11 The First Pulp Architecture Book
If I am not mistaken, the first Pulp Architecture book was written by Frankie Muschamp. I call him Frankie as if I know him. Of course I don’t know the architectural critic for the New York Times called Muschamp, but I imagine I know this Frank.
Frankie Muschamp was responsible in 1974 for lines which I think rightly fit the title of the First Pulp Architecture book. Take this example:
“My buildings wear Mona Lisa cufflinks. I don’t know any laws about what a window wants to be, I know nothing about the greater reality of the doorknob. Most of what I know of the reflective qualities of glass come from watching my reflection in shop windows as I walk up fancy streets.’
Now there are doubtless some out there who think Frankie M. should just have thrown his pen away and got right back to architecture school and learnt the greater reality of the doorknob. Actually that would not have done Frankie much good. But waiting at least twenty years before another New Yorker appeared, and Frankie would have had his perfect mentor. Nicholson Baker would have taught Frankie more than the greater reality of the doorknob.
In fact in the future, sometime later, if there is ever likely to be a new dean search at the College of Glazed Hams, I think it worthy of recommending Nicholson Baker. I really don’t know why I didn’t think about this earlier. But just in case you don’t believe me take a look at Baker’s book The Mezzanine whilst a few more sentences from Bertie’s book called ‘File under Architecture’ should convince you:
‘The serious architect has spent many years in training and feels entitled to his traditional aura. He borrows images and slogans from technology, politics, and fashion but is appalled at the notion of having to equate his work with these sources.”
I think you can see where Frankie was going with this.
“Thus it is fortunate that relatively few buildings are built by serious architects and that we have a large number of props other than buildings to choose from in articulating the space we inhabit.”
With that phrase Frankie capped it. Pulp Architecture surely is that number of props other than buildings we have to choose from. But Frankie didn’t leave it there. In the year 2003, people in New York would look back and wonder why architecture suddenly took its turn. Two years earlier somebody had come up with a rather unusual way of altering the skyline. They would do well reading these lines: ‘The experience of architecture requires no training, no special knowledge, no trips to galleries, no admission tickets…..in a system designed to answer the wants of millions of separately evolving people, the emphasis is not on permanent solutions but on the routes of access to potential realities and the means with which to shape them.’
And if you haven’t got enough, go google Frankie at bookfinder.com or halfpricebooks.com and sniff out an original, a rare copy, of the first pulp architecture book.
You might enjoy it.
Frankie Muschamp was responsible in 1974 for lines which I think rightly fit the title of the First Pulp Architecture book. Take this example:
“My buildings wear Mona Lisa cufflinks. I don’t know any laws about what a window wants to be, I know nothing about the greater reality of the doorknob. Most of what I know of the reflective qualities of glass come from watching my reflection in shop windows as I walk up fancy streets.’
Now there are doubtless some out there who think Frankie M. should just have thrown his pen away and got right back to architecture school and learnt the greater reality of the doorknob. Actually that would not have done Frankie much good. But waiting at least twenty years before another New Yorker appeared, and Frankie would have had his perfect mentor. Nicholson Baker would have taught Frankie more than the greater reality of the doorknob.
In fact in the future, sometime later, if there is ever likely to be a new dean search at the College of Glazed Hams, I think it worthy of recommending Nicholson Baker. I really don’t know why I didn’t think about this earlier. But just in case you don’t believe me take a look at Baker’s book The Mezzanine whilst a few more sentences from Bertie’s book called ‘File under Architecture’ should convince you:
‘The serious architect has spent many years in training and feels entitled to his traditional aura. He borrows images and slogans from technology, politics, and fashion but is appalled at the notion of having to equate his work with these sources.”
I think you can see where Frankie was going with this.
“Thus it is fortunate that relatively few buildings are built by serious architects and that we have a large number of props other than buildings to choose from in articulating the space we inhabit.”
With that phrase Frankie capped it. Pulp Architecture surely is that number of props other than buildings we have to choose from. But Frankie didn’t leave it there. In the year 2003, people in New York would look back and wonder why architecture suddenly took its turn. Two years earlier somebody had come up with a rather unusual way of altering the skyline. They would do well reading these lines: ‘The experience of architecture requires no training, no special knowledge, no trips to galleries, no admission tickets…..in a system designed to answer the wants of millions of separately evolving people, the emphasis is not on permanent solutions but on the routes of access to potential realities and the means with which to shape them.’
And if you haven’t got enough, go google Frankie at bookfinder.com or halfpricebooks.com and sniff out an original, a rare copy, of the first pulp architecture book.
You might enjoy it.
posted by frank heron at 9:50 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home