Books

Published 2014

Available on Apple Books: Volume 1 + Volume 2.

Description

Hundreds of example of modern and traditional ornament that exist in degree (plain to fancy), at all scales and styles. Ornament where line dominates, or shape, or pattern, or texture. It’s sometimes abstract, sometimes representational. It can be intentional, or a serendipitous consequence of design. But, intentional or not, it is all ornament.

(New York: W.W. Norton, 2002)
Paperback and Kindle. Order here.
Translation: Chinese (2007).

Description

100 different examples. Each shows two images of the same building, one of which has a particular detail removed. You be the judge.

Review

"Brolin calls the book “an exercise in the visual craft of design,” and he states as his thesis that “visual choices have visual consequences.” But that emphasis on the visual sells his idea short-for, as he shows, architectural effects are visual for only an instant, just long enough to translate into limbic cues. The book is a primer for avoiding unintended results, for opening eyes to the power of simple moves, for letting go of words. It’s about regaining control of architecture as a medium. The cumulative effect is to demonstrate that-relativists be damned-there is an intrinsic logic linking form to feeling to meaning in the perception of architecture. (And if that is true, my God, why are we wasting our time with stunts and lies?) This grand digression that at its end has given us Eisenman’s dance of death was born from frustration with that limited role. Architecture would strut and preen, its revolutionaries hoped; it would rival philosophy and science and art; it would leave those old rigors unplumbed and set out to find new truths. It hasn’t worked out that way…

Just what are these neglected architectural basics? I always cast around and return to gravity and materials and light (and programs and clients and money and such). In a new book, The Designers Eye (W. W. Norton, 2002), Brent Brolin has found many more, all hidden in plain sight…

Someone remind me: are we still in a fashion-moment when it’s uncool to control effects? If so, Brolin’s book is the antidote. It is a tool for recognizing and managing that trickiest and most critical of architectural phenomena, the repercussions of detail. …Can a small alteration—a cantilever versus a pier, say—change the feel of building so drastically that it means something new? It looks that way here.”

—Phillip Nobel
Metropolis, December, 2002

(New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).

Revised edition of Flight of Fancy: Banishment and Return of Ornament (St. Martin's Press, 1985).

Available on Apple Books.

Description

Attitudes towards architectural ornament from ancient times to the present.

Review

“This book made sense of a great many things for me. In explaining the banishment of ornament, it explores the evolution of the elaborate con-game that makes up our present concept of art, of artistic genius, and of good taste.

I expect many people will find this book incredibly offensive. It is truly a wonderful book.”

—Paul F. Harrison
(Melbourne, Australia, 2009)

(New York: William Morrow & Co., 1988).

Description

Should New York City’s prestigious St. Bartholomew’s Church tear down its community house and build a skyscraper? A tale of intense controversy between two factions of church leadership, with input from the city’s Landmark Commission.

(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985).

Original edition. For revised edition, please see Architectural Ornament: Banishment & Return.

Description

Attitudes towards architectural ornament from ancient times to the present.

Reviews

"An important book... beyond reasonable doubt, Brolin acquits ornament of any and all charges that have ever been leveled against it. With breathtaking and impeccable scholarship, he argues among other things, that the modernists themselves committed the heresy. They only disguised the natural human lust for ornament in various ways. 'Flight of Fancy' explodes a tenacious myth that has stunted twentieth-century architectural creativity. As I read the book with mounting excitement, I realized that Brolin has at last provided a sound philosophical foundation for the new architecture we all need and want. Brolin builds this foundation on his brilliant and influential previous books, The Failure of Modern Architecture and Architecture in Context. They shape our vague dissatisfactions with what is being built these days into clear, constructive thought—the kind of logical and historically literate thought that is the essential basis of good design."

—Wolf Von Eckardt, Architecture Critic, The Washington Post

"This book is a tour, after the battle, of the wrecked ideals of the modem movement in architecture, asking what went wrong and why, what can be saved, where to turn next. It's a timely, vivid summary of what everyone is beginning to think. The illustrations are especially poignant."

—Robert Campbell, The Boston Globe

With Jean Richards. (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982).

Description

Since architects of the mid twentieth century had not been trained in the designing of ornament, my wife and I collected names and addresses of artisans throughout the US who could contribute ornament to buildings. Muralists, metal workers, etc. We did this pre-computer!

Reviews

“For the person who cares about the architectural details and hardware that make a home individual and original - or perhaps authentic [this book is] of interest. Though the book is intended primarily for professionals (a few of the items are available only through designers and decorators), laymen will delight in the many ornamental possibilities illustrated.

— The New York Times 1983

This book is a tremendous resource for designers, architects, and renovators. Strongly recommended for courses on design and architecture. With more than 1000 designers, manufacturers, and distributors of exterior architectural ornament are listed under twenty headlines, from awnings, brick and terracotta, and decals through glass, murals, and sculpture, to stucco and wood. Each section consists of a brief introduction about the medium, a geographic listing of firms/craftsmen, etc., with addresses and phone numbers and a brief description of the work or materials in which they deal, and a comparative checklist. A lot of work has been done in compiling this book of questionnaires. The only complaint would be the lack of a geographical index. The illustrations are thoughtfully chosen and help to make the points which are the authors' philosophical bases of argument: ornament is not, as Loos would have it, a crime, but has a positive role in architecture which can be appreciated in the post-modern era.

—Jack Perry Brown, in Journal of the Art Library Society of North America, Vol. 1, #5.

(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1980).

Completed with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Featured in Design Arts 1, August, 1980, published by the Grants Recognition Program of the NEA.

Translations: Spanish (1982); Serbo-Croatian (1987).

Description

Amply illustrated with images from the US and Europe, showing neighboring buildings from different periods. Some more and some less successful fit-ins. My conclusion about what makes a successful fit-in? Neither size nor color nor materials, but detail.

Review

The topic of how new and old buildings are to be related to one another is one of the least-discussed and most widely mis-understood within the profession of architecture. This book, and another like it, the later "The Architecture of Additions: Design and Regulation" by Paul Spencer Byard, are two of the few good books I've found that tackle this issue, and each features essentially case analysis of both successful and unsuccessful examples of the relationship between new and old buildings in many different forms. In fact, the two books have very little, if any, overlap in content, and therefore make very good companion books. These are must-reads for any architecture, urban design, and historic preservation students (and practitioners) involved in this type of design work.

—Nathan Speck

(Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976). Translations: Greek (1978) and German (1980).

Enhanced edition available on Apple Books.

Description

After graduating from Yale Architecture School, I found I was only comfortable designing in one style: “modern.” Wondering why my design education had been so limited, I spent several pleasurable years digging into history in the New York Public Library and coming up with the conclusions found in this book.

Reviews

“Brolin attempts to liberate the budding architect from the frustrating dogmatism of his grandfathers, who branded all ornamentation as sinful…a provocative book which comes at the right time.”

—Arthur Koestler

“[Brolin] believes it is not a moral or even an economic imperative that makes PS 41 look like a factory; it is a fashion that we have the right to reject. Well argued and copiously illustrated, the book deals provocatively with questions central to the work of modern designers in many fields; it deserves a wide readership.”

—The New York Times

“The Sherlock Holmes analogy is only one of the entertaining comparisons that make Brolin’s book something few volumes on architecture ever are—intelligent for architects yet free enough from priestly jargon to be worth the interest of a general readership.”

—Boston Sunday Globe

“Brolin is an architect with a poet’s vision and a draughtsman’s eye. A special book Buy it!”

—The Reader

“When I opened this slim volume...I wondered if anyone but a specialist would be interested in what [Brolin] had to say. Now I’m betting that many of us would be...”

—CBS Radio News

“Brolin does the job with cool and deadly precision. His understated arguments are devastating.”

—Chicago Tribune

“[Brolin’s] indignation is perfectly justified and in fact long overdue. His proposed remedy...is full of good sense.”

—The National Review

“For every urban professional, [the book] is an important, insightful, thought-provoking look at the basic assumptions which underlie modern architectural practice...a study that may uncover the key to making buildings more responsive to user needs.”

—Library of Urban Affairs (Alternate Selection)

“A voice crying out in the wilderness of glass towers...“

—Art Gallery

“The final admonition about the rooting of the present and the future in the past will be convincing to all readers—for that is what this book is all about.”

—Baltimore Evening Sun