Architecture Books – Week 17/2024
Antoine Predock, Ride in Peace
This newsletter for the week of April 22 presents the just-released monograph on famed architect Antoine Predock, who died last month at the age of 87, and a couple related books from the archive; the usual new releases and headlines are also here. Next week is this newsletter’s spring break, so the next newsletter will land in your inbox on Monday, May 6, aka Week 19/2024. Happy reading!
Book of the Week:
Ride: Antoine Predock: 65 Years of Architecture by Antoine Predock, published by Rizzoli (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop)
When architect Antoine Predock died in early March at the age of 87, I could not resist mentioning, in a headline I wrote for World-Architects, the then-forthcoming release of Ride, a “memoirograph” from Rizzoli charting 65 years of architecture and spanning nearly 700 pages with a whopping 3,500 photographs. Predock’s passing was just eight weeks ahead of the release of the book this week, which means he probably got to see early copies of the book but unfortunately was unable to partake in celebrations of the impressive monograph and the life and practice it documents. It was also worth mentioning Ride because the title is so apt: It literally captures his overt love of motorcycles while alluding to the way experiencing the world — especially the landscapes of the American Southwest — from a motorcycle, as opposed to a car or an airplane, must have played a part in designing buildings that seem to be one with the places where he built. His buildings are rooted, seeming to rise from the earth.
Ride is a massive chronological presentation of Predock’s life and work, from his early years in Missouri and higher education in various places around the United States to his travels around the world and the buildings he built in and beyond his adopted home of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Predock had previously done four numbered monographs with Rizzoli, and at 2-1/4” (6.5cm) thick, Ride almost looks like all four of them glued together into one package! Although the book’s layout and contents are new, certain aspects in Ride appear to have been carried through from the previous monographs (or at least the first, which I’m familiar with and feature at the bottom of this newsletter): mainly, a “ticker” at the bottom of nearly every page that adds information to the project above or is used to add information on other projects, accomplishments, and adventures. If the buildings and projects that take up the bulk of the page are the important ones, the ones that occupied his time and efforts the most, the bottom 1.5” (4cm) layers other aspects of his work and life that Ride would be incomplete without mention of.
Although the book is big, it appears that its 690 pages were not sufficient for presenting 65 years of Predock’s architecture, for the book also includes dozens of full and partial gatefolds, as well as a few double gatefolds. The gatefolds offer literally more space for the book’s contents and places for expansive, sometimes panoramic presentations of Predock’s projects, though the partial gatefolds (in which the folded portion covers about a half of the full page below it) also enable the spreads at the start of each project to be less cluttered with text, with the paragraphs tucked within the gatefold. The first gatefold the reader encounters is a double, coming after a spread with a map of the world marked with pins locating (I assume) places where Predock has both traveled and built: the table of contents, in which projects in bold text (main projects) alternate with projects in plain text (“ticker” projects). This dense double-gatefold, starting on page 30, readies the reader for the even denser presentation of information that follows.
Although a bit unwieldy, Ride is an excellent monograph, thanks to the conversational first-person descriptions of the projects, the candid depictions of Predock’s life throughout the book, relevant quotes from critics about his buildings, and the excellent visual presentation of his studio’s buildings, many of them shot by longtime collaborator Timothy Hursley (see also the bottom of this newsletter). Suitably, the most important projects — La Luz Community, Fuller House, Nelson Fine Arts Center, Venice Beach House, American Heritage Center, Canadian Museum for Human Rights — are presented in depth.
But one thing I’ve learned about Predock’s buildings (applicable to all architecture, really, but pronounced with his approach to landscape and context) is the need to experience them firsthand for greatest appreciation and understanding. Many formal gestures that seem quizzical or overly busy in photos make perfect sense in person. My brief visit to the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University in the mid-1990s was a formative experience in my education as an architect. Ride may not be a substitute for a visit to it, but the project is presented thoroughly and honestly, down to commentary on ASU stuccoing the walls since a “ridiculous adobe color.” Buildings may change over time, but books allow their intentions and “ideal” conditions to exist in perpetuity.
Books Released This Week:
(In the United States, a curated list)
The Art of Architectural Grafting by Jeanne Gang, published by Park Books (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — If we go by the cover, the latest monograph on Jeanne Gang’s Studio Gang, an argument for grafting as an approach for contemporary architecture, carries this lengthy subtitle: Containing Rules for Extending Museums and Anonymous Buildings to Increase Their Usefulness and Delightfulness and Reduce Their Carbon Pollution. Together, with Experimental Trials for the New Joinery, Very Necessary for Every Architect-Grafter, and a Proposal for Renewing Polluted Industrial Lands with Urban Forests. Published with Ideas about Changing Cultural Perceptions on the Subject and a Few Personal Reflections.
Bofill: The French Years by Dominique Serrell and Michele Champenois, published by Editions Norma (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — Not my favorite period in the oeuvre of Ricardo Bofill (I prefer the works in Spain that preceded them), but the monumental projects he realized in France are still worthy of exploration. This book delves into “the emblematic Les Halles project, which [was] covered by a confidentiality clause until the architect's death in 2021.”
Building Carbon Europe by Dennis Pohl, published by Sternberg Press (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — This latest title in the Critical Spatial Practice series edited by Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen — highlights of it have included the first by Beatriz Colimina and essays by Keller Easterling and Jill Magid — looks at “how architecture powered European energy politics in the postwar era and paved the way for today’s dependency on coal, steel, and nuclear power.”
How to Enjoy Architecture: A Guide for Everyone by Charles Holland, published by Yale University Press (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — In what sounds like the perfect antidote to Thomas Heatherwick’s Humanize, Charles Holland, formerly of FAT, “challenges us to look beyond the day-to-day familiarity of buildings to rediscover the pleasure of experiencing architecture.”
Louis I. Kahn: The Last Notebook edited by Sue Ann Kahn, published by Lars Müller Publishers (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — A week after it reprinted Le Corbusier: Album Punjab, 1951, Lars Müller Publishers is releasing a facsimile of the notebook that Louis Kahn used during his last year of life, timed to the 50th anniversary of his death. The two-volume publication also features an essay by Michael J. Lewis and a page-by-page synopsis by Sue Ann Kahn, daughter of Louis and Esther Kahn.
Midcentury Houses Today by Cristina A. Ross, Lorenzo Ottaviani, Jeffrey R. Matz and Michael Biondo, published by The Monacelli Press (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — An update to the 2014 book that explores how midcentury houses in New Canaan, Connecticut, by the likes of Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson and Edward Durell Stone, have adapted to contemporary life.
Minerva Parker Nichols: The Search for a Forgotten Architect by Heather Isbell Schumacher, Molly Lester, Franca Trubiano and William Whitaker, published by The Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — The printed companion to the 2023 exhibition of the same name, telling the story of Minerva Parker Nichols, who opened her office in Philadelphia in 1888 and was therefore the first American woman to practice architecture independently.
The Urbanist: Dan Doctoroff and the Rise of New York edited by Sophia Hollander and Marc Ricks, published by The Monacelli Press (Buy from Amazon / Bookshop) — Back in 2017, Daniel L. Doctoroff wrote his own book, Greater than Ever: New York's Big Comeback, about his years as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding under NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. Now, in the midst of his high-profile fight with ALS, a slew of big-name contributors weigh in on Doctoroff’s legacy.
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Book News:
Over at Architect’s Newspaper, Todd Gannon reviews Vincent Scully: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community, a biography on the famed Yale professor written by A. Krista Sykes and published by Bloomsbury.
STIR speaks to Kelly Weinersmith, one of the authors of A City on Mars, “the popular science book that uncovers the realities of inhabiting space and how far-fetched some space designs may be.”
What if the Tokyo Olympics took place in 2020, not one year later due to Covid, and Zaha Hadid’s stadium was built, instead of Kengo Kuma’s? Such an alternative reality is the setup for Qudan Rie’s Tokyo Sympathy Tower, a novel about a 71-story prison built in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Gyoen park.
From the Archives:
Antoine Predock: Architect, the first of the four monographs on Antoine Predock edited by Brad Collins, founder of Group C, and published by Rizzoli, came out in 1994. The second, Bldgs 1994–99, followed at the end of 1998; the third one, Houses, came out in 2000; and Volume 4 was released in 2006. (Predock and Collins also produced Architectural Journeys in 1995 and Turtle Creek Residence in 1997.) A large photo of the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming, is on the cover of the first, with an inset of the Nelson Fine Arts Center at Arizona State University. They are the most notable Predock projects from the late 1980s and early 1990s and two highlights from this monograph; the importance of Nelson can be found in it being given the book’s only gatefold — a double gatefold. The two projects also happen to be the only Predock buildings I have seen in person. I visited Nelson in the mid-90s, when I was still an architecture student, and I can still feel the change in atmosphere as I walked from the sunny plaza to the shaded subterranean courtyard and entry: the beginning of an unprescribed promenade architecturale through the galleries and other spaces. The Heritage Center, I argued in early 2018, was worth considering for an AIA 25-Year Award (none was awarded that year), but, when I visited later that year, the building was closed so I only saw it from outside. Nevertheless, the power of Predock’s mark on the landscape is undeniable — worthy of its presence on the cover of Antoine Predock: Architect.
Of the many small images that pepper the thousands that make up Ride, a few of them show books with photos of Predock buildings on their covers — books, mind you, that are not monographs on the architect. One of them is Architecture After Modernism by Diane Ghirardo, published in 1996 in Thames & Hudson’s “World of Art” series (best known to architects for Kenneth Frampton’s Modern Architecture) and featuring Timothy Hursley’s photograph of Predock’s Las Vegas Central Library and Discovery Museum on the cover. The book has three chapters — “Public Space,” “Domestic Space,” and “Reconfiguring the Urban Sphere” — that hint at Ghirardo’s incorporation of social considerations and the fairly critical voice she uses throughout, which are what I like most about the book. Predock is mainly in the first chapter, where the Hotel Sante Fe is part of a lengthy exploration of Disney architecture; the Nelson Fine Arts Center is briefly mentioned, but with a great longitudinal section that clearly explains how the cooling I experienced actually works; and the Vegas cover project is touted for the way Predock “refused to accept the banalities of tarting up the local vernacular, as many Postmodernists would have been content to do.” Just like Frampton updated his “World of Art” book, I wish Ghirardo would do the same to her excellent survey of architecture after modernism.
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— John Hill