Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design (Hardcover)

by Ellen Lupton (Author) "SKIN is a multilayered, multipurpose organ that shifts from thick to thin, tight to loose, lubricated to dry, across the landscape of the body..." (more)
Key Phrases: artificial skin, living skin, tissue engineering, New York, Marcel Wanders, Greg Lynn (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...offers surprising insights into our relationships with the increasingly complex 'skins' that surround us." -- Metropolis, June 2002

"As this book powerfully suggests...it is becoming increasingly hard...to distinguish ourselves from the things that surround us." -- Eye, 2002

"Lupton regards skin as a cultural metaphor, which is what makes this beautifully produced book...so provocative." -- Architectural Record, October 2002

"These cutting edge ideas. . . may be changing the way people live and think about decorative furniture." -- Associated Press, July 2002

Product Description
Every object has a skin. Thick or thin, smooth or rough, porous or impermeable, the skin is the line between the hidden inside and the outside we experience. Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design presents products, furniture, fashion, architecture, and media that are expanding the limits of what we understand as surface. Reflecting the convergence of natural and artificial life, this provocative and stimulating book shows how enhanced and simulated skins appear everywhere in our contemporary world. Designers today manipulate the relationship between the inside and outside of objects, garments, and buildings, creating skins that both reveal and conceal, skins that have depth and complexity as well as their own behaviors and identities.

Skin features the work of such notable designers and architects as Greg Lynn, Petra Blaisse, SPEEDO, Morphosis, Ross Lovegrove, Marcel Wanders, and many others. It also contains essays on artificial skin and digital surfaces, and a glossary of surface materials. It reminds us that beauty is indeed only skin-deep.

This book accompanies a major exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (March 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568983182
• ISBN-13: 978-1568983189
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #430,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Images, November 25, 2002

By A Customer

This book has exellent images but it lacks text, "A picture is worth a thousand words" as they say. Although there is lack of text I think there's just enough to give you an idea of what the products are, who the designers and manufacturers are too. So the book acts almost as a catalog. All in all I think it's a great book, it's enjoyable to flip through or it could take you an hour looking at just one product. Oh and just incase you don't know what the book is about it displays different "Skin" conditions (that is different surface materials either conventional or inovative used on a wide range of products including chairs and clothes)
ENJOY :-)

0 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dee liscious, August 26, 2003

By	A. Metral "Alex" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

a little on the ind. design side of things, but a wonderful visceral survey of surface distinction.