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Situated Objects: Buildings and Projects by Stan Allen, Photographs by Scott Benedict
Stan Allen is an architect and educator who has won global acclaim, primarily for his work in town planning and his influential 1996 essay “Field Conditions.� His new book Situated Objects shows a unique facet of his creative a selection of small buildings and projects on rural sites, most of them situated within the landscape of the Hudson Valley, New York. They demonstrate an approach to architecture that engages in a dialogue with this partly wild and wholly non-urban environment that lies just outside the gates of New York City.
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The projects are presented in drawings and a rich array of images by celebrated photographer Scott Benedict. They are arranged in three thematic Outbuildings, Material Histories, and New Natures, supplemented by the architect’s writings and essays contributed by Helen Thomas and Jesús Vassallo. The first book on Stan Allen’s buildings, Situated Objects highlights Allen’s personal engagement with American material traditions, the conventions of architectural drawing, and the challenge of building with nature.
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The projects are presented in drawings and a rich array of images by celebrated photographer Scott Benedict. They are arranged in three thematic Outbuildings, Material Histories, and New Natures, supplemented by the architect’s writings and essays contributed by Helen Thomas and Jesús Vassallo. The first book on Stan Allen’s buildings, Situated Objects highlights Allen’s personal engagement with American material traditions, the conventions of architectural drawing, and the challenge of building with nature.
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256 pages, Hardcover
Published January 23, 2021
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March 18, 2024
The essays in this monograph construct a nice overview of the architect’s design process, philosophy, and built body of work. Regarding his philosophy, Allen argues convincingly that architecture is both a discipline of tectonics - the hard logic of a building coming together - as well as representation and it must function in both realms. While drawings allow the architect to navigate the abstract and the real, the tectonic situates us in the real-real - the material and spatial realm. “The architect works simultaneously on the horizon of imagination - expanding the limit of the possible - and with an obstinate and inconsistent reality.�
While the book contains lovely photographs, diagrams, axons, plans, sections and montages of the built and conceptual work of Allen, the essays rely on heroic and grandiose language that inflate the “ingenuity� of the Architect into the realm of the singular genius. It is enough to make the eyes roll out of one’s head.
Early on,Allen poses the question: “what gives architecture its social purchase?� The answers Allen gives us seem feeble when the socious is absent from all representation and photographs and his clientele seem limited to a wealthy subsect of the Hudson valley (who must appreciate Allen’s arbitrary selection of design strategies). But hey, at least his style is consistent across time.
In any case, for me this book is mainly a good exercise in questioning the role of representation in the design process. What do axons give us that worm’s eyes don’t? How might considerations of balloon framing emphasize volume over mass or surface over structure in the design process?
While the book contains lovely photographs, diagrams, axons, plans, sections and montages of the built and conceptual work of Allen, the essays rely on heroic and grandiose language that inflate the “ingenuity� of the Architect into the realm of the singular genius. It is enough to make the eyes roll out of one’s head.
Early on,Allen poses the question: “what gives architecture its social purchase?� The answers Allen gives us seem feeble when the socious is absent from all representation and photographs and his clientele seem limited to a wealthy subsect of the Hudson valley (who must appreciate Allen’s arbitrary selection of design strategies). But hey, at least his style is consistent across time.
In any case, for me this book is mainly a good exercise in questioning the role of representation in the design process. What do axons give us that worm’s eyes don’t? How might considerations of balloon framing emphasize volume over mass or surface over structure in the design process?
Displaying 1 of 1 review
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