The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 6 June 2006
by Philip Jodidio
This is a bit of a coffee-table book, full of bright and colorful illustrations of projects both built and unbuilt by architects turned artists, or artists turned architects, or merely art as architecture as art. This reader isn't sure whether artists' interest in architecture is more practical than architects' interest in art. Both artists and architects tend to have little worry about lack of ego. They are unafraid of crossing over into other disciplines. Architects are as much engineers as artists, and are very often only engineers. Their art must, if it is to be useful architecture, obey certain rules of human occupancy if it is to endure at all (i.e. Form Follows Function). Artists are freer, in that sense, to experiment with the built environment, and to give their architecture, more often temporary, a sculptural and experiential feel that sometimes escapes the practical restrictions of permanent occupied buildings. The book is a compendium of recent architecture and art that spreads across a spectrum from sculpture to museum, monument to home. Most of the sixty or so architects represented here are European, perhaps because much of the best experimental architecture is European. Our friends across the pond tend to be far more tolerant of architectural weirdness than their more conservative Yankee cousins. Artists are represented as well, from photographers to sculptors. Their work doesn't need to pass muster as architecture so much, so much of what they create has an almost fantastical feel. Many of the unbuilt projects here, though, have a sameness of presentation that makes it clear that computer design programs hold sway in the profession (for good or ill). The book opens with an essay by the author that outlines the history of the connections between art and architecture. The essay leans heavily on modern artists, and is a fair, if thin, overview of the subject. Certainly Jodidio's writing is fine enough to introduce the many beautiful illustrations. An interesting book for most coffee tables.