New Work: Three Books about Architecture

Need a holiday gift for the architect in your life? Michael Bierut and his team have designed three new architecture books, out now: The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by Robert A.M. Stern and Counterpoint: Daniel Libeskind in Conversation with Paul Goldberger (both published by Monacelli Press) and Writings on Architecture by Paul Rudolph (Yale University Press). Individually the books have been thoughtfully designed to represent the architects' work and words in ways that are both fitting and distinct, while collectively they offer an intimate perspective on three significant careers that span the twentieth century and continue to shape the twenty-first.

"Designing a book about an architect is a really satisfying challenge," says Bierut. "Often, the trick is to find the ideas that generated the buildings, and use those same ideas to shape the printed page."

Daniel Libeskind and Paul Goldberger will be speaking about Counterpoint: Daniel Libeskind in Conversation with Paul Goldberger in a Book Talk at the Center for Architecture in New York tomorrow night. The event is free and open to the public, but reservations are required.

The basis for Counterpoint: Daniel Libeskind in Conversation with Paul Goldberger is a series of informal conversations that took place between Libeskind and New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger. For the architect’s first monograph, all sides had a strong desire to create a book that would speak to the challenging nature of Libeskind’s work and his emotive dialogue with Goldberger, as well as one that would avoid the typical architecture monograph sequencing that is endemic to such publications — project description followed by plans and elevations followed by flattering photographs of the completed project. "The solution," says Bierut "was to combine the text, which is a fairly unstructured and discursive interview with Paul Goldberger, with the images in a way that evokes the sense of complexity and displacement that is typical of the architect's work." Throughout the book, Libeskind's own words are treated with large type and given prominence on full pages in order to project a sense of the architect's own voice. These text pages introduce each project with insights that encourage the reader to approach Libeskind's work on a visceral level rather than as a static collection of facts, figures and mission statements.

Following on the theme of the interview is The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by Robert A.M. Stern. Based on twenty-hours of taped interviews Stern conducted with Johnson in 1985, and edited by Kazys Varnelis, the book provides new, and often amusing, insight into the architect’s life. Johnson and Stern first met in 1961 and shared not only a lasting friendship, but many professional and personal associations that turn the interview into an intimate conversation between old friends. “As you'd expect from two master raconteurs, the conversation is peppered with asides, allusions and straight-out name-dropping,” says Bierut. “In order to let the rest of us follow along, each reference is footnoted not just with additional information, but frequently with photographs and artifacts like letters and news clippings — ‘visual footnotes’ if you will. I think the result is really fun to read.” 

Last but not least is Writings on Architecture being published in conjunction with the rededication of Rudolph’s newly restored masterpiece, Yale’s Art and Architecture Building. Built in 1963, the seven-story building features 37 interlocking levels and a façade of corduroy-like concrete. At the time of completion, the building was largely dismissed as a hulking Brutalist structure out of sync with Yale’s Ivy League aesthetic; today it is considered a masterpiece of Late Modernism. “Rudolph's reputation has had its ups and downs,” says Bierut “but he is definitely being rediscovered right now.” Towards this end, the book is a collection of nineteen essays, interviews and lectures that span a forty-year period beginning in 1952. Arranged chronologically, the entries cover a range of Rudolph’s interests from prefabrication to regionalism and urbanism. Referencing Rudolph's signature architectural elements, the book’s design makes use of naturally textured paper and a layout of strong right angles and interlocking text and images.

Bierut has also designed the printed materials for the Art and Architecture Building's rededication, which in turn is an extension of Pentagram’s long relationship with the Yale School of Architecture. Since 1998 Bierut and Robert A.M. Stern, the school’s dean, have worked in close collaboration to produce more than fifty posters for the school’s ambitious schedule of lectures, exhibitions and symposia. A selection of these posters can be seen on Design Observer.

Project Team: Michael Bierut, partner-in-charge; Yve Ludwig, designer for The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by Robert A.M. Stern, Writings on Architecture by Paul Rudolph and the printed materials for the Yale Art and Architecture Building's rededication; Rebecca Gimenez, designer for Counterpoint: Daniel Libeskind in Conversation with Paul Goldberger.