A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Musée D'Ethnographie in Paris, France by Peter Eisenman, 1999. By showing the different ways in which people represented their faces and their bodies, and the ways they used nature and negotiated with the supernatural, the museum of humankind served to cultivate universal sensitivity and render thought on our common condition more acute. -Jean Jamin Assuming that a museum of ethnography has as much right to be as, say, an art museum, defining the role of the former in a given culture is a difficult objective. Most of these museums transplant artifacts from ancient cultures to locations displaced from their origin, for example tools from an extinct African tribe on display in the United States. The tool or piece of art is dislocated from its original purpose and meaning, on view as an aesthetic object subject to aesthetic criticism. What can be learned from these objects in this context?...

Cretto in Gibellina, Italy by Alberto Burri Italian artist Alberto Burri is known for a series of works titled Cretti , monochrome pieces composed of paste left to dry and crack eventually revealing fissures. These fissures are the focus of the work, illustrating the process and the artist's minimal involvement. Burri is a guide toward an unknown end as opposed to the general attitude towards artists as realizing an ideal vision. This self-reference relates the Cretti series to paintings by artists like Jackson Pollock's drip series, which reveal their means of production, while lacking figural relationships. The Cretto , in Gibellina , Sicily, resembles his Cretti series, though the former, a monumental work, exists on a deeper level, binding intimately to a time and place. In January 1968, the same period Burri was working on the Cretti , an earthquake shook the western edge of Sicily in the Belice river...

Jacob Javits Plaza in New York, NY by Martha Schwartz, 1997 ( See also my graduate school study on the plaza, Jacob Javits Plaza: Reconsidering Intentions .) Located near the financial district of Manhattan, Jacob Javits Plaza was formed by government office blocks that opened on the southern end of the island in 1967. Inhabited by Richard Serra's "Tilted Arc" from 1981 until its destruction in 1989, the plaza is now home to a more friendly intervention; green benches snaking around grassy mounds, as designed by landscape architect Martha Schwartz . While an aesthetic contrast from the previous occupant the new design shares some similarities with Serra's minimal piece. Serra's "Arc" essentially split the plaza into two spaces: the outer expanding and the inner contracting as the steel tilted toward the arc's center. Like much of his ot...

Kuala Lumpur Airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by Kisho Kurokawa, 1998 Malaysia's economic growth, created by and dependent upon technology, found a symbol in the Petronas Towers, designed by Cesar Pelli and finished in 1998. The subsequent award given to these twin towers as the world's tallest building brought international attention to the country's capital, Kuala Lumpur. As foreign investors are lured to the city, upgrades are necessary for increased transportation. The Malaysian government looked to Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa (working with local architect Akitek Jururancang) to design a new airport, joining those in fellow Asian cities Hong Kong (Norman Foster) and Kansai (Renzo Piano) with likewise strong designs. These three airports exhibit the current trend in airport design: linear terminals that allow the maximum number of planes to dock with t...