Unfolding. - book reviews

Architectural Review, The, April, 1998 by Colin Davies

By Daniel Libeskind and Cecil Balmond. Rotterdam: The Netherlands Architecture Institute, 1997. NLG110

By Daniel Libeskind. Rotterdam: The Netherlands Architecture Institute, 1997, NLG45

These are very different publications. The first is a boxed set of paper toys and architectural fetish objects which analyze and explain Daniel Libeskind's design for the Boilerhouse Extension at the Victoria and Albert Museum with appealing playfulness and admirable clarity. So we have a folder of straightforward plans on tracing paper; two sets of handwritten notes and sketches by the project engineer Cecil Balmond, explaining the structural principles and the fractal geometry of the tiled cladding; some of Libeskind's own rough sketches, mostly elevations, printed on brown paper; something that looks as if it was supposed to end up as an A5 brochure hut remains uncut as a single A1 sheet; four conceptual collages, printed on the back of rose-patterned wrapping paper; a flipbook animation to illustrate the spiral principle of the composition; and a simplified cut-out and slot-together card model. It's all good fun - involving, interactive and communicative - like the building itself, perhaps.

The second publication, from the same stable, has the opposite characteristics. Apparently an attempt at serious literature, Fishing from the Pavement takes the form of a sombre, hard-backed, slim volume, unillustrated and typographically conventional - a bit like a hymn book, complete with black ribbon place marker. But there are some curious structural features. It is divided into 12 chapters, all but one of which are subdivided into numbered sections. Why the exception? Most of the text is written in the present tense and most 'sentences' are not true sentences. Words and images, possibly chosen by some surrealistic automatic procedure, are juxtaposed as in a collage. We might take it as poetry, though it is not in verse, or perhaps it should be seen as the verbal equivalent of Libeskind's early drawings, devoid of perspective, context and narrative. What is it about? I don't think we are meant to ask. Here is a sample, chosen (truly) at random: 'Terra ingognita: poor Rosicrucian vexing an innocent lama, trying to collar a gnat with diaphanous thread, hurling sanctimonious invectives on fir trees - burglar sent by rhyme.' It's all like that. Deeply personal might be the kind way to describe it, which is another way of saying that it means nothing to anyone but (presumably) the writer. Very odd.

COLIN DAVIES