REVIEW: This Book ROCKS! | |||||||||||
Stone Work: Designing with
Stone by Malcolm Holzman, FAIA (images Publishing, 2002) |
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reviewed by Stephanie Stubbs, Assoc. AIA |
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Maybe you can't judge one by its cover, but Stone Work gives you a pretty good hint. Its jacket offers an open field of a rosy, rough-hewn sandstone, with the subhead and author's credit neatly and unobtrusively "chiseled" in. The main title block looks finely carved, and its subtly embossed letters are high gloss, like softly polished stone. Someone, you know, designed this book very carefully. Now you can open it. If you're the reserved, organized type, just flip to lovely end plates, which offer an orderly quilt of different-colored stone wall applications. If you're the impetuous, carefree kind, fan the pages and get bowled over by the exquisite color photographs, many of them full-page and even full-spread, showing projects by author Malcolm Holzman's New York City firm, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates. Either way, be prepared to fall in lovethis book is drop-dead gorgeous! Depth
of scale Many say that architects learn best by case study, and such projects abound in Stone Work. They are tied directly into the essays, and then synopsized in the appendix. Buildings so detailed include: McClurg Hall, University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., which employs sandstone split and cut stone with an unforgettable array of nine-foot-tall finials West Wing, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Va., which uses rusticated blocks of limestone Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts, Harrisburg, Pa., built of sandstone blocks Stokes Wing, the Cleveland Public Library, the subject of This Week's practice tips, which uses marble split-face blocks, fluted quarry block faces, and sawn dimensional stone, with granite lintels. Weight
of history Holzman tells us that it took only three decades (from 1960 to 1990) from the use of stone in buildings to "evolve" from the age-old method of blocks and mortar to thin-skin panels and adhesives. The new systems became popular because they are cheaper, yet "they bear little resemblance to stone's origin as a building material, giving no particular insight into its inherent properties." He offers this hope for the future: "For the current modernism to evolve, the use of stone should move beyond the expediency of panelization. It should embrace new technology and economics but it should also incorporate ways to espouse the lyricism, beauty, and human qualities that stone so eloquently expresses." In Stone Work's introduction, Holzman says, "To raise public awareness about the material and to influence architects to redirect their attention to stone is my objective. They will discover, as I have, that it is sensuous to the touch, striking to the eye, and pleasing to the soul." Holzman made a good start on this mission with this book, which, if we may, is sensuous to the touch, striking to the eye, and pleasing to the soul. Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. |
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