Hunch #11 from the Berlage Insti­tute came out the past month. The annual books cur­rent theme is Rethink­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Google Maps +

Hunch #11 – Berlage Insti­tute
Editor: Pene­lope Dean
Pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary 2007
176 pages, 16.5 cm x 30 cm

The editor writes:
“This issue of hunch expands on the recent pro­lif­er­a­tion of the term ‘representation’ by dis­till­ing ten terms – figure, logo, image, icon, dia­gram, apply, enlarge, prac­tice, pol­i­tics and work – from the ten com­mis­sioned essays.

Peter Eisen­man begins the anthol­ogy with an essay out­lin­ing his move away from the ‘index’ toward the ‘post-indexical, or the pro­duc­tion of fig­ures, which he finds nec­es­sary for today’s revised sub­jects and read­ers. In a reply to Eisenman’s ques­tion ‘How do you teach green dots?’ R. E. Somol puts for­ward the case for per­for­ma­tive archi­tec­ture, graphic expe­di­ency, and the logo.

Ben van Berkel and Car­o­line Bos revisit the role of image and offer the alter­nate con­cept of ‘after-image’ as a dis­ci­pli­nary means for archi­tec­ture to con­tinue its func­tion as art.
In an essay excerpted from his recent book accom­pa­nied by the draw­ings of Made­lon Vrisendorp, Charles Jencks lays out the case for the iconic build­ing. John McMor­rough his­tor­i­cally recalls the archi­tec­tural cov­er­age of paint through 1960s Supergraphics.

Pene­lope Dean com­pares two Alessi Tea and Coffee moments, expos­ing emblem­atic episodes in the mobile rela­tion­ships between archi­tec­ture and design, rep­re­sen­ta­tion and discipline.

Jef­frey Kipnis returns to the role of the dia­gram and its effect of re-​origination as the basis for all medium speci­ficity. Roemer van Toorn defines a ‘politics of aesthetics’ through the work of Gerrit Rietveld and Wiel Arets Archi­tects. Sylvia Lavin calls for a shift away from rep­re­sen­ta­tion and a return to build­ing, pro­mot­ing the ‘pet rock’ as a viable anal­ogy for the return to practice.

Finally, in the clos­ing essay, Stan Allen dis­cards con­tem­po­rary dis­cus­sions of the crit­i­cal and pro­jec­tive, rep­re­sen­ta­tion and per­for­mance, to state that one’s focus can be on prac­tices them­selves, in other words on doing.

Despite the var­i­ous posi­tions and argu­ments implied in this issue – dec­la­ra­tions either for or against con­tem­po­rary modes of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, claims that rep­re­sen­ta­tion should not be about that but rather about this, or deploy­ments of rep­re­sen­ta­tion as simply the straw man for some­thing else – hunch 11 stands as a demon­stra­tion of the topic’s ongo­ing resilience and cen­tral­ity to archi­tec­tural dis­course. It’s simply the thing we’ll never get over.”