PERSPECTA 3
THE YALE ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL
Charles Brickbauer, Sanford Meech, Boris Pushkarev [Editors]
Charles Brickbauer, Sanford Meech, Boris Pushkarev [Editors]: PERSPECTA 3: THE YALE ARCHITECTURE JOURNAL. New Haven, CT: Departments of Architecture and Design, Yale University, 1955. Square Quarto. Perfect-bound and side-stitched stiff, printed wrappers. 80 pp. Text and illustrations. Design by Norman Ives. Textblock lightly ruffled along fore edge from improper storage. Wrappers lightly worn and rubbed, but a very good copy housed in original mailing envelope with a February 24, 1956 postage cancellation.
9.5 x 11.75 journal with 80 pages heavily illustrated with original artwork, photography, plans and diagrams with a few trade advertisements. Limited circulation and uncertain financial backing have combined to make the early issues of Perspecta notoriously difficult to locate. An excellent opportunity to acquire a significant piece of American architectural history.
- Architecture and Craftsmanship 3 articles establishing a historic frame of reference:
- Environment and Anonymous Architecture by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy
- Architecture in Japan by Walter Gropius
- The Conscious Stone by Christopher Tunnard
- 4 articles dealing with recent works of the following men:
- George Nakashima: Actuality (8 pages with 8 illustrations of his house in New Hope, PA)
- Henry Pfisterer: An Engineering Problem
- Philip C. Johnson: The Seven Crutches of Modern Architecture (Remarks from an informal talk to students of Architectural Design at Harvard, December 1954; includes 3 photos by Ezra Stoller of The Wiley House including a half-page color insert)
- Louis I. Kahn: Order and Form (22 pages with 22 illustrations, 1 in color and 2 onion skin paper overlays of the Yale Art Gallery and Design Center, the de Vore House and the Adler House)
- A concluding pictorial essay to show the part that craftsmanship, in its fullest sense has played in significant works of contemporary architecture
Founded in 1952, Perspecta is the oldest student-edited architectural journal in the United States and the first that devoted its pages to the artistic, historical and theoretical aspects of architecture. From its earliest issues, essays published in Perspecta changed the way people thought about architecture. Highly recommended for both form and content.
"The publication of Perspecta marked the beginning of a new kind of critical discourse about architecture," said Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture. "Although Perspecta was never a mass-market publication, its impact on the field has belied its numbers. The journal was -- and continues to be -- an intellectual showpiece for the Yale School of Architecture and an important presence in the design community."