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Mohsen Mostafavi (ed.)

Portman’s America

& Other Speculations

Portman’s America & Other Speculations takes an unconventional and speculative approach towards the understanding of the work of one of the world’s most creative, controversial, daring, and prolific architects, John Portman. Combining the talents of an architect, artist and developer, he was able to embark on a series of large-scale building projects – megastructures – that radically redefined the relationship of architecture to the city and its citizens.

Portman’s own voice and ideas complement the contributions of others, including new photographs by Iwan Baan, to present a more complex and nuanced reading of both the architect and his architecture. Finally, the repertoire of Portman’s buildings is analyzed in meticulous detail and used by a group of students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design as a catalyst for a host of divergent and new architectural speculations.

Portman’s America & Other Speculations takes an unconventional and speculative approach towards the understanding of the work of one of the world’s most creative, controversial, daring, and prolific architects, John Portman. Combining the talents of an architect, artist and developer, he was able to embark on a series of large-scale building projects – megastructures – that radically redefined the relationship of architecture to the city and its citizens.

Portman’s own voice and ideas complement the contributions of others, including new photographs by Iwan Baan, to present a more complex and nuanced reading of both the architect and his architecture. Finally, the repertoire of Portman’s buildings is analyzed in meticulous detail and used by a group of students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design as a catalyst for a host of divergent and new architectural speculations.

“the text is engaging on its own, yet it yields ground to stunning photography by Andreas Gursky, Jordi Bernadó, and Iwan Baan”
– METROPOLIS

Edited by Mohsen Mostafavi, co-published by Harvard University Graduate School of Design

With photographs by Iwan Baan

Design: Integral Lars Müller

16,5 × 24 cm, 6 ½ × 9 ½ in

356 pages, 396 illustrations

paperback

2017, 978-3-03778-532-4, English
Architectural Discourse Portrait
CHF 40.00

Mohsen Mostafavi

Mohsen Mostafavi, architect and educator, is the Alexander and Victoria Wiley Professor of Design of the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was the school's dean from 2008 through 2019. His work focuses on modes and processes of urbanization and the interface between technology and aesthetics.

Iwan Baan

Photo Iwan Baan

Iwan Baan (*1975) is a Dutch photographer based between Amsterdam and the U.S., known primarily for images that narrate the life and interactions that occur within architecture. His artistic approach has given matters of architecture an approachable and accessible voice, focusing on the perspectives of the everyday individuals who give meaning and context to the architecture and spaces that surround us. In 2012, he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his work on the Torre David in Caracas, Venezuela, gaining him further international acclaim. Architects turn to Baan to give their work a sense of place and narrative within their environments. Baan’s first major retrospective of his globally renowned oeuvre will open at the Vitra Design Museum in Germany on October 21st, 2023.

CHF 40.00