Re-Reading Perspecta The First Fifty Years of the Yale Architectural Journal

by Stern, Robert A. M.; Picard, Caroline; Plattus, Alan

• ISBN13: 9780262195065
• ISBN10: 0262195062
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-08
• Publisher: The MIT Press

Summary

Winner in the book category of the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers of 2004 competition presented by the American Institute of Graphic Arts Perspecta, the oldest and most respected student-edited architectural journal in the United States, marks its fiftieth anniversary with this selection of influential and provocative pieces published in its pages from the 1950s through the 1990s. The essays and portfolios in Re-Reading Perspectatrace the development of architectural culture and discourse over the past fifty years and bear witness to the influential role played by Perspectain a time of crucial debate about the function and future of architecture. This monumental collection (with over 700 pages and 900 images) presents the most engaging and stimulating essays published in Perspecta, written by such well-known historians, theorists, and architects as Vincent Scully, Colin Rowe, Roland Barthes, Karsten Harries, K. Michael Hays, Allan Greenberg, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, John Hejduk, Francesco Dal Co, Bernard Tschumi, and Mark Wigley. Re-Reading Perspectaalso assembles the best examples of the richly-illustrated portfolios of projects published over the years, including work by Paul Rudolph, Louis Kahn, Robert Venturi, Eero Saarinen, Charles Moore, Philip Johnson, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Steven Holl, Thomas Leeser, Hani Rashid, and others. The editors introduce each section with essays that offer historical context and critical commentary. Re-Reading Perspectaalso includes essays by Kenneth Frampton, K. Michael Hays, Joan Ockman, and Sandy Isenstadt on the history of Perspectaand its role in architectural discourse. This selection of the best of Perspectacovers a broad and lively spectrum of American architectural design, history, theory, and criticism.

Author Biography

Robert A. M. Stern is Dean and J. M. Hoppin Professor of Architecture at the Yale School of Architecture. He was editor of Perspecta 9/10 in 1965.

Peggy Deamer is Associate Dean and Associate Professor at the Yale School of Architecture.

Alan Plattus, former Associate Dean and Professor at the Yale School of Architecture, is Director and Cofounder of the Yale Urban Design Workshop.

Table of Contents

Training for the practice of architecture	p. 5
The evolution of Wright, Mies & Le Corbusier	p. 11
3 new directions : Paul Rudolph, Philip Johnson, Buckminster Fuller	p. 16
Monumental architecture : or the art of pleasing in civic design	p. 23
Some experiences and observations of an elderly architect	p. 31
Towards a plan for midtown Philadelphia	p. 33
The cardboard house	p. 38
On the responsibility of the architect : roundtable discussions with Philip Johnson, Pietro Belluschi, Louis Kahn, Paul Weiss and Vincent Scully	p. 42
Environment and anonymous architecture	p. 55
The seven crutches of modern architecture	p. 58
Order and form : Yale Art Gallery + Design Center, designed by Louis Kahn	p. 61
Order is	p. 64
Architecture is the thoughtful making of spaces	p. 68
Modern architecture : toward a redefinition of style	p. 70
Regionalism in architecture	p. 77
Order in architecture	p. 81
A letter	p. 87
Hadrian's villa	p. 93
The work of Charles Edouard Jeanneret	p. 100
"The functional tradition" and expression	p. 102
An interview	p. 109
Act and behavior in architecture	p. 114
For Perspecta	p. 119
The future of the past	p. 120
Open and closed	p. 127
Transparency : literal and phenomenal	p. 135
Antonio Gaudi : structure and form	p. 143
The death of the street	p. 151
The forces that shaped Park Avenue	p. 154
Complexity and contradiction in architecture	p. 160
You have to pay for the public life	p. 173
Whence & whither : the processional element in architecture	p. 184
Replication replicated, or notes on American bastardy	p. 187
Doldrums in the suburbs	p. 199
Now and then	p. 241
Plug it in, Rameses, and see if it lights up	p. 242
Conversation on urbanism	p. 246
Democratic planning	p. 249
Mass communication on the people freeway	p. 255
Typology and design method	p. 263
Maison de Verre	p. 269
Lutyens' architecture restudied	p. 276
From object to relationship II : Giuseppe Terragni Casa Giuliani Frigerio	p. 299
Eileen Gray : two houses and an interior, 1925-1933	p. 311
Some houses of ill-repute	p. 314
Transparency : literal and phenomenal : part 2	p. 316
Southerness	p. 329
Arts and architecture case study houses	p. 333
Julia Morgan : some introductory notes	p. 342
The monumental tradition	p. 351
Recycling New York	p. 358
The crisis of the object : the predicament of texture	p. 371
The dream of the complete building	p. 389
An architecture of participation	p. 396
The architecture of James Gamble Rogers at Yale University	p. 405
Notes on design	p. 410
Skyscrapers	p. 413
Negation and reconciliation	p. 427
Building and the terror of time	p. 428
Silent witnesses	p. 434
The shape of time reconsidered	p. 438
The persistence of formal patterns	p. 444
A conversation	p. 257
Notes from Sight Point Road	p. 461
Process and theme in the work of Carlo Scarpa	p. 467
Prospects for a critical regionalism	p. 477
Landscape and architecture work of Gunnar Asplund	p. 486
Critical architecture : between culture and form	p. 529
(Post)modern polemics	p. 536
The end of the classical : the end of the beginning, the end of the end	p. 541
Drawing a conclusion	p. 555
Excerpts from a conversation	p. 558
Mies van der Rohe : a moral modernism model	p. 561
On history and architecture : an interview	p. 573
Vertex and vortex : a tectonics of section	p. 584
Disjunctions	p. 591
The origins of modern eclecticism	p. 593
Postmortem architecture : the taste of Derrida	p. 601
Notes on a theory of making	p. 615
A conversation, "the idea of lasting"	p. 625
Wall : the time's building	p. 633
Projections	p. 693
Peter Behrens' highest Kultursymbol, the theater	p. 643
On art for the stage	p. 656
Order and disorder	p. 665
A life one century long	p. 667
A conversation with Giovanni Michelucci	p. 674
Doctrines and uncertainties	p. 683
For an open architecture	p. 688
On the work of Patkau Associates : tecto-totemic form	p. 692
On the work of Thomas Leeser : critique of the inverted house, a home for twin surgeons	p. 694
Future zones	p. 701
Nietzsche in New Haven	p. 705
Still learning from Las Vegas	p. 710
Which new urbainsm? : the Revanchist '90s	p. 720
Interchange and container : the new Orgman	p. 725
American modern : seven housing projects	p. 730
Practice and theory : Perspecta and the fate of the architectural discourse : a symposium honoring the fiftieth anniversary of Perspecta : the Yale Architectural Journal
Refelctions on Perspecta : the end of the beginning	p. 768
Reading perspecta 1 through 20 : the early years in context	p. 773
Perspecta 11-22 : searching for authenticity	p. 780
Perspecta since 1987 : the necessity of choice	p. 787
The founding of Perspecta	p. 796
Perspecta's graphic design and graphic design's perspective	p. 800
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