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Kind of Boring: Canonical Work and Other Visible Things Meant to be Viewed as Architecture: Canonical Work and Other Visible Things Meant to be Viewed as Architecture
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About Kind Of Boring: Canonical Work And Other Visible
Product Description Kind Of is a book presenting the work of Paul Preissner in a form of manifesto looking at the loose and varied origins of ideas that make room for intuition, blandness and confusion resulting in work which takes on a different type of politics: a class politics. Being boring (or boringness) has been one of the qualities of architecture an architect desperately tries to avoid. Not to provoke (or at least try to provoke) some reaction from one’s audience is to admit to a lack of ideas or an absence of creativity. In Kind of Boring, Paul Preissner rejects the idea that architecture should demand anything from its audience. The “boring and dumb” architecture documented in this book leaves us alone. In this way, the work of Paul Preissner Architects produces a conceptual space, a meaning independent of our relationship to the work; we can only understand (or misunderstand) it. Through a lot of drawings, some essays, and many pictures, this book documents what happens when architecture stops begging for our attention and instead makes space for reflection. With contributions by Jayne Kelley, Tim Kinsella, Alex Lehnerer, Walter Benn Michaels, and Li Tavor. Edited by Courtney Co!man. Graphic design by Joe Gilmore. Review In a 1987 interview in Cite 17, Charles Moore said that "it would all be so much better if everyone would relax a little. We don't even have to learn to love kitschy things; we just have to get over the stark and debilitating fear of being tainted by the ordinary." Similarly, Preissner concludes his essay in his nice book by speculating that "if the city is the one big project of society, architecture can be its black hole," which "requires the privileging of the world of normal, anonymous, weird, strange things over the interesting." We ought to use "the project of pictures, memes, and images as a carefree form of precedent of spirit to allow a relaxed idea of precision and composition to enter the architectural project." They're both right. -Jack Murphy, Rice Design Alliance From the Back Cover Being boring (or boringness) has been one of the qualities of architecture an architect desperately tries to avoid. Not to provoke (or at least try to provoke) some reaction from one's audience is to admit to a lack of ideas or an absence of creativity. In Kind of Boring, Paul Preissner rejects the idea that architecture should demand anything from its audience. The "boring and dumb" architecture documented in this book leaves us alone. In this way, the work of Paul Preissner Architects produces a conceptual space, a meaning independent of our relationship to the work; we can only understand (or misunderstand) it. Through a lot of drawings, some essays, and many pictures, this book documents what happens when architecture stops begging for our attention and instead makes space for reflection. With contributions by Jayne Kelley, Tim Kinsella, Alex Lehnerer, Walter Benn Michaels, and Li Tavor. Edited by Courtney Coffman. Graphic design by Joe Gilmore. About the Author Paul Preissner runs Paul Preissner Architects, which is a pretty good office located in Oak Park, Illinois. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Architecture.
