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Synchronizing
Geometry, by Carlos and Borja Ferrater.
Barcelona-based Carlos Ferrater has
published numerous monographs that focus on his tastefully
modern buildings that
could easily grace the pages of any glossy publication spouting
the latest trends. But the orthogonal designs that many
associate with Ferrater, and which find much favor today,
are not the only purview of the architect and his collaborators.
As this monograph attests, the practice explores geometries
much more complex than the right angles of Modernism.
The book presents eleven projects,
fitting into geometric descriptions that have found their
way into contemporary parlance with the rise of the computer
modeling: networks, topographies, folds, ribbons, membranes,
and so forth. A few of the projects are built or under construction
but most are unbuilt, making this a presentation of work
in-progress, work that still must live up to the translation
from drawing (or in this case modeling) to building. Not
surprisingly, renderings and diagrams predominate, with
the occasional model and photograph. Of course this does
not detract from the book, as many of these design illustrations
are superb, like the various media presenting the Benidorm
Seafront, found on the book's cover.
Rather than being merely a presentation
of the practice's latest geometrical explorations, aided
by the computer and a number of commissions that veer closer
to landscape rather than architecture, the book also presents
a study of geometry in time by Borja Ferrater, called "Ideographic
Resources." The long and generously-illustrated piece
grounds the book in the larger use of geometry in Modern
architecture, like Louis I. Kahn's City
Tower project. Unfortunately the argument is not helped
by the fact that most of the designs presented are large,
unbuilt designs, as the firm takes on larger commissions
and uses geometry as apparently the most important tool
at the architect's disposal. While it's a strategy that
makes for a quality book and what look to be more-than-decent
architecture, it leaves one thinking that there must be
more than geometry for architecture to reach its fullest
potential.
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