Invisible Images - The Silent Language of Architecture [Hardcover]

Beverly Willis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 27, 1997

Invisible Images: The Silent Language of Architecture by Beverly Willis, published by the National Building Museum, is a book for readers of the late 1990s, who have learned-and demand-to interact with media that includes both ideas and imagery.

Encompassing the full range of visual and verbal arts, Willis discusses and illustrates the creative process that is universal to all designers:

"All art forms, from architecture to music, dance to painting, drama to sculpture, cinematography to illustration, seek to reveal or express the invisible, unarticulated and often unperceived forces that affect the human experience at a given time. Objects that command attention and communicate at some profound level become timeless, weaving a tapestry of universal expression. The invisible images surrounding such forms or designs not only distinguish the present from the past, but generate new possibilities."

This original book, profusely illustrated in color with 170 stunning cross-cultural photographs and drawings of Willis' own architectural projects, multi-media art, and symbols will engage creative people in any field, and all of those who are interested in the creative process.

Willis' textual thesis is enhanced by a compelling visual device: a ribbon of words running along every page of the book, traversing time and place, with quotations from artists, writers, and philosophers, and highlights from her own text. More provocative than the moving headlines on Times Square, they carry the reader along. . . engaged by thoughts and interrupted by images, when not engaged by images and interrupted by thoughts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Author Beverly Willis, FAIA, illuminates an element of architecture often unseen. In INVISIBLE IMAGES: THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE, she urges the reader to understand architecture as more than forms and space or masses and voids but, rather, as a conglomeration of experiences--the invisible images that are formed from personal interpretations, linking the emotions associated with one's perception of the environment to the building itself.

The success of Willis' book comes from the theory and thought of the text, which poetically describes the contextual meaning of her designs. She eloquently unveils a method of realizing the connection between the environment and behavior. In doing so, the book is written to explain her theories to the nonarchitect, and yet it challenges the architect to explore these issues further... -- "AIArchitect The Monthly Magazine of the American Institute of Architect", Book Review by Melissa Worden, Vol. 5, February 1998

The notion of content, or essential idea, is implicit to the creation of architecture. Panofsky in "Meaning in the Visual Arts" defines content, as opposed to subject-matter, as the attitude which a work "betrays," but does not "parade." Whether identified as "meaningful forms" by Norberg-Schulz, the "spirit in objectified forms" by Frank Lloyd Wright, or the "decorum" of forms by Palladio, content is integral to the generation, development and understanding of architecture. INVISIBLE IMAGES concerns the "forces" of visual metaphor which enable an artist to represent the invisible process of transformation that connects idea and form... -- "Acadia Quarterly Review", Darlene A. Brady, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

About the Author

Beverly Willis, an artist, architect, photographer, teacher, and writer, drew on a remarkable range of experience and study as she created Invisible Images. Her career began as a multi-media artist, and she was licensed as an architect in 1966 and honored with a Fellowship by the American Institute of Architects in 1980. Best known among the buildings she designed is the San Francisco Ballet Association Building and School, which is part of the San Francisco Civic and Performing Arts Center. Her award-winning architectural designs have been widely published. Dartmouth College selected Willis to serve as Montgomery Fellow in 1992, giving her the opportunity to study and write while working with students and faculty. Invisible Images developed from preparations for the Montgomery Fellowship Lecture she delivered that winter. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts by Mount Holyoke College in 1984, and has been invited to lecture at many other universities throughout the country. Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York is among the venues that have exhibited her art and design work.

Among the many publications for which she has written are Blueprints, the quarterly Journal of the National Building Museum and Visions and Reflections on Utopia and Reality, edited by Iris Miller and Robert A. Bosser, American Institute of Architects. She studied engineering at Oregon State University and received a BFA degree from the University of Hawaii in 1954.

Beverly Willis is currently founder and director of the Architecture Research Institute, Inc., in New York, and resides in New York City.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: National Building Museum; 1 edition (October 27, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0961975288
• ISBN-13: 978-0961975289
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,745,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical Praise, December 22, 1997

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This review is from: Invisible Images - The Silent Language of Architecture (Hardcover)

Critical Praise for INVISIBLE IMAGES: THE SILENT LANGUAGE OF ARCHITECTURE "This extraordinary, original book delves into the mysteries of visual creativity. It can be explored on a variety of levels in linear and non-linear ways, but on all levels, from layout to theory, it awakens the artist within." SUZANNAH LESSARD, Author, The Architect of Desire; Contributing Author, New Yorker Magazine "Willis presents a remarkable range of images, using them in a perceptive and original way as she explores the nature of the creative process. Invisible Images undertakes a daunting task; but, through skillful graphics and a compelling thesis, it urges the reader to consider anew the language of art". ARCHITECT HUGH HARDY "Anthropologists tell us that there has never been a culture anywhere on earth that was able to get along without what we call art. This is to say that our gift for play, for making things, for looking inward as well as outward, must possess a certain Darwinian advantage. What can that advantage be? Taking evident pleasure in the formal contradiction of the title of her book <i>Invisible Images</i> architect-artist-writer Beverly Willis speculates on this and other questions from a scary position in the tent of intellect, on a trapeze that scorns the need of a net below. I read it with admiration." CRITIC BRENDAN GIL