Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines

I’ve been meaning to write something on this wonderful book for a while. Falling somewhere between dusty nostalgia and future world innovation, this book documents the explosion of self published architectural magazines of the early 1960s through to the late 1970’s.

Despite the modesty of their production, many of these ‘little’ magazines punch well above their weight in terms of documenting the socio – political revolution of this period. Before social networking, independent architectural periodicals functioned as radical manifestoes for a new way of living and these small press periodicals were produced to disseminate a startling wide range of experimental theory and practice. Rescued from the dusty shelves of architectural libraries, these missives from another time capture and expose the paradigmatic rifts within the period they were produced, as the optimistic hippie idealism embedded within the Age of Aquarius becomes tempered by the cultural fallout of the late 1960s. The book is beautifully researched throughout and gathers together around seventy small publications as well as extensive interviews and facsimile reprints. Being an architectural non practitioner, what particularly caught my eye was the rather unusual, homespun quality of the design and layout of these publications. Many have a hand crafted, low budget, almost proto punk feel and reading through them feels like sifting through a folk archive of lost and arcane architectural protest. As the book evolves, modernist values tune in and drop out and any blueprint of a unified architectural model lies burning in the streets. Perhaps more importantly, this book serves as a timely reminder that despite our unprecedented access to information we have perhaps lost some of the intense political engagement with the world which was present when these periodicals were produced. Food for thought.

Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines by Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley is out now, published by Actar.

Supergraphics

I’m glad to see someone has finally managed to publish a survey of large scale architectural graphics, which in my humble opinion is a much neglected and marginalized form of visual culture. “Supergraphics – Transforming Space: Graphic Design for Walls, Buildings & Spaces” is a wonderfully engaging examination of the ‘cult’ of seductively large letterforms, arresting geometric abstraction and chromatically overloaded environmental design. Tracing a lineage from the radical painted architectural environments of the 1960’s to the present day ‘soft design’ of advanced digital light projections, the book examines a wide range of large scale architectural graphics which have been applied in order to radically transform and alter our experience of the urban environment. The concept of Supergraphics was originally political in nature, a way in which radical visionary architects could redefine the urban space by applying painted graphics to the interior and exterior surfaces of buildings thus ‘removing solidity, gravity, even history' from the built environment. The book covers a wide variety of ground, from deceptively simple exercises in visual ornamentation, complex spatial altering distortions to functional civic signage on a grand scale. Each ‘eye popping’ design has been documented with clarity and as one would expect by anything published by Unit Editions, the book has a clean, crisp understated layout and finish. A welcome addition to any design bookshelf. Unit Editions is fast becoming my favourite source of graphic wonder. 

“Supergraphics – Transforming Space: Graphic Design for Walls, Buildings & Spaces” is published this month by Unit Editions.

The Impoverished Architectural Models Of Jockum Nordström

Varese-Edgard, Iannis Xenakis And Le Corbusier

The Radical Architecture Of Little Magazines Part One

Haus-Rucker-Co

Haus-Rucker-Co was an experimental Viennese architectural and design collective founded in 1967.  They produced a wide range of ‘disposable architecture’ which included pneumatic structures, air-mattresses and very odd look helmets which were designed to change sensory impressions.  These designs look odd, slightly perverse yet strangely futuristic and tinged with a spirit of radical sixties optimism.