All posts by Jessica Aberle

library, special collections

Eugene Atget

Atget, Eugene. Atget Photographe de Paris. With a preface by Pierre Mac-Orlan. New York: E. Weyhe, [1930].

Abbott, Berenice and Eugene Atget. The World of Atget. New York: Horizon Press, 1964.

A couple of years ago, I had the chance to visit MoMA to see the Cindy Sherman retrospective. I remember feeling overwhelmed by both her work and the crowds in the gallery. So I wandered away to explore the other exhibits and discovered a second one on photography: Eugene Atget: “Documents pour artistes”. Everything about the Atget exhibit felt different. I was lost in his photographs and captivated by his views of Paris.

Today, I discovered that the Architecture and Planning Library has two books on the works of Eugene Atget (1857-1927). The first is a collection of 96 plates with an introduction written by Pierre Mac-Orlan, housed in Special Collections; the second is by Berenice Abbott with 180 plates and is part of our circulating collection. Both were published after his death.  Abbott  writes of him:

Though he had not received the material rewards he merited and which  might have kept him going for a longer time, his infinite pains were in the end, at least, rewarded by that monument, his immortal work. He will be remembered as an urbanist historian, a genuine romanticist, a lover of Paris, a Balzac of the camera, from whose work we can weave a large tapestry of French Civilization. Yet perhaps his most haunting photographs show simply a plow in a field near the city, a crop of wheat, or one of the trees he loved so well. (Abbott, pg. xxxi)

Comparing the reproductions in the two works, I was struck by the differences of the sepia toned photographs (1930) versus the black and white (1964) in terms of both quality and emotions produced in the viewer. Additionally, some of the photographs are cropped differently. These variations led me to wonder, which is the more authentic photograph.

library

New Books at the Architecture and Planning Library: Codesigning Space

Marlow, Oliver and Dermot Egan. Codesigning Space: A Primer. London: TILT and Artifice Books on Architecture, 2013.

According to Marlow and Egan:

Pertinent to the codesign approach is an understanding that it is the people that use the space who give purpose to it, who activate and animate it with their encounters and insights, and who imbue it with meaning. With this in mind, it has become imperative to develop a way to engage those people, the end-users in a process that embeds their ideas, ambitions and creativity into the final product, be it a building, a space, furniture or services. It is these people who know best what they need from design. This endows the designer with a role unlike the one that is traditionally expected; it requires the designer to work with intuition and to facilitate creativity and cultivate existing tensions into productive contributions. (pg. 53-54)

Cover

The primer includes TILT’s manifesto along with a series of short articles or interviews on the theory underpinning their practice of codesign and examples of the types of workshops and exercises that TILT undertakes with all stakeholders.

Introductory illustration to Practice

library

New Books at the Architecture and Planning Library: Selling the Dwelling

Cheek, Richard. Selling the Dwelling: The Books that Built America’s Houses, 177-2000. New York: The Grolier Club, 2013.

Richard Cheek’s Selling the Dwelling is the corresponding publication to the exhibit of the same name hosted by the Grolier Club in New York. He writes of his motivation for the exhibit:

I became intrigued by the promotional aspect of both architectural literature and commercial catalogues, as produced from the country house era through the post-World War II building boom. How were these publications selling the dwelling? What sort of ideal home were they marketing, and to whom were they appealing? The exhibition here at the Grolier Club and the visual history that accompanies it attempt to answer these and related questions, beginning with the publication of the first American architectural book in 1775 and extending to the end of the twentieth century, when Web sites began to replace printed house design catalogues. (pg. 7)

dwelling

The work is arranged chronologically; each chapter has a brief introduction to the historical period to provide a bit of background for the illustrations that follow. The greatest feature of Selling the Dwelling is the great number of illustrations of primary documents- books, catalogues, magazines, ephemera, toys, and other objects. For those with a budding interest in the transmission of architectural ideas with regard to American domestic architecture, this work would be an ideal introduction. If you happen to find a publication of interest, do be sure to follow up with  a search in the Architecture and Planning Library. We might just have it.

library

New Books at the Architecture and Planning Library: Spain & Rome

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Two new books at the Architecture and Planning Library consider the relationship between Rome and Spain during the Early Modern Period.

Deupi, Victor. Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome, 1700-1759.  New York: Routledge, 2014.

Victor Deupi in his work, Architectural Temperance: Spain and Rome, 1700-1759, examines the relationship between Rome and Spain under the new reign of the Bourbon monarchy. Deupi writes, “…I have attempted to approach pivotal moments in the architecture and culture of early eighteenth-century Spain through an examination of the latter’s engagement with Rome.” (pg. xiii) Two of the topics addressed in Architectural Temperance include patronage and “the transmission of architectural thought”. (pg. 2) For example, Deupi examines the education of Spanish architects through both academies and travel to Rome.

Temperance

Freiberg, Jack. Bramante’s Tempietto, the Roman Renaissance, and the Spanish Crown. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

Jack Freiberg’s also considers the Spanish crown’s relationship to Rome, though two hundred years prior to the Bourbon monarchy. His interest lies with the patronage of the Tempietto by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabel of Castile and the continued importance of the building itself. He writes of his inspiration to undertake the research for this book:

The first time I entered the crypt of the Tempietto and made out the names of Ferdinand and Isabel, Catholic King and Queen, inscribed on the 1502 foundation stone, I knew that the relationship of those illustrious monarchs to the most lauded Renaissance building held rich  possibilities for defining the historical underpinnings of Bramante’s architecture. (pg. 2)

Bramante

library

New Books at the Architecture and Planning Library: Educating Architects

Spiller, Neil and Nic Clear, ed. Educating Architects: How Tomorrow’s Practitioners Will Learn Today. London: Thames & Hudson, 2014.

New to the library this week is Educating Architects, a collection of articles about the current challenges, practices, and needs of those who teach in Schools of Architecture.

EducatingArchitects

I wanted to share two of the articles I found engaging. The first is Michael Sorkin’s article, “250 Things an Architect Should Know” (pgs. 32-39).  It is a short article- quite literally a diverse itemized list. He includes knowledge rooted in the practical, historical, cross-dicplinary fields, philosophical/theoretical/academic, and finally experience,  whether gained as a practicing architect (or student) or from life itself.

The second article is by Mark Morris and entitled “School of Thought” (pgs. 166-176).  I was drawn to the article initially by his reference to the School of Architecture at UT and the school’s dean Harwell Hamilton Harris. Morris examines the recent evolution of architecture schools from the 1950s to the present. He explores the issue of  the “absence of uniqueness” present in many schools today and considers the effect of MOOCs on teaching and the importance of studios (pgs. 173-175).

special collections

Staircases

Marwick, Thomas Purves. The History and Construction of Staircases. Edinburgh: J&J Gray, 1888.

I must admit that I have not given a lot of thought to the history of staircases as separate from their actual buildings. Thomas Purves Marwich, however, has written a short treatise for the Silver Medal Prize of the Royal Institute of British Architects on just this topic. The work is divided into two parts; the first entitled, “Historical and Artistic” and the second, “Practical”. Much of the first part of the work considers the intersection of geography and/or style/period with innovations to identify the key characteristics of staircases in, for example, Renaissance France and to trace the evolution of staircase design. The second half of the work addresses issues such as fireproofing and construction.

According to Marwick, the piece written for the competition was highly illustrated; however, the number of illustrations was greatly reduced with the printing of the work.  He writes,

The original was illustrated by one hundred photographs and sketches of important staircases; but as most of these were unsuitable for reproduction, I have confined the illustrative plates to a few selected from “Letarouilly’s Edifices de Rome Moderne,” Nash’s “Mansions of the Olden Time,” and Billing’s “Baronial Antiquities of Scotland,” etc., so as to render the text more intelligible to non-professional readers. (pg. vii-viii)

I was surprised by the lack of accompanying illustrations, diagrams, and drawings. I rather expected to find the nineteenth-century architectural drawings that dismember the buildings into various parts and pieces as a means of documentation and classification.

Chateau de Blois

special collections

Suburban Garden Design

Garden design advice with regards to one’s neighbors:

Scott, Frank J. The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent. Illustrated by upward of two hundred plates and engravings of plans for residences and their grounds, of trees and shrubs, and garden embellishments; with descriptions of the beautiful and hardy trees and shrubs grown in the United States. New York, John B. Alden, 1886, [c1870].

There is no way in which men deprive themselves of what costs them nothing and profits them much, more than dividing their improved grounds from their neighbors, and from the view of passers on the road, by fences and hedges. The beauty obtained by throwing front grounds open together, is of that excellent quality which enriches all who take part in the exchange, and makes no man poorer. As a merely business matter it is simply stupid to shut out, voluntarily, a pleasant lookout through a neighbor’s ornamental grounds. If, on the other hand, such opportunities are improved, and made the most of, no gentleman would hesitate to make return for the privilege by arranging his own ground so as to give the neighbor equally pleasing vistas into or across it. It is unchristian to hedge from the sight of others the beauties of nature which it has been our good fortune to create or secure; and all the walls, high fences, hedge screens and belts of tress and shrubbery…are so many means by which we show how unchristian and unneighborly we can be….To hedge out deformities is well; but to narrow our own or our neighbor’s views of the free graces of Nature by our own volition, is quite another thing. (60-61)

Scott, pg. 60

Cridland, Robert B. Practical Landscape Gardening: The Importance of Careful Planning, Locating the House, Arrangement of Walks and Drives, Construction of Walks and Drives, Lawns and Terraces, How to Plant a Property, Laying Out a Flower Garden, Architectural Features of the Garden, Rose Gardens and Hardy Borders, Wild Gardens and Rock Gardens, Planting Plans and Planting Lists.  New York, A. T. De La Mare Company, Inc., 1927.

Have some thought for your neighbor and the passerby. Surely such an opportunity is not to be overlooked, for of all the pleasures none is to be compared with that which brings joy to the heart of others. 

The owner who plans, builds and cultivates beautiful things is a benefactor, and in no channel of thought or activity is there greater or more satisfying response than in the creation of the beautiful in landscape design (Fig. 3), showing a well placed flowering specimen. (pg. 10)

Cridland, fig. 3

Eckbo, Garrett. The Art of Home Landscaping. New York: F. W. Dodge Corp., [1956].

Unless some minimum cooperation between neighbors exists- so that each neighbor thinks about what his planning may do to the people next door, and knows that they are just as concerned with what they may do to him- problems like the elm and the roses are bound to arise. (pg. 259)

Eckbo, pg. 258

special collections

Paris 1937

The General Committee of the Exposition. Paris 1937.

Paris 1937 was a monthly publication (May 1936 to October 1937) for the Paris Exposition: Arts, Crafts, Sciences in Modern Life which was held from May to November of 1937.  The General Committee included a variety of information from articles about features and exhibitions of the fair, histories of French regions, schedules and records, to perhaps the most relevant to those interested in architecture- renderings & photographs of the pavilions and changes  made to the architectural fabric of Paris.

special collections

Sketch Book

Edinburgh Architectural Association. Sketch Book. Edinburgh: George Waterston & Sons, [1876-1894].

Volume Three (1880-1882) consists of a series of architectural drawings of historical buildings from across Scotland. There is no accompanying text or explanations regarding the architectural works, unless it was included as part of the drawing themselves. The Sketch Book is interesting not simply as a record of historical structures but also because we can see different approaches to drawing & documenting these works.

special collections

Concrete Buildings for Landed Estates

Birch, John. Concrete Buildings for Landed Estates in Great Britain and Ireland. London: E. Stranford, 1881.

According to John Birch:

The object of this pamphlet is to stimulate the use of Portland Cement Concrete as a material for the building purposes on landed estates in Great Britain and Ireland, on the grounds of its applicability and economy, more especially where suitable materials are on the spot and labour plentiful. Having had considerable experience of its uses, I venture to recommend it, and beg to submit a few well-chosen and inexpensive designs for the consideration of those who may have occasion to erect such buildings and require to study economy. (preface, vii)

The accompanying designs are well worth a look for those interested in either concrete or nineteenth-century architecture. Birch’s drawings remain picturesque, employing elements such as half-timbering and rustication. If I had not known Birch was advocating for the use of concrete, I would not have guessed that it was the intended material for construction.