Selected Product:
| For an Architecture of Reality
Paperback
Author: Michael Benedikt
Publisher: Lumen Books
Release Date: 1992-01-01
ISBN-10: 0930829050
ISBN-13: 9780930829056
List Price: $15.00
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Michael Benedikt teaches, practices architecture, and writes in Austin, where he is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas. His second book, Deconstructing the Kimbell (0-930829-16-6), is also published by Lumen.
"Benedikt has written a bold theoretical essay, with stirring cultural implications, that argues to restore the missing sense of reality to architecture and insists on the direct esthetic experience of the real.' . . . a timely manifesto. Thought-provoking and eminently quotable, it succeeds admirably in what it sets out to do: to recall architecture, and not only architecture, to those all but mute meanings so often passed over and yet inseparable from our everyday existence.-Karsten Harries
"This book will still be useful when this year's round arches have all been remodeled (isn't it inevitable?) into pointed. And because it is so vividly -and thoughtfully--written, it will still be a pleasure to read."-Charles Moore
"Every literate architect should take an afternoon off to read and ponder this brief and thoughtful and thoroughly engaging book. . . . Benedikt says more about some central aesthetic and philosophical issues confronting contemporary architecture than many celebrated pundits manage to squeeze into a shelfful of books. . . . He offers a straightforward account of his own struggle to understand the pleasures and responsibilities of architecture in an age when aesthetic pleasure is all but indiscernible from entertainment, and responsibility is often a cover for thoughtless conformity."-Roger Kimball, Architectural Record
"Benedikt marches bravely into the philosophical thicket to find a working definition of reality. . . . In his sensibilities, he is quite transcendental, much like a Thoreau or an Emerson in a hotel lobby of potted ficus trees."-Howard Mansfield, Small Press
". . . the book of the decade in Texas architectural circles. . . "-Texas Architect
Nice
| Customer Rating:  | | Unlike poetics of bordom this one is short and sweet. Simple concept told with pictures and very little narrative. I read it on a train ride. Thanks. |
A perfect little book
| Customer Rating: | | Even though this book was written a while ago (by fashions standard) it is completely relevant today. Benedikt nails down what I've been looking for and inarticulately talking about for a while: the "realness" of buildings. I'm tired of flash and fashion and this essay is a call to arms for architects to re-engage fundamental concepts about how our designs relate to space and time. A must read, preferably in masters years... |
Literature of Irony
| Customer Rating: | | Mr. Benedikt writes with good intentions but a pretentious flare that I feel undermines the very statement he is making with this book. If one is to get from the beginning of an idea to the end of that idea with efficiency and clarity, one should probably do so without excessive quotes, brackets and interstitials like "I think." This call to arms is reduced to an academic brain tease, muddles its point, and probably wastes a lot of black ink. How "real" is that? Covering one side of each bleached-white page with black ink? Excellent points are made, but there is much too much of Mr. Benedikt between each. |
Very important
| Customer Rating: | | I'm in the middle of an M.ARCH degree right now and this book has been the most influential thing I've read so far. It reminds me why I'm in school and what I'm supposed to be learning how to do. You can make sexy images and wonderful compositions that pretend to be sections and plans, or, you can think about the actual presence of the building. It's the difference between Hadid's work - which is incredibly beautiful on paper and in her paintings and yet often disorienting in real life - and Kahn's work which has fairly boring plans and sections (to me), but is powerful beyond words in actuality. |
Thoughts on realness - Lost and found
| Customer Rating: | | 10 years ago I borrowed this small book to a friend who liked it so much I never saw it since. The thoughts on the essence of realness in architecture, though a reaction to postmodernism, have made a lasting impression, and I was happy to regain the book. It is a reminder that architecture sometimes, just by being there, defines a _here_ and _now_ for us. No references, no games, no pretending. Pure existance. Thoughtprovoking and challengeing. |
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