Atlas of Novel Tectonics

by Nanako Umemoto and Jesse Reiser

Architects Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto have been generating some of the most provocative thinking in the field for nearly twenty years. With Atlas of Novel Tectonics, Reiser+Umemoto hone in on the many facets of architecture and illuminate their theories with great thought and simplicity. The Atlas is organized as an accumulation of short chapters that address the workings of matter and force, material science, the lessons of art...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1568985541
• ISBN13: 9781568985541
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

ideas are good, annoyances are plenty

Rewarding overall but the flamboyance of scholarly language is too much at times. Even though RUR chops their prose into 2-3 paragraph length chapters--more digestible chunks--it only kind of eases the hassle of sifting through the jargon. The ideas are interesting when you get to them, you just have to do a lot of digging (and dictionary referencing) to hit them. One could argue that the density of verbiage employed by RUR is a result of the "density" of ideas. If that is the case, reading Atlas is like eating a very dense mousse. You don't need to eat all of it to get the point(s). I found the repetition of certain images irritating (moire screen, bridge, etc). It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does it induces a "not again" response. At their worst, the visuals can be as inaccessible and irritating as the writing. At their best, quite interesting. Buy it. Just prepare to be a little irritated when you read it...

hook, line and sinker

maybe I was once again fooled by how sexy this book is, but I pandered to every word Jesse and Nakano had for me inside. The short entries are well composed and illustrated, have great arguments, and the entire thing can be gobbled up in an afternoon or two. Currently the book is in my bag, and goes pretty much wherever I do.

valuable

get it... that's all i have to say. there's no reason not to own it.

a rare exemplar of clarity in architectural writing

Reiser and Umemoto (henceforth R & U) have put together a wonderful role model of a textbook in a field that erroneously prides itself on having NO textbooks -- that is, by having far too many "must-read" books that remain disconnected and often irrelevant to the problem of learning HOW TO GO ABOUT wrapping one's head around this thing called Architecture. Without turgidity, mysticism, pedantry, or pretentious narcissism, the authors elegantly demonstrate one version of architectural head-wrapping: THEIRS. But make no mistake: to call it 'theirs' is only to specify the site of the (unavoidable)subjectivity that propels this kind of demonstration. And the clarity with which this demostration is done is yet another demonstration of the refinement of their subjectivity. This book, along with those by George L. Hersey, is one of the very few books in the field that can actually help one in reducing the confusion in trying to understand what Architecture as a DISCIPLINE really deals with, so overcrowded it is today with so many extra-architectural issues/agendas. After all, it was never Architecture as such that was confusing or difficult to understand. People with clubby exclusionary motives, aided and abetted by academic survivalists -- the small sort of people Dryden derided as 'criticules'(teeny weeny critics) -- have made the topic into the unnecessarily convoluted intestine that it is today. And given the paucity of well-paying or creatively challenging work for architects in the real world, this nefarious practice of obfuscation will likely continue since "all forms of power are always accompanied by some form of mysticism." But I digress. I mentioned George L. Hersey's books earlier as exemplars of clarity. I was thinking of his `Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque'. There you see what actually qualified AS an architectural problem for architects like Borromini and Guarini. You also see the INTENSITY and COMPLEXITY in the SIMPLICITY of the problems they chose to deal with. This kind of architectural cathexis (focus of interest) is something that got lost a while ago with people wasting their vital fluids arguing over possibly important but ultimately extra-architectural issues like low-income housing, importance of having porches, evils of capitalism, etc -- issues that are really a matter of political will, compassion, self-control, and/or common sense. Enter R & U: Knowledgeable admirers of the Baroque that they are, they remind us what it really means to "play ball" in Architecture: ripped-pantyhose mediations on Heraclitus be damned, Architecture, like Baseball, has its internally generated/regulated rules that demand consistency with how Nature designs; and playing a great game regardless of all external factors (politics, ideology, economy, management, the weather, etc) is really all that counts in the end. In five sections, R & U demonstrate the very thing they profess to practice - strategies of ordering - by cryst

Must read

Must read lexicon of architectural forays and methodologies for any critical architect or designer.