indonesia hOme iNTeriors

Search Amazon.com merchandizes using this form   - Books

Home & Interior Design books:
Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art

Today's info: "Best is reviewing several books first prior to purchasing at Amazon.com."

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server,
using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.

Manufacturer: Quantuck Lane

List Price: $27.50
Our Price: $12.95
You Save: $ 14.55 ( 53% )
(prices subject to change)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Average Customer Ratings:

Have you ever wondered why the Guggenheim is always covered in scaffolding? Why the random slashes on the exterior of Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, supposed to represent Berlin locations where pre-war Jews flourished, reappear, for no apparent reason, on his Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto? Or why Frank Gehry's Stata Center, designed for MIT's top-secret Cryptography Unit, has transparent glass walls? Not to mention why, for $442 per square foot, it doesn't keep out the rain? You're not alone.

In Architecture of the Absurd, John Silber dares to peek behind the curtain of "genius" architects and expose their willful disdain for their clients, their budgets, and the people who live or work inside their creations. Absurdism in a painting or sculpture is one thing—if it's not to your taste, you don't have to look—but absurdism in buildings represents a blatant disregard for the needs of the building, whether it be a student center, music hall, or corporate headquarters.

Silber admires the precise engineering of Calatrava, the imaginative shapes of Gaudi, and the sleek beauty of Mies van der Rohe. But he refuses to kowtow to the egos of those "geniuses" who lack such respect for the craft. Absurdist architects have been sheltered by the academy, encouraged by critics, and commissioned by CEOs and trustees. They stamp the world with meaningless monstrosities, justify them with fanciful theories, and command outrageous "genius fees" for their trouble.

As a young man, Silber learned to draw blueprints and read elevations from his architect father. In twenty-five years as president of Boston University, Silber oversaw a building program totaling 13 million square feet. Here, Silber uses his experience as a builder, a client, and a noted philosopher to construct an unflinchingly intelligent illustrated critique of contemporary architecture.

Le Corbusier's megalomaniacal 1930s plan for Algiers, which called for the demolition of the entire city, was mercifully never built. But his blatant disregard for context and community lives on. In Boston, Josep Lluis Sert's unprotected northeast-facing entrance to the B.U. library flooded the first floor with snow and ice every New England winter. In Los Angeles, sunlight glinting off the sharply angled steel curves of Gehry's Walt Disney Music Hall raises the temperature of neighbors' houses by 15 degrees. And of course, Libeskind's World Trade Center plan, with its spindly 1776-foot tower and quarter-mile-high gardens, proved so impractical it had to be re-designed, in an exasperating negotiation hardly worthy of the complex tragedy of the site.

Dr. Silber, an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects, asks all the questions that critics dare not. He challenges architects to derive creative satisfaction from meeting their clients' practical needs. He appeals to the reasonable public to stop supporting overpriced architecture. And most of all, he calls for responsible clients to tell the emperors of our skylines that their pretensions cannot hide the naked absurdity of their designs. 103 color illustrations.


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 724.6
EAN: 9781593720278
ISBN: 1593720270
Label: Quantuck Lane
Manufacturer: Quantuck Lane
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: 2007-11-12
Publisher: Quantuck Lane
Studio: Quantuck Lane


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
• Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America's Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry
• The Architecture of Happiness (Vintage)
• Everything by Design: My Life as an Architect
• From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Simply a matter of opinion -
A simple of opinion does not justify a twenty five dollar book. Had Mr. Sibler been an architect, rather than an "honorary member" of the AIA, and a builder with a biased opinion, he would have understood this better, I think.

Wouldn't pass muster with Silber -
Neither my love of architecture or architectural criticism were indulged by reading this book. Fortunately, I didn't lose $[...] on it as it found me courtesy of a friend regifting it. This selectively researched and speciously reasoned volume would never have passed President Silber's muster had it been submitted by one of his faculty seeking tenure at Boston University during his reign there. It's more fitting of a blog with its confusion of opinion for knowledge, and seems like little more than a vehicle to register his seemingly obsessive hatred of Frank Gehry.

The tragedy here is that there is a point to be made about some architects, and the people that give them free reign, whose work shows more concern for a page in their portfolio than respect for the function of a building, the people who will use it, and others affected by its aesthetic. But how much "absurd" design results from such a disdain for public utility versus simply different perspectives on form and function? Maybe Silber could have researched that. Instead, this opinionated polemic erects a monument to Silber's ego as egregious as the Stata Center.

For a pointed criticism of Silber's architectural acumen, see Mark Lamster's review in the Los Angeles Times online ([...]) Schadenfreude, indeed.

Great topic - uncompelling argument -
I concur with a previous reviewer. There is, arguably, some high profile architecture today that ventures into the realm of the absurd. This book's particular argument is not well constructed and in the end comes off as grumpy.

good cause, bad argument. -
I bought this book because I storngly dislike the work of architects like Frank Gehry and Daniel Liebeskind, and I thought it would be refreshing to hear an intelligent person handily dissect and dismiss these absurd blights on the profession. I haven't even gotten to the fun part yet and I'm already disappointed.

A quote:
"The drive toward absurdism in art has accompanied a decline in standards of taste in popular music and movies and the prevalence of tattoos and body-piercing ornamentation..."

He also goes on to attack numerous works of conceptual art such as Smithson's "Floating Island" and Doug Michel's "Cadillac Ranch."

The argument against these conceptual works as well as body art in general has almost nothing to do with the merits of good architecture and does very little to support his general argument. Rather, they expose this man to be what he almost certainly is: a somewhat dull, crotchety old person with a narrow vision of what art can and should be. I can see already that his arguments against these architects are not going to be at all interesting, as he has already bored me half to death.

I bought the book on Amazon and I will most likely be selling it back. Don't buy it unless you would like to have your own boring sensibilities buttressed by a fairly un-influential, pseudo-designer's rants...

Limited mind, limited book -
Silber clearly demonstrates one of the internal discussions of the profession of architecture: is it a "practical science" or is it more akin to "fine art"? His experience clearly tilts him toward the "practical science" aspect but he has picked his examples with a closed eye to all the issues with each of the projects he portrays.
For example, the Sidney Opera House, which he loves -- took 12 years and was 800% over budget when finally built -- the delays caused by the inability of the engineers to build the thing. Bilbao (which he hates) was built on time and on budget and has been credited with revitalizing an economy of a previously dwindling seaport. In fact, magazine articles are written about "The Bilbao effect" of a stunning piece of architecture to revive an economy.
He speaks to the practical aspects of architecture -- and those are many. (he uses Sert as an example of an architect too closely identified with his Spanish origins to understand the Boston climate). He doesn't address the spiritual aspects of architecture, though, and in some cases, those are equally important as the practical aspects. Gehry, who he reviles, has been equally praised in the book "The Architecture of Happiness" for his joyful designs. (I agree that no one said that about Cobusier). Holl has been praised for his solemnity; Liebeskind for this thought-provoking designs. People travel to see the work of these architects. He also does not discuss the work of Holl, even though he is mentioned as one of the "absurd" triumvirate.

Note that Boston College (where Silber administered the building program) has never been praised for its campus or architecture.

There is work-a-day design, which is appropriate for a Costco store or Best Buy, but there is design that challenges and is thought provoking -- and Silber seems to want the best of each, when he decides it is appropriate.

This is a one-sided screed that never should have been made into a book. When someone makes a film of the "architecture of Boston College" perhaps I will alter my opinion.


I gave it two stars because the photos are rather nice.

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server, using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.

| Home Design | Interior Design |