Architectural Bodies (010 Publishers 1996)

Architectural Bodies (010 Publishers 1996) The book discusses the role played by the human body for four architects. The body has always been the standard for design: size, arrangement and proportion have been central issues from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier. In current architecture things have changed dramatically: even the human size seems to be under discussion. Graafland deals with this theme by reference to Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin, in so doing explaining the theoretical basis of the book. Next come analyses of the work of Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman, both of them architects that the author has written about in earlier published works. The book is rounded off by a discussion of Daniel Libeskind’s design for the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Graafland relates this design for a museum to the method of working of the American painter Barnett Newman. This anthology adds new insights to existing discussions on design concepts, the meaning of history and the role of the social field in contemporary architecture. It shows how architects’ ideas, often implicit, can be clearly explained by a process of architectural criticism.