Kent Kleinman

Spiro Kostof’s survey has special qualities that at the time were groundbreaking: he insisted that the drawing was as important as the built edifice as a object of study; he bucked the tradition of chronology as the only legitimate structure for the genre; and he insisted on including context as part of his subject matter, not just in his text, but also by producing new drawings of well-known sites showing surrounding conditions—often even the site’s topography. He oriented all site plans with north up as a didactic reminder of cardinal orientation as a kind of meta-context.

Ben Katchor is one of the great chroniclers of New York City, even if that means inventing places for familiar events or inventing events for real places. This graphic novel introduces us to such architectural wonders as Foyer Hall—a theater on Gymsarchus Ave at 11th Street comprising principally a foyer with a gently sloped floor to encourage crowds to mingle; the Symmetry Shop on Ainsaint Avenue in the Beauty Supply District (directly across the intersection from the Hot Aura Frankfurt School store); and the waterproof, topographically precise Puddle Map of the expanded metropolitan area.

The crime is that the entire corpus of Loos’s essays has not been translated into English. This volume (the title translates as “Nevertheless”)  contains gems such as “Keramika,” in which Loos embraces accident as an aesthetic principle; “Hands Off,” banishing the architect from touching anything that is supposed to have lasting value; and the obituary to Josef Veillich, with the observation celebrated by Aldo Rossi: “Man weiss, dass das ganze kunstgetue im wohnungswesen … keinen hund vom warmen ofen lockt” (roughly: “It is well known that all the artful novelties in housing . . . do not tempt the dog away from the warm stove”). As a discipline, we should get organized and get the entire opus translated and published.