The Light Construction Reader

by Kipnis, Jeffrey; Gannon, Todd

• ISBN13: 9781580931052
• ISBN10: 1580931057
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-01
• Publisher: The Monacelli Press

Summary

The exhibition "Light Construction," held at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1995, maintains a lasting influence on contemporary architecture. Architects represented in the show, such as Steven Holl and Toyo Ito, continue to win prestigious commissions. Others, such as Herzog and de Meuron and Frank Gehry, have risen to celebrity status with the completion of competition-winning designs for the Tate Museum, Bankside, in London and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. These works share a taste for glass, perforated metal, and other transparent materials. In bringing together the work of these diverse architects, "Light Construction" raised crucial questions about the role of materials, the nature of architectural effects, and the legacy of modernism. The second volume of the Source Books in Architecture series,The Light Construction Readeris an ambitious collection of thirty-eight essays that explores the themes and issues surrounding this important exhibition. Included here are essays by exhibition curator Terence Riley as well as noted architects and critics such as Peter Eisenman, Anthony Vidler, Greg Lynn, and Robin Evans. The complete transcripts of the Light Construction Symposium, held at Columbia University in conjunction with the exhibition, are also included. Colin Rowe and Robert Slutzky's widely influential essay "Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal" is presented here for the first time together with its lesser-known sequel of 1971. Also represented are Italo Calvino, Jacques Derrida, Jean Starobinski, and many others.

Author Biography

Jeffrey Kipnis, professor of architecture at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University and curator of architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts, was formerly director of the graduate design program at the Architectural Association in London. He is co-editor of Chora L Works and a contributor to Autonomy and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-Garde in America.

Todd Gannon is a lecturer in architectural theory and design at the Knowlton School of Architecture and a project designer at Acock Associates Architects in Columbus, Ohio. He is co-editor, with Jeffrey Kipnis, of Morphosis/Diamond Ranch High School, the first in the Source Books series.

Table of Contents

Preface	15	(2)
Jeffrey Kipnis
Introduction	17	(6)
Todd Gannon
``Light Construction,'' From Light Construction (1995)	23	(20)
Terence Riley
``Buildings That Hide and Reveal,'' From the New York Times (1995)	43	(4)
Herbert Muschamp
``Reflections on Transparency: An Interview With Terence Riley,'' From Any 9 (1994)	47	(6)
Cynthia Davidson
Light Construction Symposium From Columbia D #6 (1995)	53	(17)
Bernard Tschumi
Terence Riley
Mark C. Taylor
Hugh Dutton
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
Guy Nordenson
K. Michael Hays
Greg Lynn
Toyo Ito
Joan Ockman
Plates 1-60	70	(21)
``Transparency: Literal And Phenomenal, Part 1,'' From Perspecta 8 (1964)	91	(12)
Colin Rowe
Robert Slutzky
``Transparency: Literal And Phenomenal, Part 2,'' From Perspecta 13/14 (1971)	103	(12)
Colin Rowe
Robert Slutzky
``Opaque Transparency,'' From Oppositions 13 (1978)	115	(8)
Rosemarie Haag Bletter
``Oublier Rowe,'' From Any 7/8 (1994)	123	(12)
Robert Somol
``Transparency: Autonomy And Relationality,'' From AA Files 32 (1996)	135	(12)
Detlef Mertins
``P-TR'S Progress,'' From Eleven Authors in Search of a Building (1996)	147	(10)
Jeffrey Kipnis
``Death of The Hermeneutic Phantom,'' From Houses of Cards (1987)	157	(14)
Rosalind Krauss
``An Exchange Between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman,'' Assemblage 12 (1990)	171	(11)
Jacques Derrida
Peter Eisenman
Plates 61-120	182	(23)
``Photons: Particles of Light,'' From Qed: The Strange Theory of Light And Matter (1985)	205	(26)
Richard Feynman
``Poppaea's Veil,'' From The Living Eye (1989)	231	(10)
Jean Starobinski
``Lightness,'' From Six Memos For The Next Millennium (1993)	241	(16)
Italo Calvino
``Art and Oscillation,'' From The Transparent Society (1992)	257	(10)
Gianni Vattimo
``Transparency,'' From The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in The Modern Unhomely (1992)	267	(8)
Anthony Vidler
``The Glaze: Phantasm and Modern Architecture'' From Achtung Architektur! Image And Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture (1996)	275	(6)
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
``The Veil: Architecture Without Organs'' From Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture (1996)	281	(5)
Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen
Plates 121-200	286	(25)
``The Interpretation of the Glass Dream: Expressionist Architecture And The History of the Crystal Metaphor,'' From Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 40, No. 1 (1981)	311	(26)
Rosemarie Haag Bletter
``The Glass Paradise,'' From Architecture Review 125, No. 745(1959)	337	(8)
Reyner Banham
Glass Architecture, (1914)	345	(26)
Paul Scheerbart
``Modern Monuments,'' From A Critic Writes: Essays By Reyner Banham (1996)	371	(4)
Reyner Banham
``Pierre Chareau: An Eclectic Architect,'' From Pierre Chareau: Architect and Craftsman, 1883---1950 (1985)	375	(14)
Kenneth Frampton
``Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,'' From Perspecta 21 (1984)	389	(10)
K. Michael Hays
``Mies Van Der Rohe's Paradoxical Symmetries,'' From Translations From Drawing to Building (1997)	399	(22)
Robin Evans
``A Garden of Microchips: The Architectural Image of The Microelectronic Age'' From Any 5 (1994)	421	(8)
Toyo Ito
``The Cunning of Cosmetics'' From El Croquis 84 (1997)	429	(8)
Jeffrey Kipnis
Afterword	437
Terence Riley