Brininstool + Lynch

Brininstool + Lynch: Making Architecture
David Brininstool, Brad Lynch
The Monacelli Press, September 2019



Hardcover | 10 x 11 inches | 208 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1580935326 | $50.00

Publisher Description:

Brad Lynch and David Brininstool of Chicago-based Brininstool + Lynch feature their most exemplary built works from over the course of their thirty years in practice. Founded in 1989, their office has become known for modern works that are rooted in the exceptional architectural culture of the American Midwest but also epitomize the best of contemporary design: elegant spatial compositions, remarkable aesthetic quality, and nuanced details. In this volume, partners Brad Lynch and David Brininstool have selected twelve distinguished projects that represent the character of the practice, at once refined and forthright.

Among the selected built works are the Racine Art Museum, designed around a collection of crafts in ceramic, fiber, glass, metal, and wood; city and country houses in Illinois and Indiana; sophisticated single-family homes; and multi-unit residential buildings that explore their urban scale and contexts. For thirty years, the office distinguished itself through buildings and interiors whose beauty lies in their restraint: spare, smart structures that manipulate light, space, and a simple material palette to create architecture of unusual grace. Brininstool + Lynch: Making Architecture showcases the signature works of this prestigious firm.

dDAB Commentary:

When I graduated from architecture school in 1996 and moved back to Chicago to find a job, Brininstool + Lynch (B+L) was on my list of highly desirable firms, alongside Dirk Denison, Krueck + Sexton, Wheeler Kearns, and a few others — all fairly small offices with excellent design skills. Although I didn't get an interview with B+L, one of the firms I interviewed with still drew their projects by hand, with all of the others using CAD. I had gone to undergraduate architecture school on the cusp of the digital revolution, with the class following mine required to use laptops in studio while my class did everything by hand. This fact forced me to take a CAD class at night so I could get hired, though it was still refreshing to discover firms "stuck" with hand drawings, not yet convinced of computer-aided drafting. I'm not sure if B+L was holding out in 1996, but when partners David Brininstool and Brad Lynch started their firm in 1989 they still drew by hand. I know this because the first page of this new monograph on the 30-year-old practice is a photo of an eraser shield opposite a short essay by Lynch on how they worked in those early days. While the image and words take me back to those months between school and getting a job, Lynch relates the care and patience that went into ink-and-mylar drawings to the design of their modern buildings — on full display in the pages that follow.

In 30 years, B+L have carried out more than 200 projects, but instead of cramming dozens of them into a hefty book, Making Architecture is limited to twelve buildings, each given at least ten pages. Eight of the twelve projects are located in Chicago, with a roughly even mix of houses, interiors, and apartment buildings. The last sees B+L making their stamp on different neighborhoods this decade, something I see in a welcoming light given the Windy City's predilection for bland neo-traditional apartment buildings. The most well-known B+L project is the Racine Art Museum (2003), which graces the cover and is the first project documented in the book. The clipped translucent panels on the facade look very much of its time, but they are justified: the facade gives a uniform expression to a number of existing buildings that were renovated and combined into a new downtown home for the museum. This project, like the other eleven, is explained through numerous color photos interspersed by short paragraphs and accompanied by plans, sections, and occasionally other drawings. This approach results in a clarity of explanation that parallels the clarity of their beautiful modern designs. 

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Author Bio:

David Brininstool and Brad Lynch teamed to form Brininstool + Lynch in 1989. Brininstool worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill following his graduate and undergraduate studies at the University of Michigan. Lynch was educated at the University of Wisconsin before working as a construction and project manager for the restoration of several Frank Lloyd Wright structures, including the National Landmarked First Herbert Jacobs House, Wright's first Usonian House.

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