Discourse 1—Authorship

May 07, 2020

Discourse 1—Authorship

Discourse 1—Authorship
Mónica Ponce de León (Editor)
Princeton University School of Architecture/Princeton University Press, February 2020

Authorship critically examines emergent themes in contemporary architecture by revisiting the seemingly defunct notion of design authorship. As we revel in the death of the master architect, how do we come to terms with the shifting role of creativity in architecture’s cultural production? In Authorship, a cross-disciplinary group of designers and scholars explores this topic through a myriad of lenses. Subjects include the impact of digital tools and computational scripts on the conception of buildings in the age of robotics, the current climate of appropriation and sampling as a counter-form of authorship, and the rise of reauthored materials in a postdigital age. These questions are cast against alternative ideas of authorship that, in turn, reposition the history of architecture. Featured essays investigate the separation between the personal and the authored while other contributions expose meaning, symbolism, and iconography as the subjects of authority—not authorship. Ultimately, this book dismantles, realigns, and reassembles disparate architectural conditions to form new ways of thinking.

Discourse is a biannual publication series that presents timely themes on and around architecture. A selective compilation of essays, interviews, roundtable discussions, featured exhibitions, photo-essays, and collateral materials—such as architectural models, sketches, and built works—highlight architectural culture, practice, and theory.

dDAB Commentary:

Authorship is the inaugural publication in Princeton School of Architecture's biannual Discourse series. It is an impressive start, but I say this more about the journal's design than its contents. This isn't to say that the theme of authorship is not an interesting one (it is, and it is especially relevant today) or that the contributions aren't worth reading (they are, with pieces by Jesse Reiser, Peter Eisenman, and Sylvia Lavin standing out for me). But the design is so fresh and appealing that it takes precedence over the content of the words and images. With print publications needing to find ways to distinguish themselves from — and make themselves more appealing than — digital content, I like to think of Discourse as a strong precedent for creating special publications in this third decade of the 21st century. I hope the subsequent issues maintain the same level of quality yet without duplicating every aspect of it to the point of it being formulaic.

So what about the design? Simply put, Authorship is an open-bound lay-flat volume with four paper sizes and just as many paper types. The museum-board cover — white on the outside, orange on the inside — is one of the three sizes, the same width as the full pages but not as tall, making it close to a square. (Look at the cover above then first spread below to see what I'm referring to.) The other two sizes that are less than full are narrower and can be seen in the second spread and third/fourth spreads. These two instances illustrate how the different pages function: respectively as a glossy presentation of projects inside an essay and as written content "hidden" on narrow pages within a spread of larger photos. Elsewhere are conversations on folded vellum and glossy pages with gatefold and double gatefolds. It's one delightful moment after another. The whole thing (designed by Omnivore, it should be noted) is a thing of beauty, something to be cherished — but also read.

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