''IJP the book of surfaces'' is a book by George L. Legendre, with a foreword by

Mohsen Mostafavi Mohsen Mostafavi (born 1954 in Isfahan) is an Iranian-American architect and educator. Mostafavi is currently the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. From 2008 through 2019, Mostafavi served ...

Overview

''IJP the Book of Surfaces'' was released in 2003 by the publishing arm of the London-based Architectural Association School of Architecture. ''IJP the Book of Surfaces'' is an architectural essay with a broad range of additional themes. The book features six essays on the notion of surface written from an architectural, philosophical, literary, mathematical, and computational angle, as well as several lighter asides ranging from cookery to poetry. These seemingly disjointed threads have been given a particular typographic and graphic design treatment, which purports to weave them together into a continuous narrative.

Background and literary references

The book addresses some significant developments of the decade, such as the explosion of computational tools; the emergence of the 3D surface as an architectural

signifier In semiotics, signified and signifier (French: ''signifié'' and ''signifiant'') stand for the two main components of a sign, where ''signified'' pertains to the "plane of content", while ''signifier'' is the "plane of expression". The idea was f ...

of the Digital Revolution; the profession's fascination with the formal possibilities of surface cladding; and the rise of innovative manufacturing technologies. It is thematically inseparable from two other contemporary titles:

’s and

David Leatherbarrow David Leatherbarrow is Professor of Architecture and Chair of the Graduate Group in Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Philadelphia, where he has taught since 1984. He received his B.Arch. from the University of Kentu ...

’s ''Surface Architecture'', an essay on the

phenomenology Phenomenology may refer to: Art * Phenomenology (architecture), based on the experience of building materials and their sensory properties Philosophy * Phenomenology (philosophy), a branch of philosophy which studies subjective experiences and a ...

of architectural façades, and

Ellen Lupton Ellen Lupton (born 1963) is a graphic designer, curator, writer, critic, and educator. Known for her love of typography, Lupton is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at Maryland Institute College of Art. Previously she was the ...

’s collection ''Skin: Surface, Substance + Design'', which explores the working

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...

of artificial

skin Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation. Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different de ...

in Materials science,

fashion Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fashion i ...

and the

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile art ...

. By comparison, the intellectual range of IJP The Book of Surfaces is self-centred and instrumental. The book, noted Illa Berman, withdraws from external cultural currents and their contexts and emerges from within the formal and computational specificity of the surface itself. As a piece of writing, it is indebted to the literary school

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...

. Its treatment of one theme as a collection of vignettes written in different voices (linguistic, mathematical, computational, mock-literary, and pop-cultural) nods back to

Raymond Queneau Raymond Queneau (; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, critic, editor and co-founder and president of Oulipo ('' Ouvroir de littérature potentielle''), notable for his wit and cynical humour. Biography Queneau w ...

’s 1947 Exercises in Style, in which the same trivial event is told and re-told in different idioms.

Form and content

In keeping with the literary/mathematical spirit of

layout Layout may refer to: * Page layout, the arrangement of visual elements on a page ** Comprehensive layout (comp), a proposed page layout presented by a designer to their client * Layout (computing), the process of calculating the position of obj ...

typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), ...

, and

pagination Pagination, also known as paging, is the process of dividing a document into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages. In reference to books produced without a computer, pagination can mean the consecutive page numbering to ind ...

form an integral part of the book's thesis. The pagination taps the formal affinity between a publisher’s book spread and a mathematician's surface, both of which draw on the concept of mathematical matrix. Similar mathematical references apply to the title of the work, which combines 'i' and 'j', two symbols commonly used in matrix

algebra Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics. Elementary ...

, with the symbol 'p' (for point), introduced by the author in reference to Euclidean space.

Reception

The book’s argument and restrained use of computer graphics by the standards of the day (dominated then as now by computer-generated renderings) elicited a mixed reception. Historians and theorists noted its withdrawal from the wider cultural context, its consistent argument, graphic sobriety, and theoretical reach. Readers with less time for theory deplored its lack of engagement with other pressing issues of the day, such as sustainability and

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

. They noted its blank and

solipsistic Solipsism (; ) is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known ...

tone, occasionally questionable syntax, and pedestrian graphic design. The book's reception reflected accepted disagreements in the architectural community over the meaning of

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed entit ...

, the finality of computational tools, and the low-burning culture war simmering around these disagreements. After 2015, similar polemic arguments were waged between the trade press and the self-identifying

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

movement of architectural parametricism (the author of ''IJP The Book of surfaces'' has distanced himself from the broader cultural claims of the movement Tom Weaver, Eds (2007) ''George L Legendre in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist'' (2007)
AA Files No. 56 (2007), pp. 20-25 (6 pages)).

References

{{Reflist Architectural Association School of Architecture Architecture books Mathematics books Computer books Design books Philosophy books