ideas & integrities

During his life Fuller influenced such diverse talents as Norman Foster, sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi and John Cage. Driven by the design philosophy of “more for less”, Fuller worked simultaneously on plans for houses, cars, boats, games, television transmitters and geodesic domes, all of which were designed to be mass-produced using the simplest and most sustainable means possible.

more 2 good books

Problem Seeking is an exploration of architectural programming with a decidedly EST feel to it. The diagrams seem more self-help than technical. It’s conspicuously black and white in that 1965-75 sort of way. For any diagram enthusiast, this is the right book.

New Architecture was a surprise, seeing the Brasilia influence in the American Northeast. Plenty of raw concrete, concrete louvres, visible and exaggerated structure. Again, conspicuously black and white in that 1965 to 75 sort of way.

2 good books

Collecting Systems is a perpetual inspiration… They have found the time to make an igloo out of corrugated cardboard… children play in robot costumes made of discarded cereal boxes. And, somehow it’s all rationalized as design with heart and meaning. I’m not complaining, this is a good book. Super Normal is all the things you want in your house, but perfectly rendered.

2 good books + 1

A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
This is a sparse and mostly lifeless book: elliptical language, postwar Japan, empty characters. Etsuko lives in England, her daughter just committed suicide. Ends with a sad acceptance and no real resolution: mono no aware. Mono no aware is a bittersweet and ultimately sad reflection on the transience of life and experiential nature of living.

Chicago Loop – Paul Theroux
From the NY Times review: “It is summer 1988. Heat scorches the Midwest, fires burn out of control in the national forests, used syringes and bloody bandages wash up on the beaches in New York, there are muggings and hijackings, and the Presidential campaign is in full swing. In Chicago the bitter smell of rusting iron poisons the air and the sensational Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit is on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Chicago is sweltering in the unremitting heat and people are crazy, kinky.”

Pinball – Jerzy Kosinski
A famous rock musician who has no public persona… sex.

kenzo tange

I’ve been eying-up this book for a while. Kenzo Tange is one of my favorite Japanese architects – he produced buildings with typical Japanese style combined with (almost brutalist) modernism. Early in his career he courted Metabolism, the avant-garde 60’s movement that favors a utopic city that is the result of an organic or biotechnical process (cf. archigram). The Metabolists had a tenuous role in the context of Japan’s post-war urban reconstruction and had their moment of splendor at the Osaka World Exposition in 1970. Kenzo Tange says, “There is a powerful need for symbolism, and that means the architecture must have something that appeals to the human heart.” Later in his career he played an important role in the Structuralist movement, which arose in opposition to Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne’s Functionalist presence, alongside contemporaries like Dutch architects Aldo van Eyck (Aesthetics of Number) and John Habraken (Architecture of Lively Variety [Structure and Coincidence]). A good introduction to Structuralism, if you can find it: Strukturalismus – Eine neue Strömung in der Architektur (image).