01/06/10
Text: Jessica Witkin
Log is always cool because it’s a journal about architectural ideas on the past and for the future. There’s a nice bridge there, from conservation to experiment and utopian possibility, with contributions by the absolute top architects, philosophers, and critics. Log 17, “The Superficial Issue,” is especially cool because it presents theories on the architecture of light, sensation, fancy food, Op Art, and DAVID BOWIE (David Ruy on Lessons from Molecular Gastronomy, William O’Brien Jr. on Pop, Op, and kitsch, and Jason Payne’s Hair and Makeup, among many others). Payne presents a beautiful argument that for rock stars, at least, a coiffure and the right cosmetics are both “instrumental” and “vehicular,” driving new sounds forward with new sensibilities and sensualities, and notably not feminine ones. Payne quotes Bowie: “If you look to the animal world, so often the male is more beautiful than the female—look at peacocks and lions. Really, makeup and beautiful clothes are fundamental... ”
For such a serious journal to celebrate the superficial is exciting—you can feel the energy in the issue. To quote the Editor’s note, which champions Vitruvius as the originator of joy in ornament and finish and beauty (what he termed “architectural delight”), “the realm of the so-called superficial is a possible area of unexamined architectural potential.”
Also, pick up this issue for Kenneth Frampton’s beautiful paean to Charles Gwathmey (the Modernist architect & renovator of the Guggenheim Museum who died in August) and also for a discussion between Thom Mayne and Hernán Díaz Alonso on “architecture’s ongoing affair with drawing.” Artist and toy designer Tristan Eaton made a 3-D drawing for the cover, so the issue is accompanied by red and blue 3-D glasses that conveniently double as a bookmark too.
