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2019 New in the Bookshop

Aug 08, 2019

October 2019

Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture

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Diane Y. F. Ghirardo / Yale University Press 2019 / Graham Funded / $65
280p, ills 135 color & 5 b/w, Hardcover, English

This crucial reassessment of Aldo Rossi’s (1931–1997) architecture simultaneously examines his writings, drawings, and product design, including the coffeepots and clocks he designed for the Italian firm Alessi. Diane Ghirardo explores different categories of structures—monuments, public buildings, cultural institutions, theaters, and cemeteries—drawing significantly on previously unpublished archival materials and always keeping Rossi’s own texts in the forefront. By delving into the relationships among Rossi’s multifaceted life, his rich body of work, and his own reflections, this book provides a critical new understanding of Rossi’s buildings and the place of architecture in postwar Italy.

Buildings and Almost Buildings

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Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang, nARCHITECTS (eds.) / Actar 2019 / Graham Funded / $39.95
400p, ills color, Softcover, English

Is architecture inherently complete? Or is it a state of incompletion and seeming inadequacy that incites us to imagine architecture as an armature for an ever-changing daily life? Buildings and Almost Buildings explores the work of nARCHITECTS as a single project – an anti-monograph with a subtle manifesto about the open-ended, incomplete, and ambiguous in architecture. Structured around a variety of modes of representation specially prepared for the book, Buildings and Almost Buildings reveals the ways in which the celebrated New York office led by Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang addresses contemporary issues of a world in flux. Across a range of buildings, public spaces, and ephemeral installations, nARCHITECTS argues for the formal and social potential of an architecture that remains somehow incomplete and ambiguously perceived—or in the authors’ words, Almost Buildings.

Decoding Dictatorial Statues

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Bernke Klein Zandvoort (ed.) / Onomatopee 2019 / $35
192p, ills 210 bw, Paperback, English

In the words of Hannah Arendt, “Half of politics is image-making, the other half is the art of making people believe the image.” From South Africa to Charlottesville, heated discussions over statues, their removal and their vandalism frequently make the news. Decoding Dictatorial Statues, a project by Korean graphic design researcher Ted Hyunhak Yoon, is a collection of images and texts exploring the visual rhetoric of statues in public space. How can we decode statues and their languages, their objecthood and materiality, their role as media icons and their voice in political debates? The book responds to urgent concerns about the representation of our heritage by not only asking us to examine what history gets put on a pedestal, but also to consider the visual rhetoric of the statue itself.

Para-Platforms: On the Spatial Politics of Right-Wing Populism

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Markus Miessen and Zoë Ritts (eds.) / Sternberg Press 2019 / $24.95
208p, ills 11 color 25 bw, Paperback, English

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, and material reality of right-wing populism. Three case studies—presented in a symposium organized by Markus Miessen at the Gothenburg Design Festival in November 2017—form the core from which this collection of essays has grown: journalist Hannes Grassegger on Trump and Brexit; architectural theorist Stephan Trüby on spaces of right-wing extremism in Germany; and Christina Varvia on Forensic Architecture's investigation of the murder of Halit Yozgat, a young German man of Turkish descent, at the hands of a far-right group in 2006. The presentations are reproduced along with the ensuing conversations with Miessen and the audience members.

Art in Chicago: A History from the Fire to Now

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Maggie Taft / University of Chicago Press 2018 / $65

448 p, ills color and bw, hardcover, English

Part of the Terra Foundation for American Art’s year-long Art Design Chicago initiative, which will bring major arts events to venues throughout Chicago in 2018, Art in Chicago is a landmark publication, a book that will be the standard account of Chicago art for decades to come. No art fan—regardless of their city—will want to miss it.

JA113 Reprint Edition Expo '70
Shinkenchiku-sha 2019 / $35

176 p, ills colour & bw, 23 x 30 cm, pb, Japanese/English

In the midst of the turbulent 1960s, when the world was undergoing radical shifts in cultural values, Expo ’70 was conceived, planned, and executed in Osaka. The master plan for the site was created by Kenzo Tange and Uzo Nishiyama. They were aware of the imminent transition from an industrial to an information society, and the emphasis changed from hardware exhibits to software-inspired environments. The question arose whether architecture can function as a communication media, or even if it should. In a few years, Osaka will host World Expo 2025. This issue looks back at selected articles originally published in ‘Shinkenchiku’ (May 1970) and in ‘JA’ (May/June English edition).

Architectural Logos
Counter-print (ed.) / $13

108 p, ills colour & bw, 11 x 15 cm, pb, English

'Architectural Logos' contains a wonderful selection of logos, trademarks, and symbols from around the world formed of architectural elements such as houses, buildings, windows, stairs, and doors. The book is a collection of work from some of the most talented designers around the world including Anagrama, Bond Creative Agency, Civilization, Fuzzco, Garbett, Grand Deluxe, Stefan Kanchev, Lundgren+Lindqvist, Richard Robinson Design, and many more.

Brick Index
Patrick Fry (ed.) / Centrecentre 2019 / $34.50

190p, ills color & bw, Paperback, English

'Brick Index' is a collection of named bricks and the unseen makers' marks stamped by brickworks from across the UK. It celebrates the humble brick, relishing the textures, colours and graphics debossed into their 'frogs'. This collection serves to rethink a ubiquitous material and honour the graphic stamps hidden all around us. The book features 155 beautifully photographed bricks, printed at actual size, accompanied by an index that states the time, place, and maker of each brick. Featuring an introduction from David Kitching, a brick historian and an essay from Professor Rick Poynor. Photography by Inge Clemente.

Eugenics in the Garden: Transatlantic Architecture and the Crafting of Modernity
Fabiola López-Durán / University of Texas Press 2018 / $29.95

312 pages | 7 x 10 | 132 b&w photos

The first book to link eugenics with urban planning and the built environment, this volume traces how the “science” of race improvement spread from medicine to architecture as Latin Americans pursued a utopian project of modernization.

BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE logos in black or pink silkscreened on top of sustainable rice, corn or sugar bags from Mexico. Patterns and dimensions vary.

Improvised Cities: Architecture, Urbanization, and Innovation in Peru
Helen Gyger / University of Pittsburgh Press 2019 / Graham Funded / $55

456p, Hardcover, English

Beginning in the 1950s, an explosion in rural-urban migration dramatically increased the population of cities throughout Peru, leading to an acute housing shortage and the proliferation of self-built shelters clustered in barriadas, or squatter settlements. Improvised Cities examines the history of aided self-help housing, or technical assistance to self-builders, which took on a variety of forms in Peru from 1954 to 1986. While the postwar period saw a number of trial projects in aided self-help housing throughout the developing world, Peru was the site of significant experiments in this field and pioneering in its efforts to enact a large-scale policy of land tenure regularization in improvised, unauthorized cities.

Publishing the Struggle constitutes an introspection for us, questioning the contents and forms of political publications. As such, it features articles about historical/canonical and contemporary publications that serves directly or indirectly a specific political movement.

Serving as a score for David Hartt's film of the same name about the Habitat Puerto Rico project by Moshe Safdie, In The Forest finds Fousek at his most focussed and controlled. These five pieces/chapters move with precision and intent. With subtlety and curiosity. Shrouded in ambiguity. And while Fousek works much more restrained here than on previous releases, by paying attention to every detail, he creates an intruiging work of sonic storytelling.

Texte Zur Kunst Issue 113
Discrimination
Texte zur Kunst March 2019 / $25

Paperback, English-German

For issue 113 TZK investigates the structures within the arts and cultural spheres where racism and discrimination are practiced, performed, and reproduced. This special issue concentrates specifically on the context of Germany, and includes discussions and texts from artists and theorists throughout the country who have dedicated special attention to current and ongoing political and social crises; specifically the challenges these crises pose for the language and terms of art criticism. How can criticism mount an appropriate response to the discrimination and injustices that pervade all levels of society?

Log 45
Cynthia Davidson (ed.) / Anyone Corporation 2019 / Graham Funded / $18

Paperback, English

From Pritzker Prize laureate Wang Shu on Song dynasty landscape paintings to Elizabeth Diller on orchestrating an opera on the High Line, architects thinking transformatively and reflecting critically are at the heart of Log 45. In this open issue, architects, curators, and critics observe the world at both the large and small scale, from Paola Antonelli on curating “Broken Nature” at the Milan Triennale, to Peter Trummer on an inoperable Anthropocene window; from Stephan Trüby on right-wing reconstruction efforts in Germany, to Patrick Templeton on “Adjacencies” at Yale. This issue also features reviews of a number of recent books.

Design Issues Vol 35, No. 2
Bruce Brown, Richard Buchanan, Carl DiSalvo, Dennis P. Doordan, Kipum Lee, Victor Margolin, and Ramia Mazé (eds.) / MIT Press 2019 / $18

112p, ills, Paperback, English

The first American academic journal to examine design history, theory, and criticism, Design Issues provokes inquiry into the cultural and intellectual issues surrounding design. Regular features include theoretical and critical articles by professional and scholarly contributors, extensive book and exhibition reviews, and visual sequences. Special guest-edited issues concentrate on particular themes, such as design history, human-computer interface, service design, organization design, design for development, and product design methodology.

Grey Room 74
Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Lucia Allais, Eric C.H. de Bruyn, Noam M. Elcott, Byron Hamann, John Harwood, Matthew C. Hunter (eds.) / MIT Press 2019 / $21

128p, Paperback, English

Grey Room brings together scholarly and theoretical articles from the fields of architecture, art, media, and politics to forge a cross-disciplinary discourse uniquely relevant to contemporary concerns. Publishing some of the most interesting and original work within these disciplines, Grey Room has positioned itself at the forefront of current aesthetic and critical debates. Featuring original articles, translations, interviews, dossiers, and academic exchanges, Grey Room emphasizes aesthetic practice and historical and theoretical discourse that appeals to a wide range of readers, including architects, artists, scholars, students, and critics.

Notes and Methods

Hilma af Klint / University of Chicago Press 2018 / $45

288 p, ills color, pb, English

At the turn of the twentieth century, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (1862–1944) created a body of work that left visible reality behind, exploring the radical possibilities of abstraction years before Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, or Piet Mondrian. Many consider her the first trained artist to create abstract paintings. With Hilma af Klint: Notes and Methods, we get to experience the arc of af Klint’s artistic investigation in her own words.

Constructing Imperial Berlin: Photography and the Metropolis

Miriam Paeslack / University of Minnesota Press 2019 / $30

216 p, ills color and bw, pb, English

This is the first book to critically assess, contextualize, and frame urban and architectural photographs of Berlin’s crucial Imperial years between 1871 and 1918. Imperial Berlin emerges as a modern metropolis, only half-heartedly inhibited by urban preservationist concerns and rather more akin to North American cities in their bold industrialization and competing urban expansions than to European counterparts.

Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life

Phillip Thurtle / University of Minnesota Press 2018 / $28

272 p, ills color and bw, pb, English

Phillip Thurtle explains how the grid came to dominate biology in the twentieth century, transforming biologists’ beliefs about how organisms were constructed. Biology in the Grid ultimately suggests that such a grid-organized understanding of natural life inevitably has social and political dimensions, with society recognized as being made of interchangeable, regulated parts rather than as an organic whole.

Now that the audience is assembled

David Grubbs / Duke University Press 2018 / $19.95

152 p, pb, English

Following his investigation into experimental music and sound recording in Records Ruin the Landscape, David Grubbs turns his attention to the live performance of improvised music with an altogether different form of writing. Now that the audience is assembled is a book-length prose poem that describes a fictional musical performance during which an unnamed musician improvises the construction of a series of invented instruments before an audience that is alternately contemplative, participatory, disputatious, and asleep. Over the course of this phantasmagorical all-night concert, repeated interruptions take the form of in-depth discussions and musical demonstrations. Both a work of literature and a study of music, Now that the audience is assembled explores the categories of improvised music, solo performance, text scores, instrument building, aesthetic deskilling and reskilling, and the odd fate of the composer in experimental music.

Art for People's Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975

Rebecca Zorach / Duke University Press 2019 / $28.95

416 p, ills color, pb, English

In Art for People's Sake Rebecca Zorach traces the little-told story of the visual arts of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago, showing how artistic innovations responded to decades of racist urban planning that left Black neighborhoods sites of economic depression, infrastructural decay, and violence. Working with community leaders, children, activists, gang members, and everyday people, artists developed a way of using art to help empower and represent themselves. Showcasing the depth and sophistication of the visual arts in Chicago at this time, Zorach demonstrates the crucial role of aesthetics and artistic practice in the mobilization of Black radical politics during the Black Power era.

February 2019

Gabriel Sierra (the title of the exhibition changed every hour)

Gabriel Sierra and Solveig Øvstebø / Bom Dia Books / Graham Funded / $27.25

192 p, ills b/w, pb, English

This publication is a continuation of Gabriel Sierras site-specific installation project at the Renaissance Society in 2015. Sierra is intrigued by the language of the spaces in which we live, work, and think. His practice employs a variety of techniques to examine how the human body functions in relation to its environment. The Bogotá-based artist’s first solo show in the United States consisted of a group of constructions to stand in, walk over, or lie down in, and relating abstractly to the idea of inhabiting different moments of space and time. The title of the exhibition changed every hour to frame the specific moment in which the visitor experienced the work.

One head too many

Elise Florenty and Marcel Türkowsky / Bom Dia Books 2017 / $27.25

160 p, ills color, pb, English, French, German

Dissected into five colours in motion – all at once skin, gesture, word, voice – this first trilingual monograph by Elise Florenty and Marcel Türkowsky focuses on five film-projects investigating different layers of consciousness and power relations that blur the modern boundaries between the animate and the inanimate, the verbal and the non-verbal, the dream and the awake state. Each project unfolds minor situations in marginal zones – from Mississippi to the Aegean Sea, Brazil to Japan and Eastern Ukraine – where the human and the nonhuman – an imaginary river, an amazonian parrot, a speaking cactus plant or cannibal electrons – often meet to bring back “social-utopic” experiments and the part of future that seems to have been buried with them.

Makulatur 2010–2016 Studio Manuel Raeder

Abraham Cruzvillegas, Eran Schaerf, Mela Dàvila Freire and Manuel Raeder / Bom Dia Books 2016 / $38.50

336 p, ills color, pb, English

Makulatur, a German word that derives from lat. maculatura ’something stained’, refers to misprinted paper that is discarded at the beginning of the printing process as use- and worthless. In 2010, the graphic designer Manuel Raeder started to collect and preserve misprinted sheets of all the publications he designed not only for his own publishing house BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE but also for fellow artists and institutions.These original waste paper sheets, with different qualities and grammatures, – trails, testy or stains – were combined to a new volume as a compilation of maculae ’stains’. Thus, dissolving the spoiled material from the realm of invisibility and displays it to the public whereby the Makulatur book reveals and reflects on the conventions of a book.

Gabriel Sierra: Before Present

Gabriel Sierra / Bom Dia Books 2018 / $29.95

128 p, ills color, pb, English

We are almost constantly surrounded by architecture, but we barely perceive it. Yet it has a major impact on our thought and actions – sometimes obviously, but usually unconsciously. The Colombian artist Gabriel Sierra is interested in precisely this psychological dimension of architecture. He aims to create an experiment that explores the intricate relation in between reality and perception. After all, built spaces are repositories for ideas, fears, and convictions; they are full of ambitions, traces, and future experiences, and possess multiple layers of time. Hardly any other experience demonstrates this as strikingly as déjà-vu, when we witness a moment as if it had already occurred. During a moment of déjà-vu, the present is transported backward in time; in it, the past, the future, and the present merge into a magical second that is both euphoric and unsettling.

Before Publication: Montage in Art, Architecture and Book Design. A Reader

Nanni Baltzer, Martino Stierli (Eds) / Park Books 2018 / $39

160 p, ills color, pb, English

The contributors to Before Publication consider the construction of visual meaning through montage, with each essay taking as its starting point a particular artifact—from Ed Ruscha’s photobook, Every Building on the Sunset Strip to works by Sergei Eisenstein, Muriel Cooper, and Marshall McLuhan to Tristan Tzara’s unpublished Dadaglobe anthology. A common theme threading throughout the chapters is the relationship between privacy and publicity. A concise introductory chapter by the book’s editors, Nanni Baltzer and Martino Stierli places the chapters in conversation and discusses the broader subject of montage in art, architecture, and book design.