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All Offcite Posts Tagged: Books Date Posted Categories

Handmade, Homegrown Books

Chapbooks by Beverly Dahlen and Jamie Townsend Everywhere, a surfeit of essays and articles bemoan the declining fortunes of the book and the publishing industry’s deepening crisis. Even though there have been some recent hopeful reports of better times ahead, overall, the news is: the book is dead, there’s no hope. Get. Out. Now. Despite [...]

09.24.11 Reviews

Both Sides and the Center

Detail of Schindler House, Wikimedia Commons When you first walk in, there’s a man, blindfolded and gagged with his hands and feet cuffed to parallel leather rods holding him in place in his chair. Two women in another room are knelt over blankets, sewing strings onto an accordion-folded long sheet of paper, with printed repeated [...]

09.02.11 Architecture
Reviews

Editing Urbanism

Cover image cropped from Monu issue #14. Houston has always had a tricky relationship with historic preservation. Unlike numerous other global cities, Houston often allows its older structures to grow over with weeds or be demolished, eventually making way for new development. Traditional preservationism would imply that this approach is morally wrong: not to preserve [...]

06.17.11 Preservation
Reviews

Incredible Interventions?

Yasufumi Nakamori gave a talk at the Architecture Center Houston. Photo by Hank Hancock. On Wednesday, April 20, Yasufumi Nakamori, assistant curator of photography at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, spoke about his recent scholarship to an audience invited by the Houston Public Library and hosted by Architecture Center Houston (ArCH) downtown for their [...]

05.04.11 Architecture
Reviews

How We Made it Big-Time

Houston might let you gawk at all its contradiction and complexity, but it doesn’t exactly provide an easy education for why it looks the way it does. Even if one’s adolescence consisted of breakfast with the Hobbys and dinners with the Menils, odds are—with only that human mind at your disposal—you would still be unable [...]

01.07.11 Reviews

Oscar 102/Brasilia 50

Book design and photographs by Thumb Encased in thick yellow boards and with a title reminiscent of a lopsided basketball game score, Oscar 102/Brasilia 50, immediately appealed to me. According to its graphic designers, Thumb (Luke Bulman and Jessica Young), “The book’s hybrid binding uses book boards laminated with yellow paper, trimmed flush to expose [...]

08.12.10 Reviews

Wallpaper City Guide: Houston

Rather than plainly document a bounty of recreational attractions, the recently-released Wallpaper City Guide: Houston (published jointly by the Wallpaper magazine and Phaidon) postures itself as the “fast-track” guide for the discerning traveler, offering a “tightly edited,” “ruthlessly researched,” “rigorously selected,” and “discreetly packaged” list of the city’s design-conscious locales. Instead of the design-minded denizen, [...]

01.04.10 Reviews

Book Review: City Ubiquitous

Galerías Mall, Maracaibo, Venezuela, courtesy Wilfredo R. Rodriguez H. Imagine driving across the United States, from San José to New York City, without speaking to anyone. Sounds difficult, right? Credit card swipe machines, internet check-ins, and automated food ordering allowed Andrew Wood to accomplish this feat with only uttering four words, all in the first [...]

10.01.09 Environment
Reviews

Cinema Houston

Metropolitan Theater [Photos courtesy Houston Metropolitan Research Center, via cinemahouston.info] The cover of David Welling’s book Cinema Houston is a stunning sepia photograph of the interior of the downtown’s lost Metropolitan Theater, known in its time for a booming Wurlitzer, disappearing orchestra pit, and opulent faux-gold Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Its extravagance bears little resemblance to the [...]

07.22.09 Preservation
Reviews

Everything Must Move: Transition at Rice School of Architecture

Everything Must Move [Cover design Thumb] The May issue of Cite (78) included a reflection by Ben Koush on the fifteen-year tenure of Rice School of Architecture Dean Lars Lerup. You can download a pdf of the article by clicking on the title, “Lars Lerup Goes to Rome: Former Student Reflects on Transition at Rice [...]

06.25.09 Architecture
Reviews