Twentieth-century architect Frederick Kiesler's innovative
multidisciplinary practice responded to the ever-changing needs of
the body in motion, anticipating the research-oriented practices of
contemporary art and architecture. In 1960, the renowned architect
Philip Johnson championed Frederick Kiesler, calling him "the
greatest non-building architect of our time." Kiesler's ideas were
difficult to construct, but as Johnson believed, "enormous" and
"profound." Kiesler (1890-1965) went against the grain of the
accepted modern style, rejecting rectilinear glass and steel in
favor of more organic forms and flexible structures that could
respond to the ever-changing needs of the body in motion. In
Elastic Architecture, Stephen Phillips offers the first in-depth
exploration of Kiesler's innovative and multidisciplinary research
and design practice. Phillips argues that Kiesler established a new
career trajectory for architects not as master builders, but as
research practitioners whose innovative means and methods could
advance alternative and speculative architecture. Indeed, Kiesler's
own career was the ultimate uncompromising model of a
research-based practice. Exploring Kiesler's formative
relationships with the European avant-garde, Phillips shows how
Kiesler found inspiration in the plastic arts, experimental
theater, early animation, and automatons to develop and refine his
spatial concept of the Endless. Moving from Europe to New York in
the 1920s, Kiesler applied these radical Dadaist, constructivist,
and surrealist practices to his urban display projects, which
included shop windows for Saks Fifth Avenue. After launching his
innovative Design Correlation Laboratory at Columbia and Yale,
Kiesler went on to invent new houses, theaters, and galleries that
were meant to move, shift, and adapt to evolutionary changes
occurring within the natural and built environment. As Phillips
demonstrates vividly, although many of Kiesler's designs remained
unbuilt, his ideas proved influential to later generations of
architects and speculative artists internationally, including
Archigram, Greg Lynn, UNStudio, and Olafur Eliasson.
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