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Reproduced Form/Form Reproduction
Under what circumstances can a work of art be reproduced? Here, a series of historical examples and judicial opinions involving the copyrighting and patenting of steel tube cantilevered chair designs...
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Two-Dimensional Realism
Photograph of Mordecai Gorelik's stage design for Charles Bickford's stage adaptation of Carl Sandburg's Casey Jones (Source: "A Locomotive Steals the Show: 'No.4' Is Hero of Dramatized 'Casey Jones'"...
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An Ithaca of Sorts
S.S. Albert Ballin (1923)And then, that hour the star rose up,The clearest, brightest star, that always heraldsThe newborn light of day, the deep-sea-going shipMade landfall on the island … Ithaca, at...
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Not Serendipity City
Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Project for Two Libraries at Campus Universitaire de Jussieu, Maquette (1992)The desire for serendipitous urban encounters is a desire for moments, though...
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A User's Guide to Architectural Histories and Fictions
Digram showing application of central place theory to qualitative relationships among cities in a region. From Walter Christaller (1893-1969), Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland (Jena: Fischer,...
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Larger Scales of Norman Bel Geddes
Model of Tokyo Bay (Source: Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989)The desire to represent real-time data seems quite contemporary, but in...
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Not a Whodunit. More a Whydoit
An architectural mystery, from C.W. Farrier, "Home, Sweet Home of Tomorrow?" Popular Mechanics (Sep., 1932), p.353.What is this image? What, exactly, are we looking at? Who made it? When was it...
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Patina, Provenance, Mass Production
Sticker sheet and 'zine included with Fender's Sonic Youth-model guitars (Source)Is there an industrial, mass-produced object that resists change the way that an electric guitar or bass does? Electric...
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Wes Anderson vs. Jacques Tati
Check out Wes Anderson's new spot for Stella Artois. A little Mon Oncle, no?
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Volume to Space
Olivier Messiaen in Bryce Canyon, Utah, 1971 (Source)More remains to be said about the relationship of music criticism to architecture criticism. Or put another way, music criticism should be...
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Figures of Involvement
Minutemen (L to R: d. boon, George Hurley, Mike Watt) at the 1984 Los Angeles Street Scene (photo by Eric Stringer) (Source).While we are on the topic of statistics [1], I only need to remind you of a...
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Seen and Not Seen
Postcard depicting the Comte de Lambert's 1909 flight around the Eiffel Tower (Source: Wright State University Library Special Collections)The earliest, most well-known romance between architecture and...
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A Sartorial Moment
"The unveiling of the Palace of Soviets' model, Paris, 1931" (Source: Jean-Louis Cohen, Le Corbusier and the Mystique of the U.S.S.R.: Theories and Project for Moscow, 1928-1936, Kenneth Hylton, trans....
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Happy Holidays
Christmas card by Bob Wirth depicting LCM Chair as Santa Claus. Sent to Charles and Ray Eames in 1948 (Source)A quick note to thank everyone for helping make 2010 a great year for this is a456. I could...
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Symposium Season
A quick note to remind readers of a symposium I am helping organize at Princeton. Called "Teaching Architecture, Practicing Pedagogy," this event is dedicated to new research on the history of...
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Utopia For Sale
Stanley Resor (1879-1962) (Source: Karen E. Mishra, "J. Walter Thompson: Building Trust in Troubled Times," Journal of Historical Research in Marketing, Vol. 1, No. 2 (2009), 246-269)The idea that good...
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Architecture on Trial
A colleague of mine is raising funds for a film about Jim Stirling'sLeicester Engineering Building (1963). Called MORE THAN a Building? Architecture on Trial, the film promises to be a detailed look at...
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The Harvard Candle
Detonation of Napalm M47 Device, Harvard University, 4 July 1942 (Source: Louis F. Fieser, The Scientfic Method: A Personal Account of Unusual Projects in War and in Peace [New York: Reinhold,...
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Of Hyphens and Hurricanes
S.S. Phemius (Built in 1921, Sunk by U-515 on 20 December 1943) (Source)Hurricane season is upon us, so consider these excerpts from Richard Hughes’ largely forgotten novel In Hazard (1938). Both are...
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Rocket Talk
Space Capsule, from Walter Hohmann, The Attainability of Heavenly Bodies, Technical Translation F-44, U.S. Joint Publications Service, trans. (Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space...
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