Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller + Scofidio Aaron Betsky (Editor) K. Michael Hays (Editor) Laurie Anderson (Editor) Whitney Museum of American Art (2003)

Among the most talked-about names in contemporary architecture, the firm of Diller + Scofidio has for the last two decades redefined what architecture can be. Through site-specific, highly conceptual works such as the acclaimed redesign of the famed Brasserie restaurant in New York City's Seagram Building, to the "Blur" building, created for the Swiss Expo 2002 and composed entirely of mist, the firm has consistently challenged and expanded the role of architecture and design in our technology-oriented environment.

In this first-ever comprehensive survey of the work of this internationally recognized firm, published to accompany a traveling exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, 10 of Diller + Scofidio's most important site-specific pieces are examined, along with several of the artifacts they have created in order to examine issues of gender, surveillance, place, and travel. With essays by respected scholars and a contribution by contemporary artist Laurie Anderson, this fully illustrated volume offers a compelling look at the work of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.

Sanctuaries: The Last Works of John Hejduk by K. Michael Hays, Maxwell L. Anderson, John Hejduk, Toshiko Mori (Preface) Whitney Museum of Art (2003)

This compact book, which accompanies an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, pays tribute to John Hejduk (1929-2000), one of the most original figures in American architecture and design.

Best know for his visionary works on paper and his influence on students at Cooper Union, New York, where he was Dean for 25 years, Hejduk in his last years moved from the mathematical concerns of his earlier designs toward an allegorical mode that exalted architecture's spiritual function. His lyrical last works explore themes of falls from grace, itinerancy, passage and transformation, and, above all, architecture as sanctuary.

Architecture Theory Since 1968 Cambridge, MIT Press, 1998

Recent architecture has notoriously been interpreted according to theoretical categories, from such blunt oppositions as white versus grey, or rationalist versus historicist, to more sophisticated and ariticulate-isms. Architecture theory has, since 1968, all but displaced traditional architectural criticism and has heavily influenced architectural history. Its relationship to design practice has been controversial but undeniable.

Architecture Theory since 1968 is the first comprehensive historical account of the emergence of architecture theory and the most authoritative treatment of the subject. This anthology presents forty-eight of the primary texts of architecture theory and introduces each with an explication of the concepts and categories necessary for their understanding and evaluation. It also presents twelve documents of projects or events that had major theoretical repercussions during the period. It is by far the most complete representation of recent architecture theory available, including several essays never before available in English.

Oppositions Reader — Selected Essays 1973-1984 New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1998

In its eleven-year history, Oppositions, the journal of the New York-based Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), had an impact far beyond what its modest cover might suggest. Indeed, Oppositions set the agenda, introduced the key players, and published the seminal pieces in the theorization of architecture in the last twenty years. It is a testament to the enduring importance of the journal that its issues are still highly sought after today, prized (and priced) as collector's items, and found behind the desk at virtually every architectural library.

Oppositions Reader collects the most important essays from 26 issues of Oppositions. Essays from the editors of the seriesPeter Eisenman, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Anthony Vidler, and Kurt Forester are included, along with texts by such noted architect, theorists, and historians as Aldo Rossi, Alan Colquhoun, Leon Krier, Denise Scott Brown, Bernard Tschumi, Rem Koolhaas, Mary McLeod, Georgio Ciucci, and Rafael Moneo. The page design, by Massimo Vignelli, has been faithfully reproduced. Harvard Professor K. Michael Hays (author of Unprecedented Realism, and editor of Hejduk's Chronotope) has selected the writings for inclusion.

It is an understatement to say that this volume is indispensable for any scholar or student interested in contemporary architectural theory.

Contributors include:Diana Agrest, Stanford Anderson, Giorgio Ciucci, Stuart Cohen, Alan Colquhoun, Francesco Dal Co, Peter Eisenman, William Ellis, Kurt W. Forster, Kenneth Frampton, Mario Gandelsonas, Giorgio Grassi, Fred Koetter, Rem Koolhaas, Leon Krier, Mary McLeod, Rafael Moneo, Joan Ockman, Martin Pawley, Aldo Rossi, Colin Rowe, Denise Scott Brown, Jorge Silvetti, Ignasi de Sola-Morales, Manfredo Tafuri, Bernard Tschumi, Anthony Vidler, Hajime Yatsuka.

Hejduks Chronotope Edited by K. Michael Hays New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996

What explains the contradiction that the body of work many contemporary architectural theorists find most illustrative of concepts they would promote narrative and representation after formalism, minor practice, nomadology, the carnivalesque, the swerve or détournment (the list goes on) has as its author an architect who regards contemporary theory with contempt, when he regards it at all? What warrants a collection of ruminations on theoretical practice whose focus is an architecture neither theoretical nor practical in any conventional sense of the terms?

When, late in 1990, Jeffrey Kipnis and Michael Hays proposed a working session and debate at the Canadian Centre for Architecture involving a handful of architectural theorists in an effort to focus what were increasingly divergent theoretical trajectories being spun off at ever greater distances from the practical concerns of professional designers, there was no trouble in agreeing that the primary test case of theoretical practices meeting a theoretical practice should be John Hejduk. Hejduk's pedagogy, his personal convictions, as well as his multi-modal architectural production, all seem to be founded on a sympathetic, if not entirely similar, refusal of disciplinary boundaries and unchanging definitions. What is more, pre-poststructuralist theory had not been able to theorize Hejduk's work at all, let alone its possible implications for a generalizable architectural practice. Architecture theory in its more recent iterations, it was thought, should set for itself just that goal.

Hejduks Chronotope is a collection of essays by some of todays leading theorists and historians, who display a variety of interpretive approaches to the work of Hejduk.

Contributors include K. Michael Hays, Detlef Mertins, Edward Mitchell, Peggy Deamer, Stan Allen, R. E. Somol, Catherine Ingraham.

Unprecedented Realism: The Architecture of Machado and Silvetti K. Michael Hays Princeton Architectural Press, 1995

For almost two decades the work of Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti has remained at the forefront of theoretical production. Their rigorously detailed and exquisitely drawn projects characterize an attitude of aesthetic realism towards materials, construction, function, and the cultural role of architecture. Yet the conditions they address, and the effects they produce, are unprecedented. Their projects synthesize seemingly incompatible images, uses, and typologies.

Unprecedented Realism is not an illustration of theory. Rather what emerges is a constructive theory of architecture that understands the process of design itself as a distinct mode of knowledgeas theoretical research that is still irreducibly architectural.

The book presents a range of work from buildings to urban infrastructures. Some of the projects presented include Steps of Providence, Rhode Island; Entrance for Cranbrook, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan; Carnegie-Mellon University Center, Pittsburgh; Pershing Square, Los Angeles; and Times Square, New York. Along with the analytical text of K. Michael Hays, the volume includes critical essays by Alan Colquhoun, George Baird, Fares el-Dahdah, and Rodolphe el-Khoury.

Hays has managed to elevate the genre of the monograph and to compose a text that offers not only insightful analysis of provocative work, but also a significant critical and theoretical structure that can mediate todays bifurcated currents in architectural theory.

-Val K. Warke

Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988  New York : Rizzoli International, 1994

Between the houses projects of the 1970s, which established Peter Eisenman as a leading architectural theorist, and his most recent, computer-aided explorations of complex geometries lies a destinct phase in his work, a series of theoretical projects competition submissions, and public commissions called the Cities of Artificial Excavation. This book is the first publication to document this important stage in Eisenmans career, when he not only turned his attention to the relationship between architecture and site but also reassessed, through the technique of scaling, the very idea of composition in architecture.

Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988 presents four of the most representative and best documented of the artificial excavation projects: an urban design scheme for Cannaregio West in Venice (1978); a housing project near Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin (1980-1981, partially realized 1982-1986); a design for the University Art Museum at California State University, Long Beach (1986); and a garden for the Parc de La Villette in Paris designed in collaboration with Jacques Derrida. Each project is presented through the architects drawings and models, over 200 images in all, more than 150 of them in color, most from the collections of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Each project sequence begins with a theoretical text by Eisenman, then goes on to a project history describing the site and explaining Eisenmans design strategy. The unprecedented publication of complete series of conceptual drawings not only illustrates Eisenmans design process in detail, but also traces the transformation, through drawing and model making, of his architectural discourse.

The catalogue includes a prefatory note by Phyllis Lambert, director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture; an extensive introductory essay by curator Jean-Francois Bedard, placing the artificial excavation projects in the context of Eisenmans oeuvre; and essays by Kurt W. Forster on the idea of artificial excavation, by Frederic Jameson on Eisenman as a modernist and postmodernist, and by Yve-Alain Bois on Eisenmans changing drawing techniques. Other essays discuss each project in depth: K. Michael Hays applies the theories of Benjamin, Barthes, and Freud to an analysis of the Cannaregio and Berlin projects; Alan Balfour uses the Long Beach project to trace Eisenmans design methods; and Jean-Louis Cohen examines the philosophica aspirations of the La Villette garden. In an interview with the contributors Eisenman discusses the complexities and paradoxes of his authorial stance and its influence on his design strategies. A postscript by Arata Isozaki brings a personal, non-Western perspective to this phase of Eisenmans career. The book concludes with a chronology and a selected bibliography of the Cities of Artificial Excavation.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cities of Artificial Excavation: The Work of Peter Eisenman, 1978-1988 shown at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal from March 2 to May 29, 1994.

Modernism and the Posthumanist Subject The Architecture of Hannes Meyer  and Ludwig Hilberseimer K. Michael Hays MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England, 1992

Drawing on the work of modern theorists like Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Siegfried Kracauer and on more recent poststructuralist thought, K. Michael Hays creates an entirely new method of reading architectural production. Challenging much of the traditional wisdom about modernism and the avant-garde, Hays argues that a rigorously articulated post-humanist position was actually developed in the modernist architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilberseimer. He reinterprets their buildings, projects, and writings as constructions of this new category of subjectivity.

Posthumanism is an aesthetic and epistemological response to technological modernization. It embraces the anti-individualist consequences of technological progress and, in the case of Hannes Meyer, attempts to turn the perceptual effects of modernity to explictly collectivist sociopoltical ends. As the case of Hilberseimer shows, posthumanism also harbors a contradictionthe ecstatic surrender of the subject to the very forces that assure its dissolution.

Situating his analysis within the wider domain of artistic practices and the history of the subjectas well as in relation to architects such as Adolf Loos, Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Le CorbusierHays examines the ideological underpinnings of urban and architectural projects long rejected as antihumanist.

"In this original, rigorous, and sophisticated study, K. Michael Hays draws on European theory to illuminate the philosophical and epistemological assumptions of the utopian and revolutionary architectural avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s. Hays breaks new ground in identifying the gradual disappearance of the autonomous subject as a central motif of modern architectural history."

--Anson Rabinbach, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

"Beyond the field of architectural history, Michael Hays' study is exemplary for cultural studies and avant-garde history in several ways: in its successful integration of Frankfurt School theory into architectural history of the 1920s and 1930s; in its convincing synthesis of the legacy of Adorno and Benjamin with contemporary poststructuralist thought; and, perhaps most importantly, in its complex dialectical reading of the oppositions of Neue Sachlichkeit and Productivism in the architectural work of Ludwig Hilberseimer and Hannes Meyer."

--Benjamin Buchloh, Assistant Professor of Art History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Director of Critical and Curatorial Studies, the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program

"This stimulating exploration of the work of Ludwig Hilberseimer and Hannes Meyer is a tour de force which not only directs our attention to an alternative current in the modern movement, but triumphantly reinterprets that workoften associated with a technological or engineering ideologyin utopian terms. Michael Hays thereby produces a new conceptposthumanismcapable of identifying antimodernist tendencies within high modernism that are very different in spirit from their postmodern analogues."

--Fredric Jameson, Professor, Duke University

Thinking The Present: Recent American Architecture K. Michael Hays and Carol Burns, Editors Princeton Architectural Press, 1990

Recent American architecture has not received the attention it deserves and needs in order to arrive at a positive understanding of its present. Despite the formidable dissemination of information, there has been a tendency to ignore the complex and shifting factors that definitively contribute to the actual production of architecture. Contemporary design has been seen as unrelated either to theoretical developments in other spheres of cultural production or to new conditions in politics and the economy. Thinking the Present is a collection of essays delivered to a recent conference at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University that examines the consonances and disturbances of recent American architecture and attempts to revise the terms in which it is thought, articulated, and practiced. Although an imprecise line separates the recent past from the actual present, today's architectural condition remains indebted to certain seminal issues that emerged in the mid-seventies. From this point of departure, the collection of essays analyzes the nature and impact of underlying theoretical and ideological issues on the development of the past twelve years of American architecture.

Thinking the Present includes an introduction by Rafael Moneo and essays by Peggy Deamer on Michael Graves, Martin Filler on the large firms, Alan Plattus on Venturi Rauch and Scott Brown, K. Michael Hays on Peter Eisenman, Carol Burns on Frank Gehry, Herbert Muschamp on "recent proliferations," and Hal Foster on architecture, development, and memory.

Thinking the Present is an excellent introduction to the state of contemporary American architecture and a thought-provoking overview of where it is headed.