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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | RADARBOOKS
| BLIGH VOLLER NIELD |
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Introduction by Joseph Rykwert and Xing Ruan. China Architecture and Building Press, 2005. $ 70.
A scrapbook of text, images, technical
drawings, sketches and even a newspaper
clipping, this bilingual monograph on
Bligh Voller Nield is projected towards the
international market. The chosen works
provide a comprehensive cross-section of
BVN’s diverse portfolio, ranging from
large-scale urban planning projects to
single-family houses.
Joseph Rykwert and Xing Ruan each
introduce Bligh Voller Nield in an
individual manner. Rykwert highlights the
practice’s focus on the relationship between
context and the building, evident in the
array of projects. He also appreciates BVN’s
refreshing lack of interest in the
much-debated problem of style. He remarks
on the scale of the work, reflecting that
much of BVN’s architecture could be seen as
urban planning schemes. Xing Ruan’s more
colourful introduction is entitled “Flower
Architecture” and he proposes the metaphor
and image of the flower to describe the
architecture of the practice. Referring tothe
theories of both Immanuel Kant and Louis
Kahn, he examines a selection BVN’s
buildings and concludes that, in the best
architecture, the image and the idea of a
metaphor are each legible to the inhabitants.
The projects are arranged and located
within the book by latitude and longitude
(as indicated on the cover), in an attempt to
reinforce the importance of place in their
work. This could also be seen as a way of
promoting the rising status of Bligh Voller
Nield. But this organizational idea may have
been more suitable if the practice had more
international projects to date.
The sections on each project are rich with
visual stimulation; however, the text does
not accompany the images. Rather, the
snippets of information and credits for each
project are lumped together at the back of
the book. This is frustrating for those
wanting to read the book, but may be
appropriate for those only interested in the
images. It is disappointing that this wide
selection of works does not have the
architectural critique to match.
The stunning but restrained work of BVN,
which incorporates humanitarian concerns,
is, in itself, worth a look. An unusual book,
with an international emphasis, Bligh Voller
Nield’s monograph offers brief summaries
and a generous selection of images to enable
appreciation of the firm’s significant oeuvre.
KATELIN BUTLER
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| NEW CHINA ARCHITECTURE |
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Text by Xing Ruan, photography by Patrick Bingham-Hall. Periplus, 2006. $69.95
The development of China in the last
decade is reflected in a new architectural
era. This book documents the architecture
emerging from this new context. It features
projects designed by local Chinese
architects, as well as those designed by
famed international architects such as Zaha
Hadid, Steven Holl and Norman Foster, and
includes Australians PTW Architects.
Another book with words from Xing
Ruan, New China Architecture may be
seen as a calling to international firms that
China is the place to be. The insightful
introduction by Xing Ruan, “A Hundred
Flowers”, refers to the unprecedented
architectural “flowering” in China. Xing
Ruan unpacks the conceptual and
historical complexities that are entangled
within modern Chinese architecture and
discusses the lack of attention it has
received from the West. After this long
struggle to be recognized, Xing Ruan argues,
China’s new architecture has arrived with a
dash of intensity. This is evident in the
selection of projects.
Myriad different scales and building
functions are represented in the selected
works. These range from PTW Architects’
current National Swimming Centre project,
the Watercube in Beijing (featured on the
cover), to the series of lightweight
pavilions in the forest for the West Lake
Southern Line Pavilions project by local
architects Zhang Zi and Zhang Ming.
Exciting new forms are beautifully
illustrated in Patrick Bingham-Hall’s
photography and works in progress are
portrayed through computer renderings that
emphasize the dynamic nature of this new
architecture. Comments by Xing Ruan on
each of the projects are kept to a minimum;
however, they provide an adequate
overview of the relevant themes.
This book provides an informative
outline of the progress architecture in
China has made in the last two decades,
rather than a highly critical commentary
on a series of projects. It primarily serves
to give architectural recognition to a
once-forgotten region.
KATELIN BUTLER
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| THE ARCHITECTURE OF NEIL CLEREHAN |
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Harriet Edquist and Richard Black. RMIT Architecture + Design Monographs 01, 2006. $45.
This handsome publication is the first in a
promised series of monographs on
Melbourne architects from RMIT. The
subject is Neil Clerehan, an enormously
respected elder statesman, who is still very
active in Melbourne’s architectural culture.
The book begins with a short, affectionate
foreword by Philip Goad, which introduces
the topics which will be pursued in other
essays – Clerehan’s predominantly domestic
practice, his significant work on the RVIA
Small Homes Service, his importance as a
writer on architecture as well as a maker of
buildings. Goad also captures something of
the man himself. We are given a glimpse of
his humour, his enthusiasm and his
“impeccable patrician tone”. These help
enliven the drier essays that follow.
Harriet Edquist provides a straightforward,
chronological account of Clerehan’s practice
from the immediate postwar period to the
present. Richard Black gives a thematic
account of the houses from the 1950s,
including work done for the Small Homes
Service and published in The Age, and four
demonstration houses. There is some
repetition in content between these two
essays. They are accompanied by striking
period photographs and images and plans
reproduced from the newspaper
presentations of the work of the Small
Homes Service. These give a fascinating
glimpse into the visual cultures of the time.
Leon van Schaik’s essay is much more
speculative and interpretative. Titled
“Understanding Clerehan: New World
Tragedy”, this essay locates Clerehan’s
domestic work in terms of postwar
Modernism’s “Brave New World” approach.
This, he argues, plays straight into the
hands of the “tragedy” of the new world,
which he describes as pursuit of individual
paradise at the expense of the collective.
The book concludes with an “Atlas” of
Clerehan’s designs for the Small Homes
Service and measured drawings of four
commissioned houses, including his own.
Plans and building envelopes are neatly
drawn in fine black linework. This is very
useful for the comparative purposes, but it
also strips the projects of their rhetorical
power, which is palpable in originals
reproduced elsewhere in the book, and
which was surely an important part of the
original project to bring Modern
architecture to a broader public.
This elegantly designed hardback gives a
good introduction to the considered and
careful work of Clerehan across half a
century. But I was left wanting to know
more about how this strong body of work
relates to the wider concerns of architecture
in the postwar period and beyond. The
focus on the house, the commitment to
providing housing for a broader public, the
considered engagement with media, the
relationship to postwar architecture in
other New World contexts – all of this
seems fertile ground for more thorough
thematic discussion, which might do much
to further our understanding of architecture
in this country.
JUSTINE CLARK
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| JCY THE ARCHITECTURE OF JONES COULTER YOUNG |
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Essays by Anoma Pieris, photography by Patrick Bingham-Hall. Pesaro Publishing, 2005. $55.
The vibrant colours and dramatic forms of
the architecture of Jones Coulter Young are
unlike anything else in Australian
architecture. This new monograph presents
the body of work in striking photographs
by Patrick Bingham-Hall, while the essays
by Anoma Pieris give the reader a number
of ways to access and understand the
oeuvre. Pieris frames the work in terms of
the eclectic. She is careful to outline what
this might be – not the nineteenth-century
“mess of styles”, rather a way of
understanding “the many avenues through
which a team of architects may enter into a
body of work”. She suggests that this allows
the architects to call on diverse talents
and interpretations of contexts, and that it
posits architecture as a dialogic,
open-ended process. It is, she argues, an
appropriate way of thinking about
architecture in the New World. This is a
very useful way to approach the work of
JCY, but it could also be a productive way
of thinking through the diversity of
Australian architecture more generally.
The book is broken into four sections –
Dialogic Spaces, Urban Dreams, The Western
Landscape and Building Community. Each
begins with a short essay followed by
projects shown through images, drawings
and short descriptive texts. The essays are
strongest when they critically engage with
the thematic issues and social contexts of
architecture in Western Australia.
The publication brings a significant body
of work to our attention, and, unlike many
such monographs, it also gives us a taste of
new ways to think about architecture here.
JUSTINE CLARK
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