Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery

Stone: Ancient Craft to Modern Mastery, by Richard Rhodes, is one of the only publications in English to provide a general history of stone as an architectural material. The book includes an extensive glossary, endnotes, and bibliography, and it has an impressive cover that reproduces the surface texture of stone. In his introduction, Rhodes emphasises the cultural significance of stone buildings: “The ruins of stone and masonry architecture testify to war and destruction, to the rise and fall of cities and civilizations.”

Rhodes is apparently the last surviving apprentice of a medieval Italian guild of stonemasons. He stresses that this organisation is not affiliated with “the secret-handshake Masons”, though he describes it in equally conspiratorial terms. Several chapters of the book are devoted to the guild’s supposedly “Sacred Rules” of stonemasonry, and Rhodes claims that he is “sharing these secrets for the first time.” (This all feels a bit too much like Dan Brown to me.)

Stone is one of several recent books on architectural materials. Others include Concrete, Brick, Stone, and Wood (a series by William Hall); Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton); Brick (by James W.P. Campbell); Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce); Arish (by Sandra Piesik); Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement); and The Art of Earth Architecture (by Jean Dethier).

Tectonism: Architecture for the Twenty-First Century

In a 2009 issue of Architectural Digest (vol. 79, no. 4), Patrik Schumacher grandly announced “the enunciation of a new style: Parametricism.” His article, Parametricism: A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design, even argued that this new architectural style was the successor to the Modernist movement: “Parametricism is the great new style after modernism.”

Schumacher’s book Tectonism: Architecture for the Twenty-First Century, published last year, introduces another new ‘ism’ — tectonism — which is apparently a revised version of parametricism: “tectonism is classified here as a subsidiary style within the overarching epochal style of parametricism. Tectonism is a logical continuation and refinement of earlier stages of parametricism, such as foldism, blobism, and swarmism.”

It’s hard to take Schumacher and his self-proclaimed epochal movements seriously. He makes sweeping, grandiose claims — “Tectonism is the most advanced and most sophisticated contemporary architectural style” — that have no real foundation, and he believes that parametricism/tectonism should become a global architectural hegemony: “The plurality of styles must make way for a sweeping parametricism”.

Ornament and Crime: Thoughts on Design and Materials

Ornament and Crime (Ornament und Verbrechen), first delivered as a lecture in Vienna and later published as an essay, is one of the most famous polemics in the history of architecture and design. Architect Adolf Loos abhorred the decorative ornamentation of Art Nouveau and the Vienna Secession, as he proclaimed in Ornament and Crime’s succinct central thesis: “the evolution of culture comes to the same thing as the removal of ornament from functional objects.”

Linking ‘primitive’ ornamentation to evolution is the most problematic aspect of Ornament and Crime, as Loos equated the tribal tattoos of Papua New Guinea with “degeneracy”. The essay is stridently moralistic, though it’s also arguably one of the first modernist manifestos, anticipating the functionalist architecture of Le Corbusier. Ornament and Crime: Thoughts on Design and Materials features two dozen essays by Loos, newly translated by Shaun Whiteside.

The Grammar Of Ornament, by Owen Jones, was the first systematic analysis of ornamental art, influencing Auguste Racinet’s L’ornement polychrome (‘polychromatic ornament’) and many other compendiums. Stuart Durant’s Ornament is a comprehensive history of pattern design and ornament since the Industrial Revolution. The more recent Histories of Ornament, edited by Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne, is the first attempt at a global history of the subject.

Ratchadamnoen Route View 2482+

Suwaporn Worrasit’s short film Ratchadamnoen Route View 2482+ was screened at the Thai Film Archive in Salaya on Christmas Day, as part of the 25th Thai Short Film and Video Festival. The film shows builders constructing a reproduction of Democracy Monument, intercut with an anti-government protest at the real Democracy Monument in Bangkok on 20th September 2020. The title refers to 1939 (2482 in the Buddhist Era), the year that the monument was commissioned.

The reproduction of the monument was built for Bangkok World, a new tourist attraction due to open next year. Suwaporn’s film features exceptional footage of labourers carefully installing and painting the concrete reproduction, creating a scale model of the original. However, Democracy Monument is more than a mere architectural landmark; for decades, it has been a focal point for political rallies, and borne witness to military crackdowns. After the 14th October 1973 massacre, the bodies of the victims were placed on the monument. In 2010, red-shirt protesters wrapped it in banners painted with blood.

Once it’s completed, Bangkok World’s Democracy Monument will be a pristine simulacrum — the Disneyland version of Bangkok’s heritage — though it will reveal none of the original monument’s political and social significance. While it’s under construction, surrounded by bamboo scaffolding, the reproduction is a metaphor for the country’s unfinished transition to democracy. Similarly, vintage photographs of Democracy Monument under construction appeared in the June 2012 issue of Sarakadee (สำรคดี) magazine and in Chulayarnnon Siriphol’s short film Karaoke (คาราโอเกะ), again symbolising the incomplete nature of Thai democracy.

Gothic:An Illustrated History

Roger Luckhurst’s Gothic begins with the pointed arch, the archetypal element of the Gothic style, though the book explores the Gothic influence far beyond its architectural and literary origins. As Luckhurst writes in his introduction: “Gothic: An Illustrated History takes up the challenge of building a global history of the Gothic, attempting to glimpse this protean creature as it shape-shifts.”

This is a guide to Gothic geography and cryptozoology, organised thematically rather than chronologically. Gothic motifs and settings are explored, and the book is truly international in scope. Unlike previous histories of the subject, popular culture — especially Gothic cinema — is given serious consideration, and there are around 350 superb historical illustrations.

Famously, Giorgio Vasari described Gothic architecture as “monstrous”, and Luckhurst’s book features a comprehensive bestiary of monsters of all kinds. Like the chapters on monsters, the collection of extended essays on the “Gothic Compass” (southern, western, eastern, and northern Gothic) could stand as a separate book in its own right.

With its shadowy subject matter and the sheer range of material under discussion — from medieval churches to computer games — Luckhurst’s book is similar to Marina Warner’s equally impressive No Go the Bogeyman. Music and fashion are surprising omissions, though: the goth subculture and bands such as the Cure really deserve to be included.

Henri Focillon’s The Art of the West in the Middle Ages (Art d’Occident) was the first comprehensive history of Gothic architecture. More recently, Rolf Toman’s Gothic: Architecture, Sculpture, Painting is a lavishly illustrated history of the subject.

“Bangkok’s last movie palace...”

This weekend, the curtains will close on the Scala cinema’s screen for the last time. After more than fifty years, the cinema will show its final film on 5th July.

The Scala was the last of three prestige cinemas in Bangkok’s Siam Square operated by the Apex Group. Their first venue, Siam Theatre, opened in 1966; damaged by arsonists in 2010, it was demolished to make way for a shopping mall. Apex Group’s Lido cinema closed its doors in 2018, after fifty years, though it reopened the following year as Lido Connect, a cinema and performance venue.

Its Tropical Modern exterior and elegant Art Deco lobby (designed by Jira Silpakanok in 1969) made the Scala an architectural landmark. With its velvet curtains, veteran ushers, and vast auditorium, it evoked the golden age of film exhibition.

The building’s fate had been in the balance since 2012, when landowners Chulalongkorn University first attempted to redevelop the area into yet another mall. Continued pressure from Chulalongkorn, combined with a recent two-month shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, made the cinema’s closure a sad inevitability.

In his book Thailand’s Movie Theaters, Philip Jablon called the Scala “Bangkok’s last movie palace”. The building was also photographed for the Filmvirus book Once Upon a Celluloid Planet.

The Art of Earth Architecture:Past, Present, Future

The Art of Earth Architecture, by Jean Dethier, is a comprehensive guide to “the history of architecture, settlements, and structures built from earth.” Technical aspects are covered in the first chapter, while other sections give a chronological account of raw earth architecture from antiquity to the present. It was originally published in French, as Habiter la terre: traditions, modernité et avenir de l’art de bâtir en terre crue.

The subtitle — Past, Present, Future — might seem clichéd, though it’s an apt summary of the book’s three key features: a sweeping historical survey, a guide to contemporary trends, and a manifesto for change. That last element is rather excessive, with Dethier’s repeated evangelising about the benefits of raw earth, though the 450 photographs and global coverage make this a definitive book on earth architecture.

The Art of Earth Architecture is one of several recent books on architectural materials. Others include Concrete, Brick, Stone, and Wood (a series by William Hall); Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton); Brick (by James W.P. Campbell); Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce); Arish (by Sandra Piesik); and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).

Stone

Stone is the latest in a series of coffee-table books on building materials, edited by William Hall and published by Phaidon. Like its predecessors Concrete, Brick, and Wood, Stone features stunning full-page photographs of more than 150 buildings, each with a paragraph-length caption.

“Many of the world’s most significant, revered, influential and memorable structures are built with stone,” Hall notes in his preface. Stone is the oldest and most durable of building materials, and the book includes such architectural masterworks as the pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, and the Taj Mahal. Various forms of stone are represented, including basalt, limestone, marble, and sandstone.

Wood

Wood, by William Hall, is an international survey of wooden architecture, published by Phaidon. Like his previous books — Concrete and Brick — it has an embossed dust jacket, full-page photographs with extended captions, and chapters themed according to concepts such as form, light, and scale.

The book includes buildings dating from the Middle Ages, though the emphasis is on modern and contemporary architecture. Most of the 170 examples are wooden structures, though there are a few exceptions, including some bamboo buildings and wooden facades.

Architecture in Wood is more comprehensive than Wood, though its photographs were all taken by its author, Will Pryce. Hall’s book, on the other hand, features images from various sources. Wood, by Bryan Sentance, is a guide to wood as a medium for art, craft, and design.

20th Century World Architecture

20th Century World Architecture, edited by Helen Thomas, is part of the Phaidon Atlas series. This large (folio format, 800 pages) book features 757 buildings constructed during between 1900 and 1999. Each building is profiled on a single page, though a handful of exceptions, such as the Sydney Opera House, are given double-page spreads.

This is surely the most comprehensive guide to the buildings of the last century, with "an unprecedented geographical scope, and an unparalleled level of data on twentieth-century architecture". There is substantial coverage of non-Western architecture, including sixty buildings from Africa, and almost 100 countries are represented in total. There are also more than 5,000 images.

Modern Architecture Since 1900 (by William JR Curtis) remains the best narrative history of the architecture of the period, and Architecture Of The 20th Century (by Peter Gossel and Gabriele Leuthauser) is an interesting visual history, though 20th Century World Architecture is unlikely to be surpassed as a global record of the significant buildings of the past 100 years. It's so heavy (8kg) that it comes with its own carrying case.

100 Ideas That Changed Architecture

100 Ideas That Changed Architecture, by Richard Weston, is part of Laurence King's 100 Ideas That Changed... series. Others include Photography, Film, Advertising, and Graphic Design.

Every book in the series follows the same format: 100 chapters, each with a single-page essay and a full-page illustration. What sets this book apart from others in the series is its excellent annotated bibliography.

Weston's 100 entries include architectural features (columns, arches, domes), building materials (brick, iron, steel, glass), and "more idea-like ideas" ('less is more', 'form follows function'). There are also essays on architectural styles, especially the major trends of the twentieth century, though the book's coverage is more technical than aesthetic.

100 Years Of Architectural Drawing

100 Years Of Architectural Drawing 1900-2000, by Neil Bingham, is "a world survey of architectural drawings of the twentieth century." 300 drawings are included, all printed as full-page illustrations with extended captions.

Most of the key modern architects are represented; one of the highlights is an early version of Le Corbusier's anthropometric proportional design Le Modulor (1945), inspired by Leonardo's Vitruvian Man.

The Course Of Landscape Architecture

The Course Of Landscape Architecture: A History Of Our Designs On The Natural World, From Prehistory To The Present (published by Thames & Hudson) is a survey of more than 3,000 years of mankind's shaping of the natural landscape. Such an ambitious narrative can't be covered comprehensively in 300 pages, so the book alternates between general summaries of major themes and detailed case studies of specific sites.

Christophe Girot provides a fascinating overview of our attitudes to our environment over the centuries, linking them to major scientific discoveries and artistic innovations: "Landscape is the crucible of human actions and reactions towards nature, and landscapes are the product of a deep cultural revolution that occurred at the dawn of human settlement 9,000 years ago." He argues, therefore, that we must "achieve a more respectful relationship towards our world, by giving a greater place to nature in society."

Brick

Brick, edited by William Hall, is a survey of over 150 brick buildings, from a 4,000-year-old ziggurat in Iraq to a twenty-first century structure built by a robotic arm. Published by Phaidon, it follows exactly the same format as Hall’s earlier Concrete: full-page photographs with extended captions, arranged in themed chapters.

In his introduction, Hall notes that “no illustrated books have been published on the subject for over a decade.” The last book on brick architecture, a comprehensive global history by James W.P. Campbell, was indeed written more than ten years ago (in 2003). The first international survey of brick buildings — Brickwork, by Andrew Plumridge and Wim Meulenkamp — was released a decade before that (in 1993).

Arish:Palm-Leaf Architecture

Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture, by Sandra Piesik, is “the first comprehensive publication dedicated to recording the special place of date palm-leaf architecture in the UAE’s cultural heritage.” ‘Arish’ traditionally refers to summer houses constructed from palm leaves, though Piesik adopts it as an umbrella term for all palm-leaf buildings.

Piesik’s account of historical palm-leaf architecture is limited to a collection of black-and-white photographs from the middle of the twentieth century. The book then highlights examples of palm-leaf buildings from each area of the United Arab Emirates, including ‘mogassas’ (summer houses), ‘cayady’ (winter houses), ‘barasti’ (with flat roofs), ‘khaimah’ (with pitched roofs), and ‘kada’ (with stone walls). These regional chapters have colour photographs and additional historical context.

Arish is one of several recent books on architectural materials. Others include Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton), Brick (by James W.P. Campbell), Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce), Concrete (by William Hall), and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).

Concrete

Concrete, edited by William Hall and published by Phaidon, is a collection of large (full-page and double-page) photographs of concrete architecture. It’s a visual portfolio of almost 200 buildings rather than a narrative history of concrete, though it includes an introductory essay by Leonard Koren.

Hall writes in his preface: “Many of the best and most influential buildings of the last century are constructed with concrete”. The book includes plenty of stunning examples, from Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (“perhaps the quintessential modernist structure”) to the 2,000-year-old Roman Pantheon.

Concrete has been maligned due to its associations with post-War Brutalist architecture, a trend first identified by Rayner Banham in his 1955 Architectural Review article The New Brutalism. But in his essay, Koren argues that Brutalism was a mere blip in concrete’s long history as a versatile building material.

Peter Collins wrote the first history of concrete architecture (though he placed too much emphasis on a single architect, Auguste Perret). Several histories of other building materials have been published recently, including Glass in Architecture (by Michael Wigginton), Brick (by James W.P. Campbell), Architecture in Wood (by Will Pryce), and Corrugated Iron (by Simon Holloway and Adam Mornement).

Architecture in Wood:A World History

Will Pryce previously photographed brick buildings for Brick, a global history of brickwork written by James W.P. Campbell. For his similar survey of wooden structures, Architecture in Wood: A World History, Pryce provided both the photographs and text. Pryce is an excellent photographer, simultaneously capturing the grand scale and intricate details of each building, though his text in Architecture in Wood lacks the historical scope of Campbell’s in Brick.

As Pryce explains in his preface: “This is not an exhaustive study of wooden architecture’s long history... Instead it is a selection of arguably the best buildings and those most representative of important regional traditions.” These include two significant Japanese temples: Horu-ji in Fujiwara (“the oldest wooden buildings in the world. The very oldest is the Golden Hall, which dates from 677”) and Todai-ji in Nara (“the largest building ever to have been made of wood, the Great Buddha Hall... remains the largest wooden building in the world”).

In America, thr book was released with the alternate title Buildings in Wood: The History and Traditions of Architecture’s Oldest Building Material. The original cover featured the Church of the Transfiguration in Kizhi, Russia; the new edition, published this year, replaces this with a cover image of the To-ji temple in Kyoto, Japan.

Eames: The Architect & The Painter

Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's feature-length documentary Eames: The Architect & The Painter explores the life and work of Charles (the architect) and Ray Eames (the painter). The Eames' collaborative designs "did more to change the public perception of Modern design than just about anyone else in the 20th century" (Charlotte and Peter Fiell, Industrial Design A-Z).

The documentary begins with the development of arguably the most influential Eames design, the plywood LCW chair (part of the Essential Eames exhibition at TCDC last year). This is the only item of furniture or product design that the film discusses in detail, though, as the focus shifts to the dynamics of the Eames' relationship and the working practices in their design office.

Numerous sequences from the Eames' short films are included, notably their most famous film, Powers Of Ten (1977). There are also clips from multi-screen installations such as the seven-screen Glimpses Of The USA (1959) and Think (1964), shown on twenty-two screens at the World's Fair in New York.

Interviewees include Pat Kirkham (author of Charles & Ray Eames: Designers Of The 20th Century, and co-editor of History Of Design), and John and Marilyn Neuhart (co-authors, with Ray Eames, of Eames Design, an objective catalogue raisonne described by Ray as "a book without adjectives"). Charles Eames' daughter (Lucia) and grandson (Eames Demetrios, author of An Eames Primer) also appear.

Eames Demetrios takes us on a tour of the Eames' house, and this archetypal Mid-Century Modern property reflects the different personalities of Charle and Ray Eames. The house has Modernist architecture (open-plan exterior, high ceilings, and glass walls) designed by Charles, and is filled with art and knick-knacks collected by Ray.

Though the Eames Office co-operated with the documentary, this is not a rose-tinted portrait of the designers. For example, art historian Judith Wechsler describes her affair with Charles Eames: "We had a very profound love for each other. He wanted very much for us to get married and have a child, and he wanted to close the Eames office".

On a lighter note, architect Kevin Roche describes dinner at the Eames' house: "what they had arranged for dessert was three bowls of flowers, that they put in front of you to admire, so it was a visual dessert. I was really fucked off with that, I can tell you! I hadn't eaten much, I was saving up for the dessert. So I'm looking at these stupid flowers, saying 'What the hell's wrong with these people?' I got in my car and I drove out to the nearest Dairy Queen!"

Eames: The Architect & The Painter was made for the PBS American Masters television series and first broadcast on 19th December 2011. It was also released theatrically.

Architecture In The 20th Century

The second edition of Architecture In The 20th Century was published by Taschen in 2005, in two volumes with a slipcase. Written by Peter Gossel and Gabriele Leuthauser, it's more accessible than William JR Curtis's Modern Architecture Since 1900, though Curtis's book is more comprehensive.

The book is organised in broadly chronological order, and begins with 19th century iron structures such as the Eiffel Tower, followed by the skyscrapers of Chicago and New York. The century's greatest architects - Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - all receive extensive coverage. Some of the century's most iconic buildings (the Chrysler Building in Chicago, the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Congress Building in Brasilia) are included, though not the Sydney Opera House.

Some of the 'isms' of modern architecture are missing, notably Russian Constructivism (Vladimir Tatlin's proposed tower in St Petersberg) and Japanese Metabolism (Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo). An appendix features biographies of major architects, though it's a bit too selective. Oscar Niemeyer, for example, was one of the key Modernist architects, yet he has no biography here. Also, the book has no bibliography or references.

The second edition was reprinted, in a single volume, in 2012. There were no changes to the book's main chapters (which were updated in 2005), though the biographies were revised to indicate the deaths of architects such as Kenzo Tange. The reprint had a much improved cover: the bold, black text on the white spine resembles that of A World History Of Art, and the back cover features a stunning photograph of the Chrysler Building.

Taschen's Modern Architecture A-Z (also co-written by Peter Gossel) is a more comprehensive guide to modern architects and buildings. A World History Of Architecture, published by Laurence King, is a recent survey of architectural history, though Banister Fletcher's A History Of Architecture is the classic and definitive book on the subject.

The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower: The 300 Meter Tower is a folio reprint of a book originally issued by Gustave Eiffel in two volumes: one containing construction photographs by Edouard Durandelle (similar to those of Theophile Feau), and another featuring architectural drawings of the Eiffel Tower. The reprint, published by Taschen, includes an introduction written by Bertrand Lemoine.

The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 for the Exposition Universelle, and has since become one of the most celebrated icons of modern architecture. In The Shock Of The New, Robert Hughes calls it "the one structure that seemed to gather all the meanings of modernity together". A World History Of Architecture discusses the Tower's significance in the pre-skyscraper era: "Not until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York was Eiffel's tower exceeded in height, and it remains the largest iron construction in the world".

Robert Hughes argues that various innovations at the turn of the 20th century (the Cinematographe, the x-ray, the Kodak camera, the motor car, and powered flight) offered new vantage points from which to see the world. He cites the bird's-eye view from the Eiffel Tower as the most significant of these new perspectives: "This way of seeing was one of the pivots in human consciousness. The sight of Paris vu d'en haut, absorbed by millions of people in the first twenty years of the Tower's life, was as significant in 1889 as the famous NASA photograph of the earth from the moon".