All posts by Jessica Aberle

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New Books at APL: Bricks and Texas Churches

For those interested in materials, we received two survey books on the history of building with bricks.

  • Hall, William, editor. Brick. Essay by Dan Cruickshank. London: Phaidon, 2015.
  • Campbell, James W. Brick: A World History. Photographs by Will Pryce. London: Thames and Hudson, 2016.

William Hall takes a thematic approach to the topic focusing on concepts like form, light, mass, and scale, while James W. Campbell presents the history of brick, beginning with the ancient world and concluding with What Future for Brick? While both works are extensively illustrated, Hall’s work presents almost as a photo essay.

Texas_steeplesChristensen, Carl J., Jr., artist. Lone Star Steeples: Historic Places of Worship in Texas. Text by Pixie Christensen and Foreword by David Ruesink. College Station, Tx: Texas A&M University Press, 2016.

In the preface, Pixie Christensen begins:

As the six flags that flew over Texas help define its history, the hundreds of Texas churches recognized by historic markers help define the culture, heritage, religion, and architectural identities of the people of Texas. Lone Star Steeples takes the reader on a tour of historic churches across the state. Architectural features, individual stories, cultural markers, and significant events make each church unique and also contribute to the big picture of this big state….

But more than a view of history through church buildings, Lone Star Steeples invites the reader to experience the beauty and integrity of each church building through the eyes  of the artist/architect who envisioned and illustrated the book.
(Preface, ix)

The Christensens documented more than 60 Texas churches. The book is arranged geographically, dividing Texas into 7 districts: West Texas & Panhandle; North Central Texas; East Texas; South Central Texas; Hill Country; Gulf Coast; and South Texas. Each entry includes at least one watercolor, the location, the date, and architect if known. A brief history is also included.

library, special collections

Special Collections Capstone

This semester is my last at the iSchool, which means I am working on my Capstone project. I am sure it comes as no surprise that I have elected to develop a project at the Architecture and Planning Library!

For my project, I will undertake an assessment of APL’s Special Collections so that we might better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the collection. Moreover, I hope that the process undertaken here can serve as model for other collections on campus.

In working with Special Collections, my goal has always been to raise the visibility of the collection, even if it was book by book through the Friday Finds post. I always enjoy sharing the materials that I find within. The project will hopefully raise the visibility of the collection on a much larger scale. Throughout the semester I will post about the project to keep you updated and in the end I will point you to the resources I create about Special Collections!

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New Books: APL Studios

Last week I was able to sit in on the studio lotteries to hear about all the classes that will be taught this semester in the School – I am a little jealous that I cannot take some of them myself! While reviewing the new books this morning, I discovered that two of our recent arrivals may be of interest to two of the studios – Wilfried Wang’s studio on Berlin and Margaret Griffin’s studio on tower design in LA.

Ward, Simon. Urban Memory and Visual Culture in Berlin: Framing the Asynchronous City, 1957-2012. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.

Ward_Berlin

Gigon, Annette, Mike Guyer, and Felix Jerusalem. Residential Towers. Zürich: GTA Verlag, 2015.

Residential_Towers

I will keep an eye out for other new arrivals that may be valuable to the work done in the studios throughout the semester. If you need help locating a resource or would like to request a purchase for material we do not have, please feel  free to stop in or drop us a line.

Friday Find!, special collections

Friday Finds: New Special Collections Materials

We’ve recently added material to Special Collections, and I wanted to share two of the items. They will be on display in the foyer of the Architecture and Planning Library until October. Stop in to see them!

Saltire Society. Exhibition of work by Charles Rennie Mackintosh: architecture, furniture, paintings, specially made scale models: illustrated catalogue. Foreword by Thomas Howarth. Edinburgh: Veitch & Hadley, 1953.

Mackintosh_1953

The Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, February 9, 1956.
Bartlesville, Oklahoma: H.C. Price Co., 1956.

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Visit to the General Land Office

The Library Staff Council arranged a tour of the General Land Office for the staff of the University of Texas Libraries in late July. Several members of the Architecture and Planning Library and Alexander Architectural Archives had the opportunity to attend.  It was a fantastic tour!

The GLO is a great resource if you are looking for information about land settlement and ownership in the state of Texas. Many of the resources, we discovered, are also available online. They have digitized nearly 40,000 maps. While the maps are for purchase, it’s a quick way to search their collection. Researchers may also search in the Land Grants Database – again many of these resources are available digitally. Finally, I wanted to link to their list of collections and to their list of services, which includes information about  fees associated with licensing and digitization of images. If you have any questions about the materials at the GLO, do not hesitate to contact them – they are friendly and incredibly knowledgeable.

Please note: The photos are of the former General Land Office on the Capital Grounds. The current office is near the Bullock Museum.

special collections

Friday Finds: The Books of a Thousand Homes vol. 1

Smith, Henry Atterbury, ed. The Books of a Thousand Homes.  vol. 1. New York : Home Owners Service Institute, 1927.

ThousandHomes_1
Front Cover

While doing a little bit of research on  our collection, I came across this title and was intrigued by it – The Books of a Thousand Homes. I thus pulled it from Special Collections this morning. (The book was also reprinted by Dover, as 500 Small Houses of the Twenties.) When I pulled our copy from the shelf, I was delighted by the house on the cover. I also loved that reproductions of blueprints are included in the section, “From Plan Book to Finished Home.”

The AIA Historical Directory of American Architects has a brief biography of the editor,  Henry Atterbury Smith. The Acknowledgement by the President of the Home Owners Institute, preceding the collection of plans and drawings, provides greater background on Smith. He writes:

Henry Atterbury Smith has become internationally known for his unusual and successful work in the development of practical forms of multi-family housing, being the originator and designer of the open-stair type of apartment and tenement housing the masses at low rental. The East River Homes designed for Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Sr., at a cost of over $2,000,000 to house originally 400 tubercular families, are a monument to his efforts. (Acknowledgment)

While the book is valuable for those researching American homes in 1920s and 1930s, I am curious about the origins and history of our copy. When we think about books as objects, we see them as  distinct from other copies of the work, each with their own histories and stories – though sometimes hidden. For this reason, I am always excited to stumble upon one of the works for which we know the former owner.

The Books of A Thousand Homes at Architecture and Planning:

Several different types of tape have been used to repair the pages of A Thousand Homes, while other significant tears were left untreated.  Someone created a thin bookmark that I missed on my first pass through the book, because it was tucked neatly into the spine. The note on the bookmark reads: 110 comfortable + pretty.  Some of the pages have been torn away and are missing, while  several of the houses have been checked in pencil. A book plate for the Library of the University of Texas has been affixed to the front cover’s end papers and the call number is Dewey, suggesting it was not a recent addition to the collection. No record exists for how this copy came into our collection, however. I can only speculate about who might have been responsible for the additions and subtractions to this work.

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New Books: The Letters of Philip Webb

Webb, Philip. The Letters of Philip Webb.  Edited by John Alpin. 4 vols. New York: Routledge, 2016.

I was so pleased to see the edited volumes of The Letters of Philip Webb arrived this week. The letters are organized chronologically in four volumes: 1864-1887, 1888-1898, 1899-1902,  and 1903-1914. There is also an extensive index to help navigate the letters by people, place, or topic.

John Alpin, the editor of the volumes, writes:

This four-volume collection of letters comprises a comprehensive selection from his surviving correspondence, little of which has previously been published. As well as revealing the range of Webb’s professional endeavours and the value he invested in a number of close friendships, the evidence presented in his letters confirms his position as a key member of the Morris circle. (Preface, ix)

I spent a bit of time this morning reading through some of the letters. Many of the recipients of Webb’s letters were familiar names: John Ruskin, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Richard Lethaby, William Butterfield, and members of the William Morris family.  For example he wrote letters to Jane, Jenny, and May Morris while they were away in Italy in 1877.  One of my favorites though is an exchange about the landscape at Kelmscott with Jane Morris (Letter 43 in volume 1, 1871).

 

library

New Books: Stefan Sebök

Dubowitz, Lilly. In Search of a Forgotten Architect: Stefan Sebök 1901-1941. With essays by Èva Forgács and Richard Anderson. London: Architectural Association, 2012.

While looking through book catalogs on recent architecture publications, I discovered this work on Stefan Sebök. Though the architect was unknown to me, I recalled that a couple of our patrons in the spring semester had interests in Hungarian architecture and El Lissitzky, respectively. His connections to László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius, the Bauhaus, and Moscow further suggested that this work would be a welcome addition to our collections.

DubowitzLilly Dubowitz traces her journey through family memory (she is Sebök’s niece) and archives in Europe, Moscow, and the US, encountering both silences and truths. She was aided by archivists, scholars, and relatives of Sebök’s colleagues and peers. She writes of one aspect of her research, “Levente [Nagy] suggested that I should contact his cousin, Erwin Nagy, who had unearthed all the KGB files on his father’s trial and execution, which not only told him about the false charges, but also gave him information on his family about which he was completely unaware (as part of their interrogation prisoners had to give a detailed account of their whole family history). It was through this lead, and a visit to the KGB archives, that I was later able to discover not only Sebök’s eventual fate and details of his work in the Soviet Union but also many other aspects of his life.” (pg. 43) While not everyone may not be interested in the architecture of the Modernists, the book offers a narrative on discovery through archival research. The work is also heavily illustrated with the materials Dubowitz discovered – drawings, photographs, letters, and government documents.

special collections

Friday Finds: Domestic Architecture

North American Construction Company. Aladdin Homes. Bay City, Mich. : The Company, [1916].

Special Collections houses catalog no. 28 (1916) from Aladdin Homes. The catalog offered “Readi-Cut Houses” in which one would purchase the material and plan directly from the company. The company offers several arguments for purchasing an Aladdin Home.

An appeal to modernity:

“The Aladdin System of Construction is Built on This Principle”: Modern power-driven machines can do BETTER work at a lower cost than hand labor. Then every bit of work that CAN be done by machines SHOULD be so done. The steel worker with a  little hack-saw trying to cut and fit the steel girders of the modern skyscraper should be no more out of place than the modern carpenter cutting sills, joists, and rafters. The skyscraper framework is cut to fit by machines in the steel mills, marked and numbered ready for erection. The lumber in the Aladdin house is cut to fit by machines in the Aladdin mills, marked and numbered ready for erection. The steel system is twenty years old – the Aladdin system eleven years old. (pg. 3)

Man’s ability to conquer nature:

“Waste- and What It Means to You”: Our buyers go actually into the woods, confer with the owners and cutters of the timber and buy the right lengths that will come out of the woods, through the sawmills and into our own mills in the right lengths. We don’t take raw material in lengths and sizes as chances to come, but as it should come to conform to our standards. In many instances the cross-cut saw in the hands of the woodsman is directed by our needs so that no other saw is touched to the lumber at any time. (pg. 6)

An appeal to family:

The Thelma: Home! Who loves their home more than the American family? Every day, father is looking forward to the time when he can provide a home for his loved ones – a place of comfort and enjoyment, shelter and protection. Mother has it all planned, has everything arranged. Her highest ambition is a home and its comforts. And every mother should have a home. The children – the ruddy faced kiddies – are anxious too for the great day. They want a home of their own and will love it and prize it as much as mother and father.

To this type of American family is dedicated the Aladdin home. (pg. 15)

Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University maintains the company’s archive and has digitized the catalogs and additional records, if you find ours intriguing.

Enger, Kristen. Hytta Mi. Oslo: Mittet & Co., [1946].

I discovered Enger’s work near the Aladdin Homes and was intrigued by the log cabin on its cover. Google Translate informs me that Hytta Mi translates from Norwegian to My Cabin. The work is a collection of 65 cabins designed by architects for summer, weekend, hunting, or fishing cabins. Most of the designs have the rustic exterior of log construction; however, a couple appear to have the clean lines of  mid-century design.

 hytta_mi

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New Books: Palladio

Architecture and Planning recently received two texts assocciated with recent exhibits on Andrea Palladio from the Royal Institute of British Architects and the Palladio Museum, respectively.

Mortensen, Marie Bak, ed. Palladian Design: The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected. London: RIBA, 2015.

RIBAPalladioGuido Beltramini, who is one of the editors of Jefferson and Palladio (below), Pier Vittorio Aureli, and Daniel Maudlin each contribute a short essay to the catalog. Mortensen notes that each author was selected to offer a specific reading of Palladio’s work and influence. She writes, “The contributed essays are not beholden to the exhibition’s raison d’être. Rather, they are intended as fresh contributions to a continuing polemical conversation around Palladio and Palladianism, which extends beyond the curated confines of any single exhibition project.” (Mortensen, Charles Hind, and Vicky Wilson, “Introduction,” 9.) The catalog primarily focuses on the content of the exhibit itself. Accordingly, “Through three themed sections this exhibition introduces Palladio’s unique design principles and explores the very different ways in which they have been interpreted, copied and re-imagined, and how they continue to inspire architects today.” (“Palladian Design:  The Good, the Bad and the Unexpected,” 22.) The three themes include Revolution (subset themes: Andrea Palladio: Reinventing Antiquity; The Rise of Anglo-Palladianism; Spreading the Word), Evolution (subset themes: Bending the Rules; From Architectural Ideal to a Choice of Style; Statement Architecture; Pattern Book Architecture), and Eternally Contemporary (subset themes: The Comfort of the Familiar; Postmodern Palladianism; Abstract Palladianism).

Beltramini, Guido and Fulvio Lenzo, eds. Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing a New World. Vicenza: Centro internazionale di studi di architetttura Andrea Palladio; Milano: Officina Libraria, 2015.

I have not been lucky enough to see Palladio’s work in person; JeffersonPalladiorather, my engagement with his architecture has been through the lens of Thomas Jefferson. I was, thus, excited to see Jefferson and Palladio: Constructing the New World come through our new books. Beltramini and Lenzo, write, “The ‘seasons’ of the relationship between Jefferson and Palladio are revisited, focusing on the thread of affinity and a shared vision in their project to build a new world based on the example provided by the ancients.” (“Preface,” 10.) The work includes numerous articles with contributions by James S. Ackerman, Richard Guy Wilson, and Bruce Boucher. The book also includes a photo essay by Filippo Romano and documentation of the works designed by Jefferson.