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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
This book will force you to think! Feb 07, 2010
By Steven M. Johnson
As I noted in my review of Magee's other book, THE OPEN SYSTEM, one should not approach his work when feeling tired or distracted. It is necessary to pay full attention to what he is saying, and to puzzle over and tease out his meanings since his ideas are expressed compactly. They are the end point of years of experience and thought, stated aphoristically. The rationale for his conclusions may not be immediately obvious to the reader, however! As in THE OPEN SYSTEM, this book ambitiously challenges current beliefs about how we should judge architecture, and how we should build. For Magee, honesty, clarity and simplicity of design and construction are virtues. This is because in nature there is always a connection between form and function, but not because as Louis Sullivan asserted, "form follows function", but because "form allows function". Magee, unafraid of thinking and expressing himself with originality, will have the reader scratching his/her head: "what did he mean by THAT?" If you take the time to ponder Magee's meanings in SIMPLE BUILDING, you will likely be rewarded.
From front cover to back cover the book contains original viewpoints, expressed as utterances and prescriptions that are at times difficult to unpack: "Evolve your own graphic shorthand of stilts and seeing eyes for Nature's dictionary of geometric metaphors. An artery lined with open cells expresses give-and-take between what passes and the cells. Rooms on the south and storage on the north say 'Life feeds on sunshine, not cold'". This is as much the writing of a Nature Mystic, a William Blake, as that of an architect-builder.
This book is a treatise, an argument. It is a statement in favor of an architecture of, for and by the Proletariat. He admires the honesty of pre-built, catalog-purchased, assemble-it-on-site barn buildings. He loves, for example, a simple structure built by Jeff Milstein in 1972 where "every component was ordered from the Sears catalog, including wood stove, wiring, hardware, pipe, fixtures, appliances, roof, and its off-the-shelf stairs, a ladder."
It would be wonderful if Magee had a fanatical following, if there was a Magee School of Architecture! His strongly-expressed opinions could inspire a generation of students to develop a Do-It-Yourself building style, with the same rich collection of available House Parts that one finds at the electronics store for building one's own PC computer. Put it together, take it apart, add parts and rearrange it based on evolving personal needs. Yet he is not advocating in favor of a cold machine-for-living, a modern prefab building that looks good in DWELL magazine but feels somehow anti-human when lived in. Instead, he favors an architecture that feels adaptable and invites use. When a real estate lady entered one of his homes, he took it as a compliment when she said "Well, it certainly looks lived in."
You will need to put on your thinking cap with this book. I heartily recommend it!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
great book Dec 07, 2009
By B. D. Conover
Magee takes the design principle of "form follows function" to the off-the-shelf and affordable building products available to all. Current house design in US, essentially the same old historical cookie cutter designs but with new materials, needs a dose of this.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
empty Jun 09, 2011
By Robert M. Koretsky
"DIYer"
The waves splash onto the beach, one after the other, and after so many years, the sand remains as luminous and deadly as ever, still reflecting the paling sun in sharp glints and dull colors.
It's amusing and frightening to come upon someone who covets Nature as much as the author does; I don't think Nature exists any longer; instead, a mediatized Disney World built environment EVERYWHERE( including all that green stuff and blue water you have to filter through years of watching television: while visiting Yellowstone last year, I was looking for the props like on a movie set), as ubiquitous as capitalism, money, ascendant power( think Myron Goldfinger here)- how are we ever to know what is or ever was natural; believe me, I don't trust history or it's constant rewriting, or even what this author proclaims as kind of an anti-historical approach.
What do I really like about this book? Its LACK and EMPTINESS, when I look at the photos in it, they leave me feeling neutral, bland, and devoid of function( kind of like Camus' hero in L'Etranger). Which, after all, is what human beings are in the Spectacle Society, no? Products are the only beings with a real life, existence, and subjectivity, as Sidney Magee proudly proclaims here. Their use value reduces human beings to irrelevance.
The photographs of buildings are not ominous or threatening.
I hate the Nietzchesque aphorisms, after a while they sound so pedantic and paternalistic, but new age gurus and students will lap them up; after a while I get sick of them. I also suggest you read his more technic-oriented work "The Open System"; whatever you do, don't even bother with "A Pattern Language"A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Cess Center for Environmental) - after browsing through that crap, I needed a strong dose of Corbu and heavy hit of Baudrillard to wash my mind clean.
Sadly, this book will be just another wave that ebbs and flows, and leaves no mark on the beach. I still proclaim Sidney Magee as the master of 21st century architecture, but probably for all the wrong reasons, according to those that like his work. If there's anything I've learned about new age gurus and student's minds, it's that they're basically stupid. What we need is a Rimbaud, not a Baudelaire.
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