Customer Reviews

Turner Brooks: Work

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This is not your coffee table book of the current architectural fashion. If you are interested in the idiosyncratic efforts of an intelligent practitioner working in an out-of-the-way corner of the country, I heartily recommend this book. As far as his style, it is "odd" much like Jersey Devil (Steve Badanes), but more educated and much more layered, both referentially and visually. Turner Brooks has had a modest amount of publicity, starting I think with Vincent Scully's "The Shingle Style Today" (subtitled "the historian's revenge," and a Record Houses award. The essays are better than the usual drivel which accompanies a monograph, and some of the photos are only OK, but the body of work points out that great work is possible even with projects of minimal scope. We should all do as well, or hope to.

This book presents drawings and photographs of models and completed buildings--mostly houses set in the country. To this extent, the book does what a survey of an architect's work is expected to do, and the designs are pleasing, often whimsical (some of the houses, viewed a little vaguely, resemble creatures, others boats). The images make one curious to know more of what led to these designs--and the remainder of the book helps to answer that question.

Turner Brooks' charcoal drawings of dim, dynamic scenes begin to explain the feelings that may have given rise to these designs. (I say "feelings," because it is these, and not "thoughts" that seem to matter to Mr. Brooks' work.) Some of his designs are reminiscent of Virgina Lee Burton's children's books--a source that he cites with affection. Others, especially when presented in miniature (many bright-colored models arrayed in tall grass, or his larger wooden pyramid photographed as it travelled through the streets of Rome) look like toys.

The effect of combining these glimpses into Mr. Brooks' backstage life with the images of his buildings is to show that he has been able to make his work and his play, his adult vocation and his childhood's preoccupations, an integrated whole. I wish we all could do as much.

I have never seen such a sorry excuse for architecture in my life. Buy this book if you need a good laugh. Reading the text coupled with the powerfully ludicrous images of Mr. Brook's silly architecture is analogous to watching a poorly scripted B-Movie. There are much better ways to spend your hard earned architectural salary!