Animate Form [Hardcover]

Greg Lynn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1999

When published in 1999, Animate Form, the first book on the work of architect Greg Lynn, literally pushed back the boundaries of architectural form. It inspired an entire generation of designers to think of architectureas elastic, malleable, and mutable, bounded only by imagination. Using high-end computer animation software, Lynn opened an entire new paradigm of thinking about and discussing architectural form, and, in the process, introduced an entire new vocabulary—blobs, bodies, hypersurfaces, and polysurfaces—to describe the biomorphic shapes he and his followers create. A highly sought after title, we are delighted to bring Animate Form back into print as one of the books from our 30-year history that changed the world of architecture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Along with Spuybroek and Scottish-Japanese duo Ushida Findlay, Greg Lynn is one of the leading American architect-theorists of the '90s hyper surface or waveform architecture. His second book Animate Form carefully leads you through the antecedents-Duchamp's Nude Descending, Hans Jenny's flow motion cymatics, then the '90s topological turn towards the vectorial flow of spline curves before guiding you through spectacular competition entries such as the 1994 Yokohama International Port Terminal. Lynn will be lecturing at the Royal College of Art's Youtopia series on May 11. See you there! -- I-D

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (January 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568980833
• ISBN-13: 978-1568980836
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #630,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inanimate Publishing, April 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Animate Form (Hardcover)

The text contained in Animate Form, assembled from previously published articles, continues Lynn's rhetoric announcing the emergence of a new dynamic paradigm for architectural design [animation software]. It reads like skimming a stone across the liquid surface of current [digital] architectural discourse. Each bounce touches a relative key point maintaining enough speed to progress to the next without requiring any perceived depth of substance. This presents the reader with a wide scoping text offering potential to rethink architecture as a non-static art, but does little to critically place this mode of production within practice.

The major difficulty I have with this book [animate form] is that the projects chosen have become already dated. Although monograph culture can be blamed for the presentation of more recent work, for a book's whose content is all about a newness of direction and dynamic qualities of change, the material seems incredibly inert. Even the CDRom is a very traditional piece of homepage publishing. It simply catalogues the animations for the projects and does not provide another level of understanding through hyperlink connections.

The book competently collates the work of Greg Lynn up to 1996 and is still required reading for those involved with producing new modes of architectural design through technological advancement. I guess I was expecting a More innovative approach to the publishing of Greg Lynn's material.

2 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars experimentation?, February 28, 2001

By 

aaron (san diego ca, us) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Animate Form (Hardcover)

Again we should be amazed at these wonderful algorithmic creatures that have continued to sprawl for the last half a century or more. The innovation about this type of experimentation if at all it is anymore should lie on the reality and materiality of the projects. We cannot let technology invent architecture but to at least keep up if not produce it. Lynns dialogues will only be convincing if the show doesn't end up or formulate by gyp board.