SHoP: Out of Practice
"Doesn’t everybody like SHoP? The now 16-year-old firm, based in Manhattan, has positioned itself as a band of amiable pragmatists in a field overcrowded with shallow corporatists, scholastic snobs, and ductile aesthetes. The office’s devotion to this unified practice is on full view in its new monograph, Out of Practice (Monacelli), which illustrates how principals Kimberley Holden, Gregg Pasquarelli, Christopher Sharples, Coren Sharples, and William Sharples have applied their backgrounds in design, construction, and development to projects of every scale, from their breakthrough winning proposal for the first-annual MoMA PS1 Young Architects Program to their upcoming Barclays Center sports complex in Brooklyn." —SurfaceMagazine"Given their output, it is probably surprising to many people that this is the first monograph on New York City-based SHoP Architects. But given the firm's distinct levels of diversity, control, and perfection—evident in the fact they designed the branding and graphic design that defines the look and feel of the book—this shouldn't be a surprise after all.... The sizable monograph, handsomely covered in green linen with embossed text, collects 13 completed and in-progress projects.... Between each project are visual essays that describe the various ways that SHoP distinguishes itself in its approach to architectural design and construction.... Halfway through the book the partners delve into these and other areas with a long text essay that uses narratives to describe how their approach actually works in practice. The accumulation of text (including Nobel's intro), visual essays, and the documentation of the projects leads to a good deal of insight into SHoP without sharing all of their secrets." —John Hill,Archidose