July 2024: Designer Birthdays, Literary Architecture Books, Noguchi Playgrounds
A round up of recent publishing, new books, and design news.
In June, we rebroadcasted two of our favorite episodes from the archive: our conversation with writer Kyle Chayka from 2020 and designer, writer, and teacher Lorraine Wild from 2021.
EDITOR’S NOTE
Happy Summer!
I want to begin by thanking all of you who have signed up since our last newsletter and for the great response and comments over the last month. I’ve enjoyed putting this newsletter together for paying supporters of Scratching the Surface over the last five years and already love writing it for a bigger audience. If you know someone who would appreciate these monthly roundups of new episodes, recent stories, design news, and new books, would you consider it forwarding it to a friend?
Although we’re not releasing new episodes, we’ve been busy. We have three new stories up on Scratch this month, including my new interview with architect James Biber on his fun new book, The Architect & Designer Birthday Book. There’s already a handful of new pieces in the works for July. Stay tuned! On the podcast side, we’re rebroadcasting two more favorites from the archives in July but will be prepping for new episodes to return in September for our Fall season.
Thanks, as always, for listening, reading, and following along. If you find this newsletter useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or supporting us on Patreon. If you have pitches, guest suggestions, or want to chat, leave us a note.
Until next month,
Jarrett
SCRATCH
Recent essays, interviews, and stories published on our Scratch platform.
James Biber on The Architect & Designer Birthday Book
Jarrett Fuller interviews the architect and author of a fun, new design history book.
Kevin Yuen Kit Lo recommends 6 books that challenge, inspire, and cut deep
The designer and author of Designer Against Design shares the books that have influenced him.
Mirtha Dermisache’s Illegible Publications
Regine Ehleiter on the conceptual artist Mirtha Dermisache and the subversive politics of asemic writing.
PAST GUESTS
Recent work, writing, and news from former guests of Scratching the Surface.
🔠 Peter Bi’lak released Zed, an ambitious highly accessible typeface for diverse populations.
🤑 In The Nation, Kate Wagner writes about how luxury brands are buying our cities.
👀 Paul Goldberger’s new apartment in U.N. Plaza was featured on Curbed.
⚫️ Also in Curbed, Justin Davidson writes about the bizarre architectural mind of Frederick Kiesler, whose work is on display at The Jewish Museum in New York.
💥 Leadership made New York great, Michael Kimmelman writes, where is it now?
🏢 A talk Nikil Saval gave at Harvard GSD in 2020 has been turned into a book called A Rage in Harlem: June Jordan and Architecture.
👩👧👦 Alexandra Lange wrote about immersive museum exhibitions for kids for CityLab.
🎹 For Frieze, Carson Chan wrote about John Cage’s 639-year organ.
📕 Robin Sloan’s new novel, Moonbound, is out now and Wired profiled him, calling him “Silicon Valley’s greatest living novelist.
🌱 For Untapped, Deb Chachra says we need more than ‘fewer, better things’.
💸 In The Nation, Karrie Jacobs writes about the rise of New York’s super-tall luxury buildings.
🌎 Dan Hill reviews Liam Young’s ‘Planetary Redesign’.
☁️ Carl DiSalvo launched Revery Workshop, a new company offering consulting, facilitation, and workshops for individuals and companies.
BOOK ROUNDUP
Recent books that have arrived in the studio.
Wolkenbügel: El Lissitsky as Architect by Richard Anderson (MIT Press)
El Lissitsky is known for his range of work across art, graphic design and text but this book looks at a single project: his never-realized architectural project with an untranslatable name: Wolkenbügel. This book offers a new and definitive account of how Lissitzky expanded the conceptual and representational tools available to the modern architect by drawing on many sources—including photography, typography, exhibition design, and even the elementary forms of the alphabet—to create the Wolkenbügel.
Machine à Amuser: The Life and Death of the Beistegui Penthouse Apartment by Wim van den Bergh (MIT Press)
Much like Wolkenbugel above, Machine à Amuser looks at a single building, the penthouse designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. What does it take to build not only a house but a machine for amusement? In Machine à Amuser, Wim van den Bergh chronicles the genesis of the famous penthouse of French-born Mexican millionaire bachelor Charles de Beistegui. The penthouse was planned and constructed by Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret and built on a rooftop site on the Champs-Élysées between 1929–1932. Machine à Amuser also examines the cultural milieu of artists and patrons that surrounded Beistegui and which ultimately determined the apartment's conception and use, including its rococo and surrealist-inspired interior decor.
Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide To Designing A Thriving Future by Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter (10 Speed Press)
In Assembling Tomorrow, Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter of Stanford’s D.School explore the intangible forces that prevent us from anticipating just how fantastically technology can get out of control, and what might be in store for us if we don't start using new tools and tactics. Assembling Tomorrow explores how to use readily accessible tools to both mend the mistakes of our past and shape our future for the better.
Superstorm by Noemi Biasetton (Onomatopee)
The Superstorm is a conceptual and narrative metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the relationship between political communication and new media technologies, which culminated in the tempestuous Western political visual culture of today. In her first book Superstorm: Design and Politics in the Age of Information, Noemi Biasetton traces the development of the Superstorm from the 1960s to the present and proposes new coordinates that designers may consider in order to, eventually, face its relentless evolution.
Notes on Book Design by Formal Settings (Onomatopee)
Notes on Book Design is a collection of 50 texts written by designers Siri Lee Lindskrog and Amanda-Li Kollberg of graphic and type design studio Formal Settings, based on books from the collection of Hopscotch Reading Room in Berlin. The texts draw parallels between the book as a design object and the cultural movements, political landscapes and economic conditions under which it was created.
JOB WATCH
Tracking new jobs, appointments, and career moves in and around the design industries.
Sarah Ganz Blythe, currently of the RISD Museum, is appointed director of Harvard Art Museums.
READ/WATCHED/HEARD
Articles, books, videos, and other ephemera that caught our eye this month.
🤬 Elizabeth Goodspeed thinks she picked a bad time to become a critic.
🔨 Ian Parker has the incredible story of Kanye West’s brutal renovation of a Tadao Ando house.
POSTSCRIPT
Because we’re in the middle of the summer now, I’ve been thinking a lot about playgrounds. Isamu Noguchi is a longtime touchstone for me and I’ve always found his playground designs to be especially fascinating. Contoured Playground, shown above, was designed in 1941 and composed of gently sloped earthen mounds. The design was in response to another Noguchi playground that was deemed to dangerous for children to play on.