Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
A challenging examination of the connections between traditional materials and forms and contemporary expression in architecture. Architect, architectural historian and preservationist Francoise Bollack explores the use of traditional materials with contemporary forms and the corollary of contemporary materials applied to traditional forms and the blurring of the boundary between the two. Nineteen projects in the US, Europe, Japan, and New Zealand are examined. Among the featured architects are Kengo Kuma, architect of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium, MVRDV, a highly regarded Dutch firm, and Lacaton & Vassal of Paris.
Synopsis
A provocative examination of the connections between contemporary expression in architecture and traditional materials and forms. Architect, architectural historian, and preservationist Fran oise Bollack presents eighteen projects that use traditional materials to build contemporary forms or use modern materials to build traditional forms, blurring the boundary between tradition and modernity in architecture.
Bollack rejects the modernist taboo against imitation and precedent, tracing the history of adaptive and imitative design from the Renaissance to the Greek and Gothic revivals and to the nineteenth-century modular cast-iron facades that Philip Johnson considered the basis for modern design.
The book examines projects in the US, Europe, and Japan, encompassing a broad range of building types: residential, hospitality, commercial and retail, and cultural spaces. All share an intriguing, even radical, approach to reinterpreting traditional forms and materials. Humble thatch moves beyond the farmhouse roof to clad the walls of a Danish environmental center; a photographic image of a Parisian facade becomes a scrim on the facade of a new building; the ghost of an ancient Italian basilica is outlined in wire mesh.
Among the featured architects are Kengo Kuma, architect of the Tokyo 2021 Olympic stadium; MVRDV, a highly regarded Dutch firm; Lacaton & Vassal and Chartier/Corbasson in France; Skene Catling de la Pe a in the UK; Morris Adjmi in the USA; Max Dudler in Germany; Dortre Mandrup in Denmark; and Herzog & de Meuron in Switzerland.