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Strange
Details , by Michael Cadwell.
During a stay at the American Academy
in Rome, architect and academic Michael Cadwell studied
the buildings of Carlo
Scarpa, specifically the construction details the now
well-known and admired architect is known for. In Scarpa's
Querini
Stampalia Gallery in Venice, Cadwell "abandoned
his attempts to categorize [the details] theoretically and
resolved instead to appreciate their idiosyncrasies"
of the odd details and patterns of the building and garden.
This book presents Cadwell's exploration of that design,
as well as three other works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies
van der Rohe, and Louis Kahn.
Not surprisingly, the most thorough
and enjoyable essay is the one on the Querini Stampalia,
where the author delves into the intricacies of the joinery
and the spaces, seeing relationships that only the most
"cultivated sensibility" -- as Kenneth Frampton
says -- would find. But Cadwell does not see architecture
as merely the resolution and accumulation of materials and
their construction details. He finds that the gallery and
garden are greater than the sum of these parts, a strange,
yet unresolved succession of spaces that destabilizes the
visitor. Having visited the gallery years ago when the garden
was closed for repairs and now reading this essay, I feel
like I missed out on a great deal of the experience, as
if the voyage was incomplete. In that regard my appreciation
of the building on the level of details is justified, though
obviously incomplete.
The three other essays present the
Jacobs
House by Wright, Mies's famous Farnsworth
House outside Chicago, and Kahn's Yale
Center for British Art. Like Scarpa's Venice project,
Cadwell gives great attention and care to his exploration
and presentation of each, with drawings, photographs and
sketches accompanying the text. The essays not only give
insight into each building and architect; they also present
to the reader a unique approach to thinking about architecture
and nature, since after all the former is made up of the
latter. This is the type of book that should be more common,
a mix of case study, theory, and history that's insightful
and thought-provoking.
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