Main entry:

Phillips, Stephen John, 1967- author.

Title & Author:

Elastic architecture : Frederick Kiesler and design research in the first age of robotic culture / Stephen J. Phillips.

Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2017]

Description:

xiv, 364 pages ; 24 cm

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction : Design research: the non-building architect -- Actorless stages and endless theaters -- Habits and tactics: the automatisms of display -- Design correlation: laboratory experiments -- Autonomic vision: the galleries -- Introjection and projection: endless houses and dream machines -- Elastic architecture: from control to liberation -- Architecture and its Robota.

Summary:

In 1960, the renowned architect Philip Johnson championed Frederick Kiesler, calling him "the greatest non-building architect of our time." Kiesler's ideas were difficult to construct, but as Johnson believed, "enormous" and "profound." Kiesler (1890-1965) went against the grain of the accepted modern style, rejecting rectilinear glass and steel in favor of more organic forms and flexible structures that could respond to the ever-changing needs of the body in motion. In Elastic Architecture, Stephen Phillips offers the first in-depth exploration of Kiesler's innovative and multidisciplinary research and design practice. Phillips argues that Kiesler established a new career trajectory for architects not as master builders, but as research practitioners whose innovative means and methods could advance alternative and speculative architecture. Indeed, Kiesler's own career was the ultimate uncompromising model of a research-based practice. Exploring Kiesler's formative relationships with the European avant-garde, Phillips shows how Kiesler found inspiration in the plastic arts, experimental theater, early animation, and automatons to develop and refine his spatial concept of the Endless. Moving from Europe to New York in the 1920s, Kiesler applied these radical Dadaist, constructivist, and surrealist practices to his urban display projects, which included shop windows for Saks Fifth Avenue.

ISBN:

9780262035736 (hardcover ; alk. paper)
0262035731 (hardcover ; alk. paper)

Subject:

Kiesler, Frederick Criticism and interpretation.
Kiesler, Frederick.
Kiesler, Frederick 1890-1965
Design History 20th century.
Design Histoire 20e siècle.
Design.

Form/genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 295137
Call No.: BIB 241195
Status: Available