BOOKS

Gesture and Response: 25 Buildings by William Pedersen of KPF Architects by William Pedersen Novato, CA: ORO Editions, $60 585 pages, 336 illustrations (275 color)

When in 1976 prominent New York architect Gene Kohn invited two others to join him in a new firm, his choice of chief designer was William Pedersen, and the result has been a large part of recent architectural history. This welcome new book records 25 of Pedersen’s designs overa period of 45 years. There is no KPF signature style, and certainly there has been no “less is more”

austerity. Instead, there have been varied and eloquent personifications of location, use, character, and mood.

To pluck only three examples: In 1982, there was 333 Wacker Drive in Chicago, a tower responding gracefully to the sweeping curve of the river it faces; in 2008, the Shanghai World Financial Center, at the time the world’s tallest building; and in 2011, the International Commerce Center soaring over Hong Kong’s Kowloon Peninsula. The last of the 25 projects is something quite different: a weekend retreat for Pedersen and his family on New York’s Shelter Island—reachable only by ferry—where the house evokes, in Pedersen’s words, “the idea of a hull cutting through the water.”

The book closes with a dozen pages of the furniture designs that have occupied Pedersen in retirement. He notes that “a chair’s dominant role is to interact with the human body,” so here the sharp-edged geometry of the architecture is replaced with gentle curves, a lovely postscript to a remarkable career. Breuer’s Bohemia: The Architect, His Circle, and Midcentury Houses in New England by James Crump New York: Monacelli, $60

Unlike most books about Marcel Breuer, this one does not concentrate on his major works (UNESCO in Paris, the old Whitney Museum on Madison Avenue in New York, and St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota) but on his residential design. And unlike most architect monographs it goes beyond the subject’s buildings to consider his “social circle,” not only his friends and their houses but also their “complex personal stories,” revealing plentiful drinking (but seldom for Breuer), occasional nudity, an amputated leg, the suicide of a gay son, and countless adulteries. Some of this is titillating but superfluous, and those of us who knew Breuer professionally (I worked for him when there were only 12 of us in the drafting room) found him a soft-spoken gentleman, still very much a teacher. He may have gone wild after office hours, but I doubt it.

The book design is as odd as its viewpoint, the main text in a stentorian boldface but the captions so pale they are virtually invisible. Only one residence is supplied with a floor plan and only two with elevations, but there are plentiful photographs of the houses and their “bohemian” owners. There is no index.

Very welcome, however, is coverage of several generally overlooked projects: on Cape Cod, the 1947 Scott house in Dennis, Massachusetts; the 1949 cottages for Gyorgy Kepes and for Breuer himself in nearby Wellfleet; and the 1975 Gagarin house in Big Sur, California. Also welcome is recognition of Breuer’s rejection of architecture’s long domination by males with the “relatively large percentage of female architects that he hired,” some of them women of color. The author has also made a film with the same title to be released later this year. A preview can be seen at breuersbohemia.com.

What They’ re Reading... “My wife told me about a podcast she listened to by author Erin Meyer, who spoke about how different cultures have completely The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of different lenses on communication. So her book seemed like Global Business something I needed to read and digest from a design standpoint. She delves into the importance of understanding each other to by Erin Meyer become better communicators as we work on complex, multiNew York: PublicAffairs, $15 cultural teams. What I found most interesting was the 288 pages, 26 color illustrations Japanese concept of being a kuuki yomenai, which translates to someone who cannot read the air,or, in other words, doesn't understand the unspoken rules of a group. As we work with clients, artists, makers, and manufacturers with varied perspectives, it’s important we maintain honest and concise communication while being open, proactive listeners. By understanding others’ cultural backgrounds, we can be better designers and in turn recognize that each client evaluates and interprets things differently. In our studio, we try to David use local materials and building methods whenever possible to communicate design in varying Montalba scales. But as our work is becoming increasingly international—Nobu Hotel Palo Alto in California Founding principal and Whitepod, an ecoluxury hotel in the Swiss Alps, among our recent projects—this awareness is of Montalba a critical part of understanding the context and history of the places we work. It is present when Architects we craft presentations and proposals for varying audiences and in how we interact with potential clients, or even our collaborators, which often are European manufacturers and fabricators. I can say with certainty that what I've learned from this book has helped me better understand the working habits and cultural differences of their teams, which in turn has led to a deeper understanding of their workflow and when we can expect things to be completed. As creatives, we should always be adaptive.”