Shelf-life: a W* edit of timeless design and architectural tomes to dip into this August
Panicking that you’ve finished all your summer reads already? Have no fear, because we’re back with another book edit. This month we’re bringing you a whole range of publications to suit your seasonal needs, including a behind-the-scenes look at David Hockney’s ongoing exhibition at the RA, and an insightful collection of 50 buildings that have inspired notable architects.
For a denser read, pick up the thought-provoking, artistic take on domestic life, Home Economics, or delve inside the life and works of Richard Sapper. Finally, for the workaholics out there, further your marketing savvy with the compact PR in a Box. Whether perusing with coffee or facilitating a return to the office, we have it all in the Wallpaper* library.
Writer: Elana Wong. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
Richard Sapper
By Jonathan Olivares
The late Richard Sapper (1932–2015) was one of the superstars of modern industrial design. Although the German designer was a contemporary of Rams et al, his name is not nearly as widely known. This posthumous monograph celebrates a life that spanned the entire era of post-war electronics evolution and the concurrent rise of mass consumption. You probably know, or even use, a Sapper design. His celebrated folding Brionvega TS502 radio of 1965 secured retro appeal before the term even existed, and other work included products for Heuer, Alessi, Artemide and IBM, among others. Jonathan Olivares’ monograph is based on many interviews with Sapper, and is wrapped up within a slick design by SM Associati.
Published by Phaidon, £59.95
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
From the book: Sapper’s self-proclaimed ’messy’ desk-scape. The desk itself is a prototype related to the table of his 1986 ’Rumpus Room’, which used road cones as legs. Pictured: ’MILAN’, 2013. Photography: Ramak Fazel. Courtesy Phaidon. Copyright Richard Sapper Archive
Sapper recounts in the book, ’The agent of Alessi in Germany came to me and said, "We need a kettle. We don’t have a kettle."’ Pictured: from the early 1980s, Sapper and Alberto Alessi at a meeting to review the ’9090’ coffee maker and ’4060’ tea and coffee service, Crusinallo, Italy. Courtesy Alberto Alessi, Phaidon. Copyright Richard Sapper Archive
The ’Zoombike’, a folding bicycle, is perhaps the ultimate expression of movement and speed in Sapper’s work. ’I’ve always wanted to take that,’ he once said with a grin [of the psychological testing Germany requires of people who acquire excessive speeding tickets]. Pictured: ’Zoombike’, for Elettromontaggi, 2000. Courtesy Phaidon. Copyright Richard Sapper Archives
’There wasn’t very much imagination within IBM about how the "Wearable PC" could be marketed. They didn’t think they could make money with it and so on. And after a time, they didn’t want to hear of it anymore’, explains Sapper. Pictured: ’Thinkpad 700C’, with Kaz Yamazaki, IBM, 1992. Courtesy Phaidon. Copyright: Aldo Ballo
David Hockney: 82 Portraits and One Still-life
The indefatigable David Hockney’s latest big ticket show at the Royal Academy focuses on the portrait; or rather a colossal 82 portraits (and one still life) created by the artist in a series of sittings undertaken over the past few years. Hockney is a man of method and technique, and these four-score pictures of close friends, associates and other people of the age were painted in the artist’s LA studios. They certainly sing out with a bright, Fauvist West Coast palette, all using the same chair and foaming, sea green background. The sheer volume and lack of tonal variety recalls the late John Bratby’s manic south coast painting factory, but this is much sunnier stuff, a decisive survey of an artist in total command of his method and still able to shape the conversation through his choice of subject.
Published by the Royal Academy of Arts, £25.00
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
From the book: ’I think I’ve found something that I could go on with forever, because people are fascinating, they’re mysterious really,’ explains Hockney, on painting portraits. Pictured: David Hockney. Photography: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves. Courtesy Royal Academy of Arts. Copyright David Hockney
Pictured left: David Hockney in his studio. Right: working stages of Edith Devaney, 11th, 12th, 13th February 2016. Photography: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves. Courtesy Royal Academy of Arts. Copyright David Hockney
Creating these works has brought Hockney a rare sense of artistic and personal fulfillment, a bringing together of people and a culmination of developments present in his art for decades. Pictured: David Hockney paints Rufus Hale in his studio. Photography: Jean-Pierre Gonçalves. Courtesy Royal Academy of Arts. Copyright David Hockney
50 Architects 50 Buildings: The buildings that inspire architects
By Pamela Buxton
The twist on this otherwise familiar take on the listicle-as-monograph is that the featured favourite buildings are chosen by an array of the world’s best contemporary architects, each selecting a structure that they consider inspirational. Sometimes the selections are expected – Richard Rogers has repeatedly spoken of the importance of Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre, while Chris Williamson of Weston Williamson chooses another establishment classic, the Eames House in the Pacific Palisades. Yet not every featured project is quite so high profile, and the involvement of the Twentieth Century Society means that many modernist gems are given a welcome outing.
Published by Batsford, £30
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
From the book: widely regarded as an exemplar of British modernism, the Golden Lane Estate consists of 557 flats and maisonettes. It was conceived as council housing for single people and couples. Pictured: Great Arthur House (right) towers over eight lower blocks on the Golden Lane Estate. Photography: Edward Tyler. Courtesy Batsford
Takero Shimazaki at the Hexenhaus (pictured), once a modest cottage extended and altered over many years by architects Alison and Peter Smithson. Photography: Edward Tyler. Courtesy Batsford
Designed for a French art dealer and collector, Maison Louis Carré is Alvar Aalto’s only remaining building in France and a total work of architecture, interior and landscape design. Pictured: the living room, with fireplace to the left and views over the landscape through generous windows to the right. Photography: Gareth Gardner. Courtesy Batsford
Home Economics
by Shumi Bose, Jack Self and Finn Williams
Visitors to Venice have until the end of November to catch the installations and exhibits of the 2016 Architecture Biennale, of which ‘Home Economics’ forms a vital part. If you can’t make it to the Giardini to experience the installation in the British Pavilion, this monograph distils the scope and thesis of the show down into 160 pages. Conceived and curated by Shumi Bose, Jack Self and Finn Williams, ’Home Economics’ is a timely exhibition about our relationship with space, function and the true cost of living. The physical exhibition took the visitor through an escalating series of scales, from furniture through to whole roomsets, examining ways in which uses change as we grow and evolve. Our spaces are inexorably bound up in systems of politics and economics, and it’ll take new design paradigms to unpick these long-established power structures. Home Economics is a start, a handbook for living that is designed to inspire and encourage a new generation to find new ways of making cities work.
Published by REAL Foundation and The Spaces, £25.00
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
From the book: nomadism has never been about being homeless, nor abut being home everywhere. It relies on having the possibility to orientate emotionally and symbolically while being in foreign spaces. Pictured: ’Portrait 3’, åyr. Courtesy REAL Foundation and The Spaces
The future is always forced to occupy the spaces of the past, even if it refuses to acknowledge or engage with them. Pictured: spread from the chapter on ’DAYS’ the pavilion’s second room installation by åyr. Courtesy REAL Foundation and The Spaces
Between each room are breaks in the continuous wall element. These deep, coloured thresholds contain mats inscribed with the text ’a home for...’ and their room’s time period. Pictured: spread from the book’s ’Exhibition’ chapter. Courtesy REAL Foundation and The Spaces
The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2015
Swiss publishing’s annual love-in looks back on last year and comes up trumps with 18 titles drawn from the clutch of titles published during 2015, selected and awarded by an esteemed jury and then served up as a fine example of best practice in design, typography and photography. This year you’ll find established names like Scheidegger & Spiess and Edition Patrick Frey on the list, with the latter garnering no less than three entrants. As well as the prestigious Jan Tschichold Award (given to the designer Ludovic Balland), there’s acclaim for the London-based John Morgan Studio (working with Mathias Clottu and Adrien Vasquez), Laurent Benner and Roland Brauchli, among others. As before, this celebration of contemporary book design helps bolster the status of both publisher and designer on the international scene.
Published by Swiss Design Awards
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
From the book: flicking through the illustrated list of 18 titles, one noticeable pit-stop is Annebella Pollen’s The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, published by London’s Donlon Books, in which we trek up mountains with the 1920s camping, hiking and handicraft group. Photography: Michael Ainscough
Another stand-out is 30 ans à Paris, a retrospective of Paris’ Centre Culturel Suisse (CCS), which opened in 1985, featuring a complete overview of the centre’s activity. Photography: Michael Ainscough
Essentially a catalogue for a show at the White Cube in London, Liquids by Christian Marclay is one of the slimmer volumes included in the round-up, but earns a place for its cheer and humour. Photography: Michael Ainscough
Lilly Keller Künstlerin. Literarisches Porträt, which spends 200, gloriously tactile pages on a literary portrait of the artist, and ends in a contrastingly colourful 32-page photo essay. Photography: Michael Ainscough
Iconographic Handbook for the Contemporary Designer (and collection)
By Guido Scarabottolo
Italian illustrator Guido Scarabottolo has honed his eccentric line for many decades, most notably as a contributor to Abitare in the 1970s and 80s. His career spans architecture, graphics, book covers and art direction, and there’s the occasional provocation thrown in. The Iconographic Handbook is one such side project, an ironic array of cross-cultural translations of familiar technologies. Fans of his illustration will miss the dense little array of lines, but there’s plenty of pleasure in finding obscure translations (the book includes Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish and Swahili words) of familiar things. This limited edition book from Italian publisher La Grande Illusion is a bit of an art director’s diversion, but a beautiful project nonetheless.
Published by La Grande Illusion, €8
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
Also from the collection: Giallo enigmistico. In the third book from the collection, Scarabottolo makes visual poetry by mixing words with lines for the impassionate of puzzles and lovers of graphic
The book, imagined by Danilo Premoli, has been realised via an old IBM PS/1 (with an Intel 80386SX processor) computer using a program written in 1997, transcribing every single element into computer-based parameters
’La modernità comincia con la ricerca di una letteratura impossibilie’ (’Modernity begins with the search for a impossible literature’) is an apt quote to preface the book with, drawn from Roland Barthes’ 1953 Il grado zero della scrittura
PR in a Box
By Simon Rayner-Langmead
The magic bullet business book has been a staple of the salesman’s library since the days of Dale Carnegie, but the world moves on and with it come new techniques and tricks for making a success of yourself. PR in a Box is not just a book; it’s a whole suite of services devised and developed by well-connected media types to ‘help you connect to your brand’ and take the necessary steps to develop a campaign and then take to a (hopefully) eager press. Sifting through the noise to find the signals is a vital skill in the modern media landscape, and shouting louder isn’t always the best way forward.
Published by PrinaBox, £22
Writer: Jonathan Bell. Photography: Sophie Rush and Hannah Abel-Hirsch
From the book: ’The bread and butter of effective PR is great relationships and compelling stories. But to create a truly tasty treat, that bread and butter needs a delicious filling,’ says Tracey Tompsett of Land Rover UK. Courtesy and copyright Simon Rayner-Langmead
’To recognise the importance of social media is vital when building a brand today. None of us could have predicted the speed at which it’s grown or the "noise" and impact it can create for brands,’ says Charlotte McCarthy of Jo Loves. Courtesy and copyright Simon Rayner-Langmead
’PR is about Passion, if you live, breathe and believe in your brand then everyone else will. Don’t be afraid to tell your story often you will have to open yourself up to let people in and engage in your business,’ says Michelle Boon of Beauty Seen PR. Courtesy and copyright Simon Rayner-Langmead
Pictured: one of the many useful example planning charts that Rayner-Langmead includes in his handbook, with this particular one showing a simple, effective way to plan and organise newsletter content in advance. Courtesy and copyright Simon Rayner-Langmead
’The key is to know who you are pitching to, and understand what will grab their attention. So much is based on personality both of the media and journalist,’ says Wallpaper’s very own publisher, Malcom Young. Courtesy and copyright Simon Rayner-Langmead