THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD
April 1937
A. Lawrence Kocher [Managing Editor]
with Contributions by Esther Born and Frederick Kiesler
A. Lawrence Kocher [Managing Editor]: THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. New York: F . W. Dodge Corporation, Volume 81, No. 4, April 1937. Original edition. Quarto. Photo illustrated sewn and glued wrappers. 206 pp. Illustrated articles with exceptional graphic design throughout. Period advertisements. Wrappers intact with spine rolled. Textblock unmarked and clean with a few signatures loosening. Overall a very good copy of this rare number of the AR.
8.5 x 11.5 magazine with TypoFoto composition by Ernest Born, 148 pages of editorial content and 58 pages of period advertising 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.
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.
Author and Photographer Esther Born spent months in Mexico photographing the contemporary native functional architecture. Her architecture training, combined with her good eye, led to exceptional building photography, and her singular vision binds this portfolio in a cohesive fasion unknown to the other conspectuses of the era. Architect and Husband Ernest Born assembled all of these elements in a striking layout with sensitive typography and rhythmic and dynamic page design. Mr. Born’s wrapper design is an excellent example of the American TypoFoto style that harkens back to that old weird American collection of word and image that tried to be sophisticated and European, but only reinforced the fundamental American character of the product.
Contents include:
- Acknowledgments: “Unless otherwise indicated, all photographs were taken by Esther Born. Data and material were collected and arranged by Esther Born and Ernest Born. (Esther Born and Ernest Born were both students of architecture at the University of California under the distinguished teacher, John Galen Howard. Disgusted with the amateur photographs she took during a trip to Europe, Esther Born studied photography as preparation for specialization and as an aid to her future architectural work. Ernest Born is well known both in San Francisco and New York as a brilliant designer, and has been associated with The Architectural Record and other publications in designing architecture, typographical layouts and editorial work.”
- Schoold of Industrial Technics, Mexico City
- The Pyramid of Cuicuilco
- Editorial Foreword
- Plan Development of Mexico City: Carlos Contreras
- Soil and Foundation Conditions in Mexico: José A. Cuevas
- Architect as Contractor in Mexico: F. Sanchez Fogarty
- The New Architecture in Mexico: Justino Fernandez
- Mexican Examples: Industrial, Schools, Institutions, Hospitals, Residential, Markets, Commercial, Parks, and Public Works and Utilities.
- 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
- Architecture and Animals: Design Correlation by Frederick J. Kiesler. Monthly column that debutes in the February issue. “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.”
- Ansonia High School [RIP] by William Lescaze featured, as well of more American Architecture designed and built during the Great Depression
From 1937 to 1942, Frederick J. Kiesler [Austria-Hungary, 1890 – 1965] 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]