable admirers of the Baroque that they are, they remind us what it really means to "play ball" in Architecture: ripped-pantyhose mediations on Heraclitus be damned, Architecture, like Baseball, has its internally generated/regulated rules that demand consistency with how Nature designs; and playing a great game regardless of all external factors (politics, ideology, economy, management, the weather, etc) is really all that counts in the end.

In five sections, R&U demonstrate the very thing they profess to practice - strategies of ordering - by crystallizing the perennial topics of Architecture. The five headings are:
1. Geometry
2. Matter
3. Operating
4. Common Errors to Avoid
5. The World

Under those five headings, Reiser and Umemoto present short discussions based on themes that are often paired into their basic Yin & Yang. Some examples:
Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree
Variety vs. Variation
Selection / Classification
Classical Body / Impersonal Individuation
Exact / Anexact-yet-rigorous
Continuity / Discontinuity
Intensive / Extensive

No doubt there are ways of looking that go beyond the binary but I agree with this manner of presentation for the clarity it can offer to the student who needs to first get his conceptual house in order anyway.
With their confident yet quiet presentation, R&U steer clear from trying to be clever or pointlessly esoteric. Every illustration serves to enhance the point they are trying to get across. And the point is always and consistently ABOUT HOW ONE MIGHT GO ABOUT DOING this thing called Architecture which essentially operates - without necessarily being delimited thereby in its possibilities - as a finite set of limits within a SYSTEM - a coherent system of desire and sensibility, as opposed to a smorgasbord of personal whims, tastes, styles, and personal baggage.

Discussion of each topic is accompanied by quirky but spot-on illustrations ranging from stress diagrams to engravings of Solomon's Temple from Villapando to Max Ernst collages to selections from their own projects. (Whether, if, and how well R&U actually applied these very principles to their own design work is a matter outside the scope of this review.)

Being teachers as well as practicing architects, R&U thoughtfully included a section (Section 4) that should be particularly useful for most architecture students who often end up getting the short end of the stick after going from one teacher to another without there being any rhyme or reason to the arbitrary sequence in which they are exposed to ideas.

The value of this book lies in its status as an exemplar of clarity in terms of its strategy of perception/observation, not necessarily in its enormity of scope, exhaustiveness, logical throroughness, or profundity in the application of Deleuze's or DeLanda's ideas -- which in this case is not really an issue.
As an exemplar, this book points a way possibly toward a New Architecture (again) but more importantly, a New Honesty/Modesty/Clarity in speaking/writing about Architecture.

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valuable

get it... that's all i have to say. there's no reason not to own it.

reviews: page 1, 2

Architects Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto have been generating some of the most provocative thinking in the field for nearly twenty years. With Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Reiser+Umemoto hone in on the many facets of architecture and illuminate their theories with great thought and simplicity. The Atlas is organized as an accumulation of short chapters that address the workings of matter and force, material science, the lessons of art and architectural history, and the influence of architecture on culture (and vice versa). Reiser+Umemoto see architectural design as a series of problem situations, and each chapter is an argument devoted to a specific condition or case.

Influenced by a wide range of fields and phenomena Brillat-Savarin's classic The Physiology of Taste is one of their primary models the authors provide a cross-section of thinking and inspiration. The result is both an elucidation of the concepts that guide Reiser+Umemoto through their own design process and a series of meditations on topics that have formed their own sense as architects. Atlas of Novel Tectonics offers an entirely fresh perspective on subjects that are generally taken for granted, and does so with a welcome punch and energy.

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