Bauhaus Travel Book. Weimar. Dessau. Berlin
Ed.: Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
DuMont Publishers, 2012
304 pages, Color, Hardcover, 210 x 160 mm
ISBN 978-3-8321-9412-3
www.dumont-buchverlag.de
If there ever was a perfect book, this might well be it. Surprisingly, this is the very first travel guide to the sites of the historic Bauhaus (1919-1933) in Germany, including in-depth background information, maps and practical travel tips. With a brilliantly clear layout and a handy format, the routes include the well-known Bauhaus sites of Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin, but also the obscure: a small village church in Gelmeroda, for instance, which featured in Lyonel Feininger’s paintings. But what really makes this book an invaluable treasure chest is, that it traces the Bauhaus not only through space, but also through time: with biographies and stories about all the key protagonists following the Bauhaus’ diaspora worldwide. This book makes one want to go on a “grand tour” immediately to see all the sites – but it’s also a great read. (fh)
Bauhaus Travel Book
Manifest Destiny: A Guide to the Essential Indifference of American Suburban Housing
Edited by Jason Griffiths; afterword by Martino Stierli
AA Publications, 2012
144 pages, Color, Hardcover, 220 x 170 mm
ISBN 978-1-907896-05-7
Manifest destiny: the uniquely-American myth of endless expansion. As Jason Griffiths’s own expansive manual charting the landscape of today’s American suburbs suggests, this urge to settle and domesticate has never really vanished. The continual manifestation of America’s destiny is cataloged here in all its contradictory glory – what Griffiths calls the simultaneous “push from the past” and “pull to the new.” Especially telling are the often absurd photographs snapped by Griffiths and his travel partner, Alex Gino, over their 178-day journey through suburbia, detailing the moments when progress gets ahead of itself (unfinished constructions, empty streets, bizarre or redundant architectural elements). The suburb is contextualized here without judgment but with true curiosity, situating it within its long American tradition; from the log cabin all the way to the pre-fabricated wooden shell of a home at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. (ew)
Manifest Destiny: A Guide to the Essential
Indifference of American Suburban Housing
The Road to Oxiana,
Robert Byron
Introduction by Colin Thubron
Penguin Classics, 2007
368 pages,
Paperback, 129 x 198mm, £9.99
ISBN 9780141442099
www.penguin.co.uk
This travel book is, in the true spirit of that hackneyed term, a real classic - even 75 years after publication.
An account of the journey Robert Byron took in 1933-34 from Venice via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Teheran to Oxiana, the area where Afghanistan met the then Soviet Union. The book was groundbreaking in its day for its diaristic mix of personal incident and anecdote, with descriptions and photographs of the jaw-dropping structures – mosques, shrines, towers (like the 72 meter brick tower Gumbad-i-Kambus built in 1006) – that pepper his route. Byron is only unrestrainedly prejudiced about architecture (loves Islamic; hates Greek and Buddhist: the two great Buddhas at Bamian, destroyed by the Taliban, are “monstrous”) but not about people, who are never stereotyped, even when mercilessly critiqued. (rgw)
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