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PIXEL POINTS
Nancy Levinson on architecture



    About Pixel Points

    Pixel Points is a reference to an influential magazine called Pencil Points, the self-styled "journal for the drafting room," which first appeared in 1920 and was published until 1943. For a very long time print was the medium in which architecture was profiled and pictured, debated and discussed. These days the print culture of the field is dwindling — or reorganizing, to put it optimistically — and the drafting table has been replaced by the computer screen — developments whose merits can be debated, but which make the web an invigorating place to be.

    And no matter the medium, there's a lot to debate and discuss these days, for architecture is often maddening but never boring. It's become, in fact, one of those expansive cultural categories that can accommodate all sorts of topics — the value of diverse buildings, of course, but also the problem of our metastasizing suburbs, the fitful revitalization of urban America, the unfulfilled promise of sustainable technology, the relationship of building to landscape, the influence of computers on design, the decline of our public realm, the glamorous goings-on of celebrity designers, the commercialization of art practices . . . to name just some of the issues that Pixel Points will consider.

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About Nancy Levinson
I like to think of architectural journalism as an extension of architectural practice. More


About Pixel Points
Pixel Points is a reference to an influential magazine called Pencil Points More

Write Me:
nlevinson@artsjournal.com



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DESIGN FILE

PREFAB
Prefab seems always to be the next big thing—the solution to our chronic shortage of middle-class housing, a means to making contemporary design affordable. It's been around for a while, of course, from the "Modern Homes" that Sears, Roebuck sold via catalogue to Buckminster Fuller's curvy Dymaxion prototype to recent experiments in shipping-container chic. But lately there's been a lot to look at, and much of it's good-looking.

The LV Home, by the Chilean-born, Missouri-based architect Rocio Romero, is an effort to make "high-end modern design" not only affordable but unintimidating too. The kit-of-parts—basically the exterior shell—starts at $32,900, and Romero's web site features testimonials like this, from a Wisconsin homebuyer: "the closest I could ever get to the aesthetics of the Mies van der Rohe Plano house."


For the manufacturer Kannustalo, Ltd., the Finnish firm Heikkinen-Komonen Architects have created the Touch House. First exhibited at a housing fair, the 2,000-square-foot house hasn't been yet been widely marketed, which seems a shame.


Austrian architect Oskar Leo Kaufmann designed the SU-SI House in the mid-'90s, for his sister Suzy. A couple of years ago, the 1,400-square-foot house was constructed—or rather, assembled—on a rural site in Sullivan County, New York, for about $300,000, for a Manhattan photographer and his family.


Marmol Radziner Prefab, a division of the Los Angeles firm, designs "factory-made modules shipped ready to occupy." The architects, known for design/build work, both manufacture the modules and supervise construction. So far one house has been built, in Palm Springs—near Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House, which the firm restored—and a few more are underway.
More

PRINT RUN

HOUSES
Some mostly recent books on houses, some posh, some not.

The Green House
Authors Alanna Stang and Christopher Hawthorne argue that green design is not just ecologically responsible but also high style— "camera ready." They make a good case, using projects like Georg Driendl's Solar Tube, in Vienna, Brian MacKay-Lyons's Howard House, in Nova Scotia, and Lahz Nimmo's Casuarina Beach House, in northern New South Wales.


Prefab Modern
A well illustrated and gracefully written survey by Jill Herbers showcasing some designers who are making prefab both affordable and stylish. Besides the projects listed elsewhere on this site, these include Adam Kalkin, Jennifer Siegal, Michelle Kaufmann, and Resolution: 4 Architecture


The Very Small Home
The subtitle says it: "Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space." Author Azby Brown has compiled a collection of houses most of which are so diminutive they'd fit into the master bath of a McMansion. These include Tadao Ando's austere 4 x 4 House, just 243 s.f., and Architecture Lab's White Box House, a comparatively roomy 559 s.f.


David Adjaye Houses
A handsome monograph featuring a dozen of the houses that have made Adjaye a rising star of London architecture. These include Elektra House and Dirty House, plus the residences he's designed for Ewan McGregor and Chris Ofili. More

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