THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD
Volume 81, Nos. 1 – 6, January – June 1937
A. Lawrence Kocher [Managing Editor]
New York: F . W. Dodge Corporation, Volume 81, Nos. 1 – 6, January – June 1937. Quarto. Single volume bound in evergreen fabricoid with gilt titles. 1,060 pp. Illustrated articles with superior to exceptional graphic design throughout. Non-circulating Reference Collection Ex-Libris edition with all covers and advertising material present. Light institutional stamps throughout. Inked volume notation to textblock fore edge. An excellent reference copy.
[6] 8.5 x 11.5 magazines fully illustrated with articles directed towards the practicing professionals of Depression-era America. Both the Record and the Architectural Forum were considerably more progressive than their competitors, with the Record being notable for its lengthy relationships with Frederick Kiesler, R. Buckminster Fuller, C. Theodore Larsen and Knud Lönberg-Holm.
Contents include:
- Design Correlation by Frederick J. Kiesler. Monthly column debuts in the February issue. Four columns included here: “Design Correlation—The Architect in Search of Art, “ ten pages fully illustrated, including a photograph of Arshile Gorky working on a mural for the Newark Airport. “Design Correlation—Animals and Architecture,” six pages fully illustrated with examples by Lubetkin & Tecton, Tatlin, Meyerhold & Lissitzky, etc. and an excellent Philip Johnson footnote: “Quit [post] in 1935 as Curator of Architecture at the Museum of Modern Art to join forces with the late Senator Huey P. Long.” “Design Correlation—Duchamp’s Glass is the First X-Ray Painting of Space.” Eight page article about The Large Glass. The work was photographed by Berenice Abbott [courtesy of the Photographic Division, Federal Arts Project, WPA] specifically for Kiesler’s article. Frederick Kiesler and Marcel Duchamp met in the mid-1920s in Paris and stayed in contact until the early 1950s when, for reasons still unknown, their friendship suddenly seems to have fallen apart. During those 25 years, Kiesler and Duchamp worked within the same vein, both occupied with predominant themes like perception and mechanisms of visions. They shared the same friends in Paris and frequented the same intellectual circle in New York. In 1937 Kiesler published his first article on Duchamp´s Large Glass based on the extensive use of photomontage and on a free association of images. Five years later, Duchamp rented a room in Kiesler´s apartment for twelve months. “Design Correlation—Towards Prefabrication of Folk-Spectacles,”Four page devoted to sound design and reproduction in movie theatre design.
- House for Mrs. R. C. Kramer: William Lescaze. Seven pages and 17 halftones and floorplans of this modern four-story NYC townhouse.
- The New Architecture Of Mexico Special Issue. Author and Photographer Esther Born spent months in Mexico photographing the contemporary native functional architecture. Architect and Husband Ernest Born assembled all of these elements in a striking layout with sensitive typography and rhythmic and dynamic page design. Includes work by Juan O’Gorman, Luis Barragan, Carlos Tarditi, Enrique De La Mora, Carlos Contreras, José Beltrán, Ortiz Monasterio, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Alfredo Zalce, Paul O’ Higgins, Gabriel Fernandez Ledesma, Doctor Atl, Julio Castellanos, Maria Izquierdo, Cecil Crawford O’ Gorman, Roberto Montenegro, Antonio Ruiz, Manuel Rodriguez, Lozano, Cesar Canti, Augustin Lazo, Luis Ortiz Monasterio, Guillermo Ruiz, Mardonio Magana, Antonio Muñoz Garcia, José Villagran Garcia, Carlos Greenham, Enrique Aragon Echeagaray, José Arnal, José Creixell, Cervantes & Ortega, Kunhardt & Capilla, Enrique Yañez, Luis Martinez Negrete, Carlos Obregon Santacilia, Luis Martinez Negrete, Juan José Barragan, José Villagran Garcia, Juan Legarreta, Fernando B. Puga, Ignacio Diaz Morales, Rudolfo Weber, Enrique Del Moral, and Guteirrez Camarena. “This book shows modern architecture in Mexico, chiefly in Mexico City. The quantity of it comes as a surprise. Such a quantity would be unexpected in any North American city; but to the Northerner, acquainted with Mexico only through literature and hearsay, the energy displayed and the up-to-the-minute quality are doubly astonishing. We had thought of our neighbors as engaged in pursuits different than ours. These people were our opposites. Their territory was all mountainous, contrasted with our level central basin; it was occupied chiefly by Indians, not white men; colonized by Spaniards instead of Englishmen; spotted with huge ruins older than Rome and of a scale comparable comparable to Egypt. The inhabitants, we were led to believe, supported themselves chiefly by handicraft, lacked a sense of time, were of a mystical rather than a practical bent of mind and, in countless other ways, differed from us as much as human beings could; besides, they were much happier...." — Editorial Foreword
- Houses: H. Roy Kelley, Edgar Bissantz, Harold G. Spielman; William Lescaze; Van Pelt & Lind; Beatty & Strang; R. M. Schindler; William Wurster; George Fred Keck; Alfred Clauss; F. R. S. Yorke; etc.
- Buildings: Royal Barry Wills, Hugh Stubbins; Ernest Born; Jones, Roessle, Olschner And [Samuel G.] Wiener; Alfred Roth; Albert Kahn; Baldessari, Figini Pollini; William Lescaze; Samuel G. Wiener & William B. Wiener; Marcel Breuer & F. R. S. Yorke; Eugen Schoen, Oscar Stonorov, etc.
- Architecture in England Special Issue. Essays by Nikolaus Pevsner, Hugh Casson, J. M. Richards, Paul Nash and Herbert Read. Over 91 work examples by Eric Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, William Morris, Raymond McGrath, Wells Coates, E. Maxwell Fry, Joseph Emberton, Frederick Gibberd, Oliver Hill, G.A. Jellicoe, Lubetkin and Tecton, E. Owen Williams, F.R.S. Yorke, and Adams, Holden & Pearson, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, William Lescaze Eric Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff, Joseph Paxton; Alexander Thomson; Charles Rennie Mackintosh; Marcel Breuer; Sir John Burnet, Tait, & Lorne; Serge Chermayeff; Anthony Chitty; Connell, Ward & Lucas; Joseph Emberton; Maxwell E. Fry; Frederick Gibberd; Walter Gropius with E. Maxwell Fry; Valentine Harding; Oliver Hill; Geoffrey Allan Jellicoe; William Lescaze; Christopher Nicholson; A.V. Pilichowski; Godfrey Samuel; Slater & Moberly; Marshall Sisson; Tecton; Sir E. Owen Williams; S.A. Heaps; and, Adams, Holden, & Pearson. "The work of the English contemporary school in the last few years, still so evidently expanding and improving, sets a mark which we will not easily pass in America. It sets that mark, moreover, under cultural conditions more like our own than those of most other countries of the world. We can understand what the obstacles have been in the way of these men, what temptations to compromise, what general distrust, what whimsical building regulations, what indifference to earlier national steps toward modern architecture they have had to overcome. The psychology of recovery is generally conservative rather than experimental, and in a world of rising nationalistic prejudice England's hospitality not only to Continental ideas but to foreign architects has been amazing One can end a consideration of English architecture in the winter of 1937 not merely with the conclusion that its present achievement is almost unique and could hardly have been foretold even five years ago. One can also prognosticate that this achievement very probably represents the opening stage in an architectural development of prime creative significance."
- Prefabricated Bathroom:R. Buckminster Fuller.
- Architecture at Harvard University: Walter Gropius. Four pages and 3 halftones.American industrial, cultural and educational ambassadors were eager to embrace the refugees fleeing the coming storm in Europe. Joseph Hudnut invited Walter Gropius to join the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Association of Arts and Industries financed the New Bauahuas in Chicago under Moholy-Nagy, Josef and Anni Albers helped developed the experimental teachings at Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, Mies van der Rohe assumed leadership of the Architecture program at the Armour Institute, Illinois Institute of Technology, and Alfred Barr and the Museum of Modern Art hosted art, architecture and design exhibitions devoted to the Bauhaus ideas. The underlying idea Bauhaus formulated by Gropius, was to create a new unity of crafts, art and technology. The intention was to offer the right environment for the realization of the Gesamtkunstwerk [total work of art]. To achieve this goal, students needed a school with an interdisciplinary and international orientation. The Bauhaus curriculum offered a unique combination of research, teaching and practice that was unequalled by rival academies and schools of applied art. This educational paradigm was widely embraced by institutions in the United States trying to emerge from the depths of the Great Depression. The Harvard Graduate School of Design is widely regarded as the cradle of American modern architecture. Professor Joseph Hudnut created the GSD by uniting the three formerly separate programs of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning in 1935. He got rid of antique statuary, replaced mullioned windows with plate glass, and hired Walter Gropius to head the architecture program. During his tenure at Harvard—from 1937 to 1952—Gropius oversaw the end of the academic French Beaux-Arts method of educating architects. Gropius’s philosophy placed an emphasis on industrial materials and technology, functionality, collaboration among different professions, and a complete rejection of historical precedent. Assisted by Bauhaus colleague Marcel Breuer, Gropius educated a generation of architects who radically altered the landscape of postwar America, including Edward Larrabee Barnes, Garrett Eckbo, Lawrence Halprin, Dan Kiley, Philip Johnson, Eliot Noyes, I.M. Pei, Paul Rudolph, Edward Durell Stone, and many others.
- Building Types: Grocery Stores; Restaurants; Sowrooms; Specialty Shops; Industrial Buildings, including the Municipal Incinerator at Shreveport, Louisiana, by Jones, Roessle, Olschner and [Samuel G.] Wiener. Built with PWA funds, the Incinerator was the first major American building of its kind where complete design and supervision service was provided by a firm of architects. Selected as one of the buildings illustrated in the United States Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition of 1937, as well as a traveling exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art. "If I had any gold medals to distribute, I would quickly pin one on Jones, Roessle, Olschner and Wiener for their Municipal Incinerator at Shreveport, Louisiana. This one of the best examples of the rational use of the ribbon window and the overhanging building, with the ground floor accessible to vehicles that I have come across -- an excellent design, with no vulgar attempts at prettifying a form that needs no additions. -- Lewis Mumford. The Incinerator was razed in 1974. Single Family Residences; Schools; etc.
- Mensendieck in Palm Springs, CA built for Grace Lewis Miller: Richard J. Neutra with Peter Pfisterer. Six pages and ten halftones and floorplans photographed by Julius Shulman. At the dawn of his international fame, architect Richard Neutra was approached by a St. Louis socialite, Grace Lewis Miller, to design a small winter home on the edge of glamour-baked Palm Springs. Miller wanted an open, light-filled house that could also act as a studio for her fashionably avant-garde exercise course in posture and grace, "The Mensendieck System." This unique program, combined with the desert landscape and the proactive, health-minded client appealed to the idealist in Neutra. The frequent, fervent dialog between Neutra and Miller, who had great mutual respect, produced a work of forward-thinking and artful architecture. Like the houses of Albert Frey, a contemporary of Neutra's who also build in the desert, the Miller House shows how architecture, the California landscape, and an interest in well-being can intersect in a moment of the architectural sublime.
- And much more.
From 1937 to 1942, Frederick J. Kiesler was the director of the Laboratory for Design Correlation within the Department of Architecture at Columbia University, where the study program was more pragmatic and commercially oriented than his deep, theoretical concepts and ideas, such as those about "correalism" or "continuity," which concern the relationship among space, people, objects and concepts.
“During the 1930s, Kiesler devoted much of his time to elaborating his design theories, publishing articles (including a series in Architectural Record on "Design Correlation"), and lecturing at universities and design conferences around the country, gaining notoriety for, among other things, his exhortations on the mean-spirited character of the American bathroom and the pressing need for a nonskid bathtub. He also called for the founding of an industrial design institute (for which he prepared architectural plans in 1934) and eventually persuaded Columbia University to allow him to set up an experimental Laboratory for Design Correlation within the School of Architecture. This laboratory, which functioned from 1937 to 1942, was the testing ground for many of Kiesler's biotechnical ideas. During this period, he actively experimented with new materials and techniques, such as lucite and cast aluminum, and executed some of the extraordinarily sensual, organic furniture designs that presaged the form-fitting, ergonomic concepts of the 1940s and 1950s.
“By 1940, Kiesler was already well aquainted with the Surrealist movement through his close friendships with Marcel Duchamp, Matta, and Julien Levy, who, in the 1930s, was the first art dealer to exhibit Surrealist works in New York. His ties to the movement were further strengthened by the immigration of many European Surrealists to New York at the onset of World War II. He had an ongoing dialogue with the Surrealist artists Yves Tanguy, Andre Breton, Kurt Seligmann, Matta, Joan Miro, Andre Masson, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, and Luis Buhuel, all exiled in New York during the war.
Also in 1942, Kiesler designed the gallery Art of This Century for Peggy Guggenheim in which he installed a Vision Machine to look at a series of reproductions from Duchamp´s Bôite en Valise. During the 1940s Kiesler and Duchamp collaborated on several projects such as the cover of the 1943 VVV Almanac and the exhibition Imagery of Chess at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. In 1947 they worked together again in Paris at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme for which Kiesler designed the Salle des Superstitions. A few months later, Kiesler executed a portrait in eight parts of Marcel Duchamp which can probably be considered the last collaboration between the two artists.
“Kiesler's Greenwich Village apartment at 56 Seventh Avenue was a haven for visiting and emigre Europeans. They were not only welcomed there by Kiesler but by symbols of America — the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building were clearly visible from his penthouse apartment (which was otherwise described by the doorman as a cross between a studio, apartment, and junk shop). 33 Among his many guests were Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Leger, Mies van der Rohe, Hans Richter, Jean Arp, and Piet Mondrian. Kiesler generously introduced the newcomers to curators, critics, and dealers — Philip Johnson, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., James Johnson Sweeney, Sidney and Harriet Janis — as well as to other artists and prominent friends such as Arnold Schonberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, Martha Graham, E.E. Cummings, Virgil Thomson, Edgard Varese, and Djane Barnes. Committed to fostering an active exchange of ideas among artists of all disciplines and nationalities, Kiesler also relished the potential drama of these encounters. The spirit of the old Vienna cafe days remained with him, and most of his evenings were spent talking with his friends at Romany Marie's or other Village haunts into the early hours of the morning. He never took phone calls before noon. “ [Lisa Phillips]
When A. Lawrence Kocher was appointed Managing Editor of The Architectural Record in 1927, the magazine issued a “Delphic utterance” that it was embarking on a new chapter in its history which would probably include “something about ferro-concrete, about architectural polychromy, about a more effective direction and use of the allied arts and crafts. Possibly the impulse originated by Sullivan, developed by Frank Lloyd Wright and amplified abroad will bring repercussions from Europe. No doubt standardized shapes and machine-made surfaces will find their logical place in design. That there will be movement, enterprise, new feeling is clear....” (Architectural Record, January 1928, p. 2) Under Kocher’s direction the magazine was transformed from a beaux-arts periodical into one espousing a broad concept of modern architecture encompassing education, social responsibility and concerns, modern design, and contemporary materials and methods of construction.