Book Review: Provisional
Provisional: Emerging Modes of Architectural Practice USA, a new book edited by authors Elite Kedan, Jon Dreyfous, and Craig Mutter, surveys America’s next coming wave of innovative design practices. Some of the firms profiled, such as SHoP and Lewis.Tsrumaki.Lewis (LTL), expand the boundaries of the architect’s role by exploring new approaches to firm organization or the design process. Other designers break through those traditional professional expectations completely; Meejin Yoon Studio, for example, is as likely to create an exhibit design as they are a fashion line. Meanwhile consultant practices like Front and Gehry Technologies take an opposite tactic by capitalizing on our society’s current tendency towards specialization, focusing on particular segments of the building industry such as facade systems or digital software tools. They use their specific expertise to make other people’s designs build-able.
The book’s physical form, too, is a composite of multiple ingredients. A mixture of interviews, construction footage, blueprints, glossy renderings and even anecdotal snapshots are sandwiched between a series of theoretical essays anchoring the narrative’s beginning and end. The resulting visual object is generally attractive, its lime green interview pages interspersed with the grey and white sediment of other informational types.
The book’s layered mass hides further secrets. Intertwining through its structure is an ambitious navigational system, one which aims to inject some of new media’s hyperlinked interconnectivity into the book’s older medium of print. Each page is divided into a grid of numbers, as though it were part of some strange atlas …
Sets of coordinates then appear every time a key topic is mentioned, giving the reader a non-linear option for navigating the text:
If those hyperlinks were easy and effective to use, the book’s design would be an appropriate match for the bleeding-edge technology that it covers. Unfortunately, however, the idea only works in theory. The problem is simple – the network of hyperlinks is not comprehensive enough. I frequently found myself wishing for links where none existed. When one interviewee referred to a building that he had completed, I found myself yearning to be able to flip to a picture of it, or at least see more information. Instead I had to put the book down in order to go dredge the depths of Google on my computer. Although the internet’s total comprehensiveness might be impossible to imitate, adding such simple elements as index to the book (as dangerously old-fashioned as that might sound) would at least improve the accessibility of whatever information networks might currently be transcending its pages.
The architects themselves show a more pragmatic outlook towards their own design projects. In spite of the high levels of technology that they like to play with, these designers share a common tendency to forgo the high-profile architect’s usual appetite for forward-looking design heroics in favor of embracing today’s existing status quo. LTL seeks opportunities in their design constraints, while SHoP admires the practical values of Australian sustainability guru Glenn Murcutt. One ultimately gets the impression that these architects are willing to appropriate or adapt anything, so long as it can be built. As the book’s authors ultimately conclude, “there is nothing essentially subversive or avant-garde about… ” the ideas of the profiled firms. “The point, after all, is to build.” Such theories are undoubtedly some form of counter-reaction against our recent decade-long procession of spectacular amoebas; an parade which, upon being rained on by the economic collapse, has left its onlookers scurrying for more practical shelter.
Despite the interviewees’ emphasis on pragmatic building, however, the book itself shows more interest in thoughts than in actions. Although the authors’ interview questions occasionally reveal the kind of telling glimpses into the profession’s trenches suggested by the book’s practice-oriented marketing and candid construction photography (example: “What are some of your biggest failings?”), the discourse ultimately can’t stay grounded for very long before it inevitably floats back up into the airier realm of ideas.
Which brings me to the question of what, exactly, these architects’ theories mean. The architects’ decisions to embrace the profession’s practical demands are either the achievement of some zen-like level of philosophical enlightenment, as suggested by LTL’s intricate rationale for their acceptance of design constraints, or else the move could simply be a great way for a designer to stay financially afloat. Regardless of the answer, Provisional must be applauded for drawing attention to the underlying philosophies of some architects who are more commonly known for the face value of their practices. The resulting books is most useful as a snapshot of today’s current architectural thinking.
Some other reviews of the book can be found on Archidose, anArchitecture, Dexigner, and Architectural Scholar.
Provisional‘s entry in the portfolio of the book designer, Project Projects.
