num_pages: 368
description: Essays on contemporary architecture that are less about making critical judgments than about explication exegesis and provocation.Jeffrey Kipnis's writing thinking and teaching casts architecture as both an intellectual discourse and a lived affective experience. His essays on contemporary architects are less about making critical judgments than about explication exegesis and provocation. In these eleven essays written between 1990 and 2008 he considers projects concepts and buildings by some of the most recognized architects working today with special attention to the productions of affect. He explores intuition in the work of Morphosis exhilaration in Coop Himmelb(l)au freedom in the work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA magic in Steven Holl's buildings and anxiety in Rafael Moneo's writing about contemporary architecture.Kipnis's deft integration of art critical theory philosophy pop culture classical music and science--what the volume's editor Alexander Maymind calls ancillary material--into a rigorous architectural theory and criticism makes A Question of Qualities an exemplar of a new way to write about architecture. It is also a distinct pleasure to read. Kipnis transcends the fractious intellectual climate in architecture stepping outside the boundaries mandated by the vast specialized criteria that the discipline now claims to address. The essays in this volume demonstrate a style of writing that is not so much about architecture as it is an affect of architecture itself.
language: English
title: A Question of Qualities: Essays in Architecture
publisher: MIT Press