Publication

  • "Giulio Carlo Argan, The Crisis of Values: Essays on Modern Art and Architecture, 1930–1965" and "Shadrach Woods, Build in Uncertainty: Essays and Writings"
    Craig Buckley
    Editor
    Columbia Books on Architecture and the City
  • GRANTEE
    Columbia University-Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
    GRANT YEAR
    2013

Shadrach Woods, plate from What U Can Do (Houston: Rice University, 1970).

The Columbia GSAPP Sourcebooks series focuses on gathering material published in a wide range of contexts into single volumes and on translating writings currently not available to an English-speaking public. Giulio Carlo Argan: The Crisis of Values; Essays on Modern Art and Architecture, 1930–1965 presents thirteen essays by Argan, a prominent art and architectural historian who played a major role in Italy's cultural life throughout six decades, with his scholarly work and cultural criticism, his activity within academic and state institutions, and finally his political action as Mayor of Rome (1976–79) and Senator of the Italian Republic (1983–92). Argan's leading role as a critic and historian of modern architecture has largely been overshadowed in the English-speaking world by the influence of his most famous student: Manfredo Tafuri. Shadrach Woods: Build in Uncertainty; Essays and Writings compiles key writings of this Team X member from rare magazines along with previously unpublished lectures from his archive at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library. Together, these writings trace the evolution of Wood's thinking for the first time, uncovering the underpinnings of central ideas in contemporary architectural theory and criticism.

Craig Buckley, series editor, is an assistant professor in the History of Art Department at Yale University. In addition to initiating and editing the GSAPP Sourcebooks series, he is the coeditor of several books, including Dan Graham's New Jersey (Lars Müller Publishers, 2011), Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X–197X (with Beatriz Colomina; ACTAR Press, 2010), Utopie: Texts and Projects 1967–1978 (with Jean-Louis Violeau; Semiotext(e), 2010).

Cesare Birignani, co-editor of Giulio Carlo Argan, The Crisis of Values, received a PhD in architectural history and theory from Columbia University in 2012, with a dissertation on the planning of early modern Paris. His main research bears on the practices developed by the Paris police to control, discipline, and manage the city as well as on a corpus of texts produced from the end of the seventeenth century until the Revolution under the rubric of "police science." The theorists of the ville policée, he argues, turned the city into a new, complex object of knowledge: the discourse of police was the first critical effort to understand and come to terms with the modern urban condition. His current projects also include a critical edition of L'homme tel qu'il devrait être, the last, unpublished treatise by the French architect and theorist Pierre Patte, and the research project Architecture and Magnificence, which explores a range of festivals and collective events—from Renaissance royal entries to Olympic opening ceremonies—as moments that produce both ephemeral spaces and political subjects.

Elsa Lam, co-editor of Shadrach Woods, Build in Uncertainty, is editor-in-chief of Canadian Architect magazine. She holds a doctorate in architectural history and theory from Columbia University, where she completed her dissertation "Wilderness Nation: Building Canada's Railway Landscapes, 1885–1929" under the supervision of Kenneth Frampton and Vittoria di Palma. She previously studied architectural history at McGill University and design at the University of Waterloo. Lam has contributed chapters to the forthcoming books Environments of Mobility in Canadian History and Giambattista Nolli and Rome. Her writing also appears in publications including the Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, Archis, and Azure. In 2006, Lam cocurated the exhibition Build in Uncertainty: Unpacking the Shadrach Woods Archive with Brad Walters at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University. She has worked on exhibitions on contemporary architecture as a curatorial coordinator at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.

Mary McLeod, co-editor of Shadrach Woods, Build in Uncertainty, is a professor of architecture at Columbia University, where she teaches architecture history and theory, and occasionally studio. She has also taught at Harvard University, University of Kentucky, University of Miami, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. She received a BA, MArch, and PhD from Princeton University. Her research and publications have focused on the history of the modern movement and on contemporary architecture theory, examining issues concerning the connections between architecture and ideology. She is coeditor of Architecture, Criticism, Ideology, and Architecture Reproduction (Princeton Architectural Press), and is the editor of and contributor to the book Charlotte Perriand: An Art of Living (Abrams, 2003). She also initiated and helped curate the exhibition Charlotte Perriand: Interior Equipment, held at the Urban Center in New York. Her articles have appeared in Assemblage, Oppositions, Art Journal, AA Files, Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians, Casabella, Art Journal, Harvard Design Magazine, and Lotus, as well as other journals and anthologies, such as Architecture School, The Sex of Architecture, Architecture in Fashion, Architecture of the Everyday, Architecture and Feminism, The Pragmatist Imagination, The State of Architecture, Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished, Architecture Theory since 1968, Oppositions Reader, Le Parole dell'Architettura, Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art, and Architecture Schools. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship, a National Endowment for Humanities award, and grants from New York Council of the Arts and the Graham Foundation.

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