Synopses & Reviews
Now more than ever, architects and designers are crossing aesthetic borders, and redefining craft to suit their own creative needs, philosophies, and expectations—often by commenting upon or challenging it. By transforming our notions of what might be considered “crafted,” today’s practitioners have not only put a new spin on an ancient art; they have expanded our understanding of where and how the personal touch is found in the sometimes bewildering or inhospitable terrain of the contemporary aesthetic landscape.
Featuring twenty-five residential, commercial, and institutional projects—by major international design figures as well as the relatively unknown and up-and-coming—this volume looks at what constitutes the craft influence in contemporary architecture and design. By turns luxurious and simple; time-honored and leading-edge; small-scale and monumental; unabashedly beautiful, surprisingly witty, socially adroit, and sublimely poetic, these projects are sure to give us a new appreciation of the pleasures of making—and enlarge and enrich our understanding of the presence, and importance, of craft in all our lives.
About the Author
An architecture and design journalist, Marc Kristal is a contributing editor of Dwell, a former editor of AIA/J, and has written for Metropolis, the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, and numerous other publications. In 2003, he curated the exhibition “Absence Into Presence: The Art, Architecture, and Design of Remembrance” at Parsons School of Design, and in 2009, he was part of the project team that created the Greenwich South planning study for the Alliance for Downtown New York. Also a screenwriter, Kristal wrote the film Torn Apart. He lives in New York.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Aberystwyth Business Units
Aberystwyth, Wales
Hot Rod House
Seattle, Washington
Deformscape
San Francisco, California
Rhode Island School of Design Library
Providence, Rhode Island
Goodman House
Pine Plains, New York
Casa A
Vilches, Chile
East River Triplex
New York, New York
Ini Ani Coffee Shop
New York, New York
Hotel Seeko’o
Bordeaux, France
Mobile Chaplet
Fargo, North Dakota
Charred Cedar House
Nakano, Japan
Molori Safari Lodge
Madikwe Game Preserve, South Africa
Tanner Studiolo
New York, New York
Courtyard House
Toronto, Canada
Ling Loft
New York, New York
Orchard East
Chicago, Illinois
Turtle Creek Water Works
Dallas, Texas
Villa for an Industrialist
Shenzhen, China
Santa Monica Parks Project
Santa Monica, California
Ventana House
Tucson, Arizona
Central Park West Apartment
New York, New York
Integral House
Toronto, Canada
Oasis Advertising
New York, New York
Bloomfield Hills House
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan
Norwegian National Opera and Ballet
Oslo, Norway
Acknowledgments
Photography Credits