another pamphlet #01 2011
legibility!
The inaugural pamphlet will consider the issue of legibility, the degree to which something is apprehensible. Legibility may be one of the most persistent themes in the field of aesthetic practice, registering across all scales, from language to cities. It is perhaps first and foremost a formal issue, intrinsically tied up with organizational strategy (order, hierarchy, coherence), with graphic representation (contour, sharpness, resolution), and with shape-making (volume, shadow, depth). But it is equally important as a semiotic issue, intimately engaged with questions of iconicity, metaphor, analogy, and symbol. Perhaps most suggestive is how legibility implicates disciplinary interiority and exteriority – demanding radically different sensibilities depending on whether one’s particular vantage and/or intended audience are inside or outside the discipline.
01 disciplinary legibility
02 the legibility of ghosts
03 the cultural value of legibility
04 participating in legibility
05 interior + exterior legibilities
06 urban legibility
07 the legibility of play
08 legibility and domination
09 visceral legibility
LEGIBILITY! pamphlet contributors:
PEP AVILES is the Head of Graduate Studies at the Barcelona Institute of Architecture and a PhD Candidate at Princeton University.
IBEN FALCONER is the Business Development Manager at Bjarke Ingels Group New York and an editor of Perspecta 45: AGENCY.
DOUGLAS GAUTHIER is Coordinator of Design and Construction in the Real Estate Program at Columbia GSAPP and principal of Gauthier Architects.
ISAIAH KING is an architect in New York City and co-conspirator of another pamphlet.
MICHAEL LOVERICH is a founder of the small design farm Bittertang, winner of the 2010 New York Architectural League Prize.
MEREDITH MILLER is a lecturer at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan and co-founder of Milligram Office.
RYAN NEIHEISER is an architect in New York City and co-conspirator of another pamphlet.
JESSICA REYNOLDS is a professional tutor at Cardiff University and co-founder of the London based design firm vPPR Architects.
GIANCARLO VALLE is an architect in New York City and co-conspirator of another pamphlet.
another pamphlet is a document of loose exchange, an excuse to play, a frame through which to look, a shared excitement. It is an open dialogue with our friends, our histories, and our surroundings.
Meaning both “more of the same” and “something different”, “another” contains the seeds of both continuity and change. another pamphlet mines this contradiction – this tension between past and future – opportunistically interrogating, critiquing, and celebrating the discipline of architecture.
It is deliberately short. We’re all busy and we want to keep the conversation quick, easy, relevant, and fresh.
It is perversely anachronistic – it is printed on paper and distributed via, gasp, the post. Against the haze of digital distraction we crave an object to hold our attention – something to touch, to fold, to tuck in our back pocket, to discard.
And above all it is a group effort. Distinct voices are provisionally brought together into a contingent collective. But while the contributors and the ideas they offer are vital, particular authorship is obscured. The authors are given credit for participating, but the ideas stand on their own. The collective dialogue is given primacy over the individual position.
