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Between Spaces
While the computer has made sweeping transparent planes and polished metal details comonplace, at least in renderings, few architects are actually building these images, and none with the craft and imagination of Smith-Miller + Hawkinson. This New York-based practice has recently vaulted into international prominence with the completion of their Glass Museum in Corning, New York. Built entirely of glass walls held in place by marine-quality fittings, this building has stunned the world with its sensuous qualities of transparency, reflection, and retraction.Between Spaces is a collaboration between the architects and the world-famous photographer Judith Turner, whose seminal book Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects established a new way of looking at architectural photography upon its publication two decades ago. Her dramatic duotone photographs illustrate the details, complexity, and qualities of light and space found inn Smith-Miller + Hawkinson's architecture.This new monograph features in-depth examinations of five recently constructed projects--Corning Glass Center, Loft for Robert Greenburg, InsideOut/Fabrications, North Carolina Musuem of Art Amphitheater & Outdoor Cinema, and Pier 11--and two unbuilt projects--Ferry Terminal Guidlines and Shilla-Daechi Bulding. This beautiful volume is lavishly illustrated with plans, models, and stunning tour-de-force photography.
- GenresArchitecture
175 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2000
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January 30, 2012
This is one of those architectural monographs with an angle. That is, in order to beef up the otherwise typical portfolio of works accompanied by non-critical project descriptions, the more clever approach here is to package this as a collaboration between the firm and the photographer Judith Turner. Turner’s contribution is an array of close-up detail shots of the half-dozen or so projects that, were it not for the parsimonious inclusion of a few drawings, would totally preclude any comprehensive reading of the work. This would be fine if, as the photographer herself states, these fragments are then taken “out of context… becom[ing] something else, assuming a new meaning” but really these are just fetishistic pics of particular details - guardrail supports, glazing panel connections, exposed beam ends, and so on. Certainly the approach is probably appropriate for the rather hyper-detailed architecture of Smith-Miller and Hawkinson and office, but making this the rule really limits the quality of this as a comprehensive monograph. This feels forced.
I’m no photographer but the rather gloomy quality of the images simply gets old after a couple of pages. Perhaps Turner’s earlier book Five Architects invented this zoomed-in technique but I somehow doubt it. I keep visualizing EVERY photo of any given Carlo Scarpa project I’ve ever seen, not to mention almost every IIT-forward Mies photo published long before Turner’s 1980 compilation. As my mother and wife will validate, I could also dig out every architectural photo I ever took before this book came out and you’d see the same damn thing in color. My excuse is that I suck at photography and, with the additional limitation of cheap cameras, could rarely capture any kind of decent overall view of building exceeding the dimensions of a kiosk. Turner’s excuse is more about transcending the architecture, extracting some deeper meaning than that intended or recognized by the architects. As John Hejduk states in his rambling introduction, she’s making a “critical commentary on that which she photographs.” I suppose this bothers me in that the images presented here seem to represent exactly what the firm would want. This is a commission, not a subversion.
The positive attributes of this: the architectural work is quite good and the details are indeed worthy of close attention. The three quick essays and extremely brief project statements made getting through the book easily accomplished in just over an hour and greatly reduced the odds of egregious misspellings that seem to permeate many PAP offerings. It looks pretty good on a shelf and, probably because of the aforementioned issues, can be easily had for about $12.
I’m no photographer but the rather gloomy quality of the images simply gets old after a couple of pages. Perhaps Turner’s earlier book Five Architects invented this zoomed-in technique but I somehow doubt it. I keep visualizing EVERY photo of any given Carlo Scarpa project I’ve ever seen, not to mention almost every IIT-forward Mies photo published long before Turner’s 1980 compilation. As my mother and wife will validate, I could also dig out every architectural photo I ever took before this book came out and you’d see the same damn thing in color. My excuse is that I suck at photography and, with the additional limitation of cheap cameras, could rarely capture any kind of decent overall view of building exceeding the dimensions of a kiosk. Turner’s excuse is more about transcending the architecture, extracting some deeper meaning than that intended or recognized by the architects. As John Hejduk states in his rambling introduction, she’s making a “critical commentary on that which she photographs.” I suppose this bothers me in that the images presented here seem to represent exactly what the firm would want. This is a commission, not a subversion.
The positive attributes of this: the architectural work is quite good and the details are indeed worthy of close attention. The three quick essays and extremely brief project statements made getting through the book easily accomplished in just over an hour and greatly reduced the odds of egregious misspellings that seem to permeate many PAP offerings. It looks pretty good on a shelf and, probably because of the aforementioned issues, can be easily had for about $12.
Displaying 1 of 1 review