It may be a case of selective viewing, but I feel sure there is a fundamental shift happening in how Western culture describes the connection between the mind, the body and the physical world. My primary interest areas are visual art, literature, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, cultural theory, psychedelic studies/neuroscience, spirituality. And as wide ranging […]
Architecture
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Architecture is a Verb
Some proclivities are sui generis, perennially present as a life unfolds. That is the sense I get when George Saunders expresses the discomfort he still feels about his childhood failure to befriend a lonely girl in his neighborhood. For Saunders, gifted author and teacher, kindness and humility are built in. I have a primordial proclivity […]
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Robinson Redux
In Milan, down a side street I first became acquainted with architect and philosopher Sarah Robinson in 2012 when I came across her book Nesting at one of my favorite bookstores in San Francisco. After falling under the spell of Juhani Pallasmaa‘s extraordinary book, The Eyes of the Skin, I sensed immediately that Robinson was […]
No Logic Here
“Book for Architects,” by Wolfgang Tillmans (Photo: Francesco Galli) Over the past ten years, I have photographed buildings in ordinary and extraordinary contexts in thirty-seven countries on five continents. Displaying the complexity and the irrationality—sometimes madness—and at other times the beauty of architecture, these pictures in their totality seem to me a little daunting but […]
Ada Louise: Fierce Grace
Ada Louise Huxtable photographed in the 1960s (Photo: Landmarks45.org) During my coming of age as an artist, Ada Louise Huxtable‘s architectural criticism informed so many of my ideas about buildings, cities, preservation, city life, aesthetics. One of the first books I read after moving to Manhattan in the early 70s was Will They Ever Finish […]
Sagrada Familia
The first time I went to Barcelona, Franco was still in power. Catalan, like the rest of Spain, was cautious and dark, well aware of the harsh boot of his repressive regime. That was 1970. My photos from that visit are buried in a box somewhere in my basement, but I remember making a pilgrimage […]
Place and Imagination: Robinson’s Nesting
William Stout Books, San Francisco San Francisco’s William Stout Architectural Books is located on the periphery of North Beach, just a few blocks from the better known City Lights. Both bookshops are labyrinthine and lushly overstuffed. But Stout and me, we have a mystical connection. I never leave that narrow two storied jewel box without […]
The Gift of Time
Two women stroll among the walls of Halebid, built in the 9th century Sharing experiences from travels is a bit like sharing dreams: The iconography and narrative are personal and not well suited for public discourse. So other than sharing the rudimentaries, my report on my time in India will be succinct. A phrase or […]
The Lure of the Minimal
John Pawson’s monastery in Bohemia The gap that exists between theory and practice is a challenge in so many pursuits, and Minimalist architecture is just one that struggles with that perennial problem. In 1908, Adolf Loos wrote a memorable essay, “Ornament and Crime,” that advocated for a more streamlined aesthetic. And yet to create that […]
Zumthor: Essentialist of the Sensual
The Therme Vals, by Peter Zumthor (Photo: ArchNow!) Michael Kimmelman’s New York Times piece about the architect Peter Zumthor is full of nuggets worth keeping on hand, easily accessible. I first began paying attention to Zumthor after visiting his Kolumba museum in Cologne. It was such an unexpected blend of old and new (Zumthor incorporated […]