Books. Every good office has a nice collection of them. Usually when I’m waiting for an interview I like to check out what books they have. I marvel at the number of books too, wondering how even the smallest office can afford to build such a library. Someone in my situation has to be selective.
LEFT: Hennessey & Ingall's in Space 15 Twenty // RIGHT: Digital Fabrications cover
The last book I bought was Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques by Lisa Iwamoto. It was somewhat of an impulse buy when I was walking around Hollywood and stumbled across Hennessey & Ingall’s new location in Space 15 Twenty, a small campus of brick warehouse buildings with small boutique shops hosted by Urban Outfitters (project was managed by local Taalman Koch Architects). Naturally I was interested in this one because Lisa Iwamoto was a professor at Berkeley while I was there, and although I never had her as a teacher, I had heard her crit and my friends had done some pretty cool work with her, including their shortlisted 2007 P.S.1 competition entry (I was also one of many enlisted to help assemble the presentation model and do a little dancing for the animation).
In her book, she offers 35 mini case studies in “one-to-one scale experimentation” including some commonly-known projects like the Georgia Tech atrium installation, GSD pupper theater, BP gas station, dragonfly, and also Tokyo airspace (which I did a report on for Alice Kimm’s Sp ’09 seminar). The discussion through various construction logics – sectioning, tesselating, folding, contouring, and forming – is a good introduction to digital fabrication techniques for a curious newbie like me. Some projects I found particularly interesting were SHoP’s brick curtain wall panels at 290 Mullberry Street in New York (I liked the idea of propagating a standard brick across an unconventional field), the faceted BP gas station by Office dA and Johnston Marklee (like Koning Eizenberg says, architecture isn’t just for special occasions), and PATTERNS composite, ribbed shell structures (reminds me of EMERGENT’S work in integrating surface and spline). Reading this book even made me reconsider the lasercut model I made for my last studio at USC. I think I may redo it in acrylic and have something nice to add to the portfolio.
More recently, with two Borders gift cards burning a hole in my wallet, I decided to find a new good read from Borders (they, like Barnes & Noble, have a pretty banal selection of architecture books). But, I figured their online selection might be a bit better. After an hour or so of sifting through endless webpages on Frank Lloyd Wright or generic books on treehouses, I actually found something interesting: Yes is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution, a monograph released last November from Bjarke Ingels closely relating BIG’s work and approach to the changing forces of pop culture. Other things I considered getting were a few back issues of Pamphlet, the 2003 year’s compilation from Detail Magazine, and Delirious New York. Hopefully I will be able to get a good summer (architecture) read or two in this year. I still have $15 left on my gift card!
Yes is More: an Archicomic on Architectural Evolution
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