The Lowe Lectures: The Paradox of Contemporary Architecture & Digital/Real: Blobmeister/First Built Projects. (Reviews - Simultaneous Translations).

THE LOWE LECTURES: THE PARADOX OF CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

Edited by Peter Cook, Neil Spiller, Laura Allen and Peg Rawes. London: Wiley-Academy. 2001. [pounds sterling]24.95

DIGITAL/REAL: BLOBMEISTER/FIRST BUILT PROJECTS

Edited by Peter Cachola Schmal, Basel: Birkhauser. 2001. CHF88.00, [pounds sterling]39

With translation fundamental to architecture both of these books are helpful. The Paradox of Contemporary Architecture addresses the problems of translating ideas into words and images. While lectures by architects about their work are important propaganda for architecture schools, they are also an integral part of both pedagogy and practice. Yet they almost invariably disappear as quickly as they are presented. By documenting 22 of the Lowe Lectures, given at the Bartlett between 1999 and 2001, this book seeks to not only offset that loss but to prompt further discussion. It presents ideas from a range of architects of different persuasions and from different settings to project the work of familiar names -- Zaha Hadid, Christine Hawley, Snohetta and Klaus Kada -- alongside others more mysterious -- Chora, Softform and Lotek. Words and images have been edited and mostly with tact and insight.

Occasionally editors seem to have been overzealous so one lecture is reported with the briefest of texts and no illustrations while for others strident images are given preference over informative drawings. Yet this is a useful record and a reference that presents sweeping views over the architectural landscape.

Digital/Real focuses on specific translations from screen to building. A catalogue for a recent exhibition at the Deutsche Architektur Museum, it combines six essays, of varying quality, that speculate on digital design research with descriptions of 11 built projects by architects dubbed as Blobmeisters. All have sought ways to construct complex three-dimensional building forms devised with the liberating influence of new computer modeling systems. The book describes the detail of those translations. It also notes some of the benefits of digital technology for fabrication by referencing new techniques, collaborations and initiatives that have been developed by architects, engineers and contractors. While explanations of the constructional systems developed for the Zollhof in Dusseldorf hardly represent Gehry's first built project when put alongside schemes by Jacob + MacFarlane, Hadid and Egeraat, they provide useful insights. Studies of other projects, however, reveal cumbersome ways of building and question the relationships between the apparent ease of developing complex three-dimensional forms digitally and the seemingly inherent difficulties of translating them to the scale of buildings. More detailed information on material research and structural innovations would be beneficial. Drawings more effectively labelled, with scales noted and describing actual edges, openings and skin/frame connections would also help.

This book's effusive flow of words, screen-based imagery and breathless enthusiasm for the new bring to mind the extraordinary translations of von Erlach and Guarini, or more recent achievements of Mendelsohn, Le Corbusier and Eero Saarinen