Perspecta 32: The Yale Architectural Journal - Softcover

Anne Marie Brennan; Brendan D. Moran; Nahum Goodenow

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262523094 ISBN 13: 9780262523097

Publisher: MIT Press, 2001

Synopsis

An exploration of mid-century architectural modernism in a postmodern age, and of surface as a subject with depth.

"Resurfacing Modernism" Founded in 1950, Perspecta is the oldest and most distinguished of student-edited American architectural journals. Perspecta 32 examines contemporary "resurfacings" represented by the return of many forms and values associated with mid-twentieth-century modernism. By 1950, a plethora of architectural practices were adapting earlier modernist experimentation to the changing times. Numerous buildings of this period employed sleek surfaces of glass, metal, and stone to provide primary stylistic unity. More generally, much architectural activity involved the quotation, manipulation, and modification of past appearances (surfaces) and discourses (spaces). Exceptional architecture of the last decade―not only built work, but also historical and theoretical research―has again been informed by such imagery and actions. For this reason, Perspecta 32 explores the prospects of mid- century modernism in a postmodern age. The issue invokes three different meanings of "resurface": the reappearance of aspects of the past as well as the layering of new meanings and interpretations onto accepted conventions, and the peeling away of accrued patinas associated with modernism. While critical explorations of architectural modernism have frequently emphasized surface qualities, the recognition and analysis of surface as a subject with depth presents itself now more than ever.

Contributors
George Baird, Peggy Deamer, Deborah Fausch, Michael Hays, Sandy Isenstadt, and Reinhold Martin

About this title

Review:

Those eagle-eyed editors over at Yale's venerable design journal Perspecta have been noticing a lot of buildings springing up the past few years that smack seriously of mid-century modernism, even if their high-tech materials make Mies-era steel and glass look downright primitive. That's why they've devoted this issue to essays (by bigwigs like George Baird, Peggy Deamer, K. Michael Hays, and Demetri Porphyrios) that explore the "resurfacing" of high modernism--what's changed, what hasn't, and why. Thankfully, not all of the contributions are as impenetrable as their titles, such as Hays's "Prolegomenon for a Study Linking the Advanced Architecture of the Present to that of the 1970s through Ideologies of Media, the Experience of Cities in Transition, and the Ongoing Effects of Reification." And plenty of small black-and-white photos of the works under discussion (plus a full-color gatefold of recent "neo-modernist" projects) are included alongside the text to help clarify the more oblique ideas. Look at Jean Tschumi's 1960 Nestlé headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, against Jacques Richter and Ignazio Dahl Rocha's late '90s redo and add-on for the same complex, for example, and the whole point of this dense, ambitious issue of Perspecta clicks intriguingly into place. --Timothy Murphy

About the Author:

Ann Marie Brennan is completing her thesis for the Master of Environmental Design Program at the Yale School of Architecture.

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0262523094
• ISBN 13: 9780262523097
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120