"Stickwork" by Patrick Dougherty

Softcover, 208 pages, 230 color illustrations, 20 black & white illustrations; 7 x 9.5 inches.

ISBN-13 9781568989761, November 2010.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press:

Using minimal tools and a simple technique of bending, interweaving, and fastening together sticks, artist Patrick Dougherty creates works of art inseparable with nature and the landscape.

With a dazzling variety of forms seamlessly intertwined with their context, his sculptures evoke fantastical images of nests, cocoons, cones, castles, and beehives. Over the last twenty-five years, Dougherty has built more than two hundred works throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia that range from stand-alone structures to a kind of modern primitive architecture—  every piece mesmerizing in its ability to fly through trees, overtake buildings, and virtually defy gravity.

Stickwork, Dougherty's first monograph, features thirty-eight of his organic, dynamic works that twist the line between architecture, landscape, and art.

Constructed on-site using locally sourced materials and local volunteer labor, Dougherty's sculptures are tangles of twigs and branches that have been transformed into something unexpected and wild, elegant and artful, and often humorous. Sometimes freestanding, and other times wrapping around trees, buildings, railings, and rooms, they are constructed indoors and in nature. As organic matter, the stick sculptures eventually disintegrate and fade back into the landscape.

Featuring a wealth of photographs and drawings documenting the construction process of each remarkable structure, Stickwork preserves the legend of the man who weaves the simplest of materials into a singular artistic triumph.

Photos taken on March 25, 2013, of an installation by Patrick Dougherty currently on view on the campus of Washington University in Saint Louis.

From an article on "Double or Nothing" by Liam Otten on the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts web site:

There is an undeniable romanticism to the sculpture of Patrick Dougherty. Working with the simplest of materials -- sticks, branches, and saplings -- the North Carolina-based artist creates playful architectural forms that variously suggest nests, primitive shelters, and fairy-tale castles.

This fall, Dougherty enlisted dozens of students to help construct "Double or Nothing", a new commission for Washington University in St. Louis' Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Located along Forsyth Boulevard, on the south lawn of Givens Hall, the piece consists of two large woven-wood structures, each rising approximately 20 feet in the air.

"I think of myself as a sculptor, and I think of sticks as worthy sculptural material," says Dougherty, the Sam Fox School's 2011 Louis D. Beaumont Artist in Residence.

"People have a visceral response and connection to sticks," says Dougherty, who to date has created approximately 200 "stickworks," as he calls them. "People tell stories about their favorite trees. I just had to figure out what birds and beavers already knew about fitting sticks together."

"Double or Nothing" grew out of a master class, titled "Stickwork on Campus," co-taught by Dougherty and Ron Fondaw, professor of art. (Funding for the project was provided by the Sam Fox School Dean's Office and by the Colleges of Art and Architecture.)

Sixteen graduate and advanced undergraduate students—drawn from art, architecture, and the new Master of Landscape Architecture program—met with Dougherty for an initial site visit last August, then attended a series of lectures on public art and architecture.

"Fumihiko Maki" by Fumihiko Maki, Kenneth Frampton, Mark Mulligan, and David M. Stewart

Hardcover, 320 pages, color and black & white illustrations, 11.378 x 9.875 inches.

ISBN-13: 9780714849560, June 2009.

Published by Phaidon:

Fumihiko Maki (b. 1928), who was honoured with a Pritzker Prize in 1993, is known for subtle but technologically innovative buildings that thoughtfully relate to the people who use them and to their surroundings. This volume includes over 40 key projects selected by Maki, each of which is illustrated in detail and described by Maki himself, including analysis of how they have influenced his design thinking. Three prominent historians, Kenneth Frampton, David Stewart, and Mark Mulligan, have contributed essays on different aspects of Maki's life and work. The inclusion of a wide range of projects, from early experimental work to buildings under construction now, allows the reader to understand 50 years of the work of this master architect.

Fumihiko Maki (b.1928) is principal of Maki & Associates in Tokyo and a 1993 recipient of the Pritzker Prize. Major projects have included the National Museum of Art in Kyoto, the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium, and the Yerba Buena Gardens Visual Arts Center in San Francisco. Maki's current projects include Tower 4 at the former World Trade Center site (scheduled to open in 2011), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's media lab and the Aga Khan Development Network's Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat in Ottawa, Canada.

Kenneth Frampton is an internationally respected architectural critic who holds the Ware Professorship at the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, Columbia University, New York. He lectures extensively in the US and Europe, and has also written, edited and contributed to numerous publications on contemporary architecture. He is the author of Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980; revised 1985 and 1992) and Studies in Tectonic Culture (1997). His collected essays Labour, Work and Architecture were published by Phaidon in 2002.

Mark Mulligan is a registered architect and a faculty member at the Graduate School of Design. His practice focuses on modern houses in the US and abroad that are sensitively related to their local climate, environment and culture. Mulligan teaches courses in architectural technology, focusing on the relationship between design, detail, and construction, as well as design studios at the GSD. He has written and published articles about contemporary Japanese architecture as well as translating Japanese authors into English.

David B. Stewart has taught in Japan as Ministry of Education Foreign Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology since 1975. He was trained as an architectural historian at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London by the late Professor Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, under whose supervision he earned his Ph.D. Dr. Stewart is widely known in Japan and abroad as an architectural commentator and contributor to a number of specialist publications, as well as for his Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture: from 1868 to the Present (Kodansha International, l987).

Patrick Dougherty's "Double or Nothing"

Photo by T. Renner

The photos in this post were taken in January 2012 from the interior of an installation by Patrick Dougherty then on view on the campus of Washington University in Saint Louis.

From an article on "Double or Nothing" by Liam Otten on the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts web site:

There is an undeniable romanticism to the sculpture of Patrick Dougherty. Working with the simplest of materials -- sticks, branches, and saplings -- the North Carolina-based artist creates playful architectural forms that variously suggest nests, primitive shelters, and fairy-tale castles.

This fall, Dougherty enlisted dozens of students to help construct Double or Nothing, a new commission for Washington University in St. Louis' Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Located along Forsyth Boulevard, on the south lawn of Givens Hall, the piece consists of two large woven-wood structures, each rising approximately 20 feet in the air.

"I think of myself as a sculptor, and I think of sticks as worthy sculptural material," says Dougherty, the Sam Fox School's 2011 Louis D. Beaumont Artist in Residence.

"People have a visceral response and connection to sticks," says Dougherty, who to date has created approximately 200 "stickworks," as he calls them. "People tell stories about their favorite trees. I just had to figure out what birds and beavers already knew about fitting sticks together."

"Double or Nothing" grew out of a master class, titled "Stickwork on Campus," co-taught by Dougherty and Ron Fondaw, professor of art. (Funding for the project was provided by the Sam Fox School Dean's Office and by the Colleges of Art and Architecture.)

Sixteen graduate and advanced undergraduate students—drawn from art, architecture, and the new Master of Landscape Architecture program—met with Dougherty for an initial site visit last August, then attended a series of lectures on public art and architecture.

Photo by T. Renner

"Le Corbusier & Lucien Hervé: A Dialogue between Architect and Photographer" by Jacques Sbriglio

Hardcover, 296 pages, black & white illustrations, 14.1 x 10.1 inches.

ISBN-13: 978-1606060889, September 2011.

Published by Getty Publications:

In 1949, the photographer Lucien Hervé (1910-2007) took a picture of an innovative apartment building in Marseille, France, and sent it to the buildings architect, Le Corbusier (1887-1965). Le Corbusier responded by asking Hervé to become his official photographer. This book recounts the collaboration between these groundbreaking Modernists.

The author takes the reader on a tour of sixteen of Le Corbusier's most iconic buildings using Hervé's edited sheets of contact prints as visual guides. These sheets,which became an effective tool in the collaborative dissemination of Le Corbusier's work, capture Hervé's dynamic perspectives and dramatic use of light. His sequencing of the individual prints creates an exhilarating rhythm that powerfully showcases the architects novel forms and materials.

Jacques Sbriglio is an architect and professor of architectural theory and projects at Lécole nationale superieure d'architecture de Marseille-Luminy. Quentin Bajac is head of the photography department at the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, in Paris, and author of The Invention of Photography (Thames & Hudson/Abrams, 2002). Béatrice Andrieux is a freelance curator who has organized several exhibitions of Hervé's photographs in France. Michel Richard is director of the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris.

Where Am I? #2

"Supermannerism" by C. Ray Smith

Paperback, 354 pages, color and black & white illustrations, 8.1 x 5.8 inches.

ISBN-13: 978-0525474241, August 1977.

Published by Plume, out-of-print.

From the inside front cover:

Supermannerism is concerned with the new attitudes that provide the contextual background of design and architecture in America today. It is the first book about the revolution against the style called "Modern" and the development of the current period in architecture and design that is now more and more being called "Post-Modern."

Supermannerism catalogues the beginnings of this movement -- a period from about 1960 to 1970 -- its protagonists and their works, their educations and inspirations, and their influences on students and their works. It outlines the new attitudes that many diverse architects and designers shared in opposition to the Modernists. Among these attitudes are: ambiguity and disorientation; with and whimsy; the pop acceptance of symbols; historicism and decoration superimposition and layering; and adaptability and open-endedness.

The words and works of many spokesmen for these attitudes are presented -- not as they remember them a decade and more ago -- but as they said and designed them while the movement gained momentum. Among these spokesman are Charles Moore, Robert Venturi, Hugh Hardy, and a host of others. The collection of these words and works (illustrated in over 200 halftones and color plates) is by an eyewitness reporter who did much to bring the movement to the attention of professionals in the mid-1960s and who coined the term Supermannerism and supergraphics.

The Jewel Box, Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.

From the web site of the City of St. Louis:

The Jewel Box, located on a 17-acre site in Forest Park, was built by the City of St. Louis in 1936 and is operated by the Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry. It is listed on the National Historic Register. The designation was given by the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior. The application was submitted by the Landmarks Association of St. Louis on behalf of the City of St. Louis Department of Parks, Recreation and Forestry. The Jewel Box was given the designation on the National Register because it is, “locally significant in the area of architecture. The Art Deco building is an outstanding example of greenhouse design.”

The Jewel Box was dedicated Nov. 14, 1936 and cost about $117,000, with about 45 percent coming from Public Works Administration (WPA) funds. It was designed by city engineer William C. E. Becker and Robert Paulus Construction Co. was the contractor.

With its unconventional, cantilevered, vertical glass walls rising majestically 50 feet high, the Jewel Box opened in 1936 to national acclaim. The Post-Dispatch called the Art Deco-style structure, "the latest word in display greenhouses."