Product Description

Adam Caruso and Peter St. John, partners in the London firm Caruso St. John, insist on architectural history as a creative resource, and on embracing that resource rather than forsaking it for the rat-race Modernist pursuit of novelty: as St. John argues, "The new for its own sake seems to us both hopeless and pathetic. We prefer characterful ugliness to calculated perfection." Aiming for a "richly associative" architecture that draws on the nature of its materials, Caruso St. John embraces outside disciplines like art, design, literature and philosophy to enrich its practice--Claes Oldenburg's 1960s work at the Storefront Gallery, for example. Almost Everything documents buildings and projects in Britain and Continental Europe since the early 1990s, and also assesses Caruso St. John's philosophy. With contributions by Philip Ursprung, Thomas Demand, John Blockehurst and Jonathan Glancey, it is a thorough overview of one of Britain's most independent-minded architectural firms.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #261748 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 328 pages

Customer Reviews

a lecture course material?
This is one of the best book designs I have come across. Not a book like any other monograph since the focus is not on covering the projects. Prof. Ursprung rather modestly introduces it as something between an atlas and a travel guide but to my mind only in a sense that it is read as a journey like the courses in an architecture school. The photos are crisp and beautiful (many by Helene Binet), the essays cover topics beyond their projects, and there are also bits of texts by Loos, Semper, the Smithsons, Sir John Soane, Walter Benjamin, about Benjamin, about Mies, plates of Owen Jones... all adding up layers like an archeological report. It is a pleasure to own and to reflect upon, at the same time, reminds of why architecture can be a difficult profession to let go once initiated, a mad passion like the true love. a right shot.