Renowned artist and architect Maya Lins visual and verbal sketchbookmdash;a unique view into her artwork and philosophy.Walking through this parklike area; the memorial appears as a rift in the earth -- a long; polished black stone wall; emerging from and receding into the earth. Approaching the memorial; the ground slopes gently downward; and the low walls emerging on either side; growing out of the earth; extend and converge at a point below and ahead. Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls of this memorial; we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorials walls. These names; seemingly infinite in number; convey the sense of overwhelming numbers; while unifying these individuals into a whole.... So begins the competition entry submitted in 1981 by a Yale undergraduate for the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington; D.C. -- subsequently called "as moving and awesome and popular a piece of memorial architecture as exists anywhere in the world." Its creator; Maya Lin; has been nothing less than world famous ever since. From the explicitly political to the un-ashamedly literary to the completely abstract; her simple and powerful sculpture -- the Rockefeller Foundation sculpture; the Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial; the Yale Womens Table; Wave Field -- her architecture; including The Museum for African Art and the Norton residence; and her protean design talents have defined her as one of the most gifted creative geniuses of the age. Boundaries is her first book: an eloquent visual/verbal sketchbook produced with the same inspiration and attention to detail as any of her other artworks. Like her environmental sculptures; it is a site; but one which exists at a remove so that it may comment on the personal and artistic elements that make up those works. In it; sketches; photographs; workbook entries; and original designs are held together by a deeply personal text. Boundaries is a powerful literary and visual statement by "a leading public artist" (Holland Carter). It is itself a unique work of art.
#2249139 in eBooks 2013-06-17 2013-06-17File Name: B01B67G392
Review
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. What is an architect and why do they build the models they do?By David ShawSomewhat academic approach to the role of architectural models in Western civilization; from the ancient Greeks up to the end of the 20th Century.I found this in the architectural library at a nearby university (my daughter had a junior high school class project on building a scale model of a Gothic cathedral; and I first thought this book might be a handbook on building scale models; but not so). Still; it looked to be an interesting read (for those used to reading works by academics; at least).Most readers of this book will be students of architecture; but for this non-architect I found the exploration of what an architect was and how they were trained over the past 5000 years an interesting mirror of how Western culture has changed over the centuries. (Im speaking here as a social scientist more used to reading history than works in the humanities).The first and fourth chapters are well-done surveys; though the second chapter seemed light in analytical depth in places. The third chapter provides formal framing of his argument between the first and second halves of the book; too academic for many readers but mercifully brief.The payoff to the too-academic structure of the book comes in the last (fifth) chapter; as the author attempts to deconstruct the work of a handful of architects from the 20th Century; focusing on the role of drawings versus physical models of specific projects in their body of work. I found the approach persuasive for all of the architects examined except for the last; Andrew Libeskind (spelling?); but at least some illumination came of it.A read of a day and a half for a casual reader outside the field. Id be interested to hear what specialists in the field would have to say about the book. For instance; is this book based on refereed articles in the field? And how does it related to other scholarly work in the field of architectural studies?
