Gesture & Response – Oro Editions – Publishers of Architecture, Art, and Design

Architecture

Gesture & Response

“Forty-four years ago, on the eve of our national bicentennial, Gene Kohn, Shelley Fox and I began our collaboration.”

Forty-four years ago, on the eve of our national bicentennial, Gene Kohn, Shelley Fox and I began our collaboration. Each of us brought a very different personality type to our partnership. Based on our individual strengths, we each focused on a specific aspect of making architecture. Together we possessed the abilities necessary to create an architectural firm that could aspire to buildings of the highest quality, creating designs that captured the conditions of our times. (…) Our collective mission, which came about slowly over time, was not the product of a polemical manifesto. It evolved organically form the opportunities we created as we focused on designing the fundamental building blocks of thee modern city.

No building type is more dominant, or pervasive, than the commercial high-rise office building. It is ubiquitous now throughout the world. By its nature it is insular and autonomous. We wanted to find ways of bringing it into a more social interchange with other urban structures, inspiring connections and linkages in the fabric of the modern city. (…) We are now working in a new era- one that combines the goals I have outlined in this book with those that have arisen in this new generation. It is a most exciting, and urgent time to be an architect.

William Pedersen

“We wanted to find ways of bringing it into a more social interchange with other urban structures, inspiring connections and linkages in the fabric of the modern city.”

Good buildings require an understanding of the principles of structure, light, space, and material, but great buildings require an understanding of people. The most successful inspire through the interactions and connections made within them. Gathering is the latest book from the award-winning architecture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. This collection of work exemplifies how architecture has the power to bring people together by design, allowing them to engage with one another in new ways, to generate ideas, share their passions, and build communities. The fourteen projects included in this volume range greatly in size, function, and

aesthetic, from the High Meadow Dwellings at Fallingwater to the Newport Beach Civic Center in southern California to Apple Stores located around the world. Through full-color photographs as well as conceptual sketches and diagrams, each case study gives insight into Bohlin Cywinski Jackson’s design process, and how the firm’s approach has helped transform clients’ institutions, workplaces, retail environments, research laboratories, and public spaces into extraordinary places for people. An introductory essay and chapter text by noted architectural writer Sam Lubell accompanies this volume.