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Michael Kubo at Boston's Pinkcomma

Hidden underground in an industrial warehouse in the South End, the pinkcomma gallery carves an alternative space in Boston's conventionally conservative design circle. I attended their latest opening, a double feature titled Publishing Practices and Heroic -- the first a sweeping survey of architectural publishing, the second an optimistic showcase on Boston's love affair with concrete. Fascinated by the duet of subjects, I delved into it further with Michael Kubo, designer, scholar, and guest curator.

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What was the inspiration for your project, "Publishing Practices"?

My background is in architecture, and after nine years of working in editorial -- at Office of Metropolitan Architecture and Actar Publishing -- I wanted to explore the long history of architects that have operated through books. When I was in Barcelona with Actar, almost all of the editors were architects, and we saw ourselves as architects. It was just that our architectural product was...books.

In your survey, you asked people to name books that "have been important in your architectural education and/or current practice in the field." But how can you really measure or quantify the impact of books?

I was looking for what books mattered to people. Not like a 'top five' list, but more of an overarching survey of the status of books throughout architecture -- across the entire discipline, if you took a slice at year X, what would be the most important book to people? What is the shared knowledge at different points in time and how has it evolved? And that's why we focused on ten case studies -- from Corbusier's Vers une Architecture in 1923, to Venturi's Learning from Las Vegas, to Koolhaas's S, M, L, XL. The discovery through all of this? The most canonical architects have also been the most canonical publishers.

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Michael Kubo, designer, scholar, and guest curator at Pinkcomma Gallery.

Out of the 150 people you surveyed, what were some of the most striking trends?

As to be expected, being an online survey, there was a definite skew towards architects and designers educated after 1990. What we did notice, surprisingly, was that there was a significant flattening of data points after S, M, L, XL in 1995, nearly 15 years ago. It begs the question, could it possibly be the final major influential design book?

I know that people have probably asked you this -- when you were in architecture, what book spoke most to you?

(Chuckles.) I've actually never gotten that particular question directed at me before. I think that my research has really been trying to answer that, for myself. You could say that this exhibit was in part a self-reflexive question that arose out of my professional career.

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Left: Chris Grimley's graphic intelligence really made the book timeline and data graphics communicate in Publishing Practices.

Right: Mark Pasnik's photography was a big part of the look of the Heroic show.

And now for the burning question of the moment: what about design blogs?  Could you see them being the center of a similar type of research investigation? Do you think design blogs have the ability to inspire new forms of architectural production in ways that books cannot?

Because of the sheer amount of online content and how quickly design blogs change, I don't think they are built with the same longevity as books. Currently, the field is too diffuse for this question, and the rate of consumption is too rapid. I think what we've mainly seen is that when specific blogs try to focus themselves, when a blog wants to be 'canonical', it does so by trying to become a book.

How does "Publishing Practices" engage in a dialogue with "Heroic"? And why was Pinkcomma chosen to be the site of this double feature?

Pinkcomma is really occupying a new space in Boston's design world for things outside both academia and industry. With Heroic, Chris Grimley, Mark Pasnik (Pinkcomma co-directors) and I are trying to recover a period of innovation in Boston, embracing those concrete buildings that are either ignored or hated today. We wanted to re-make Boston's architectural history as a modern, shared project, and move away from its conservative, 'brick city' image. Which is why we used individual sheets of pink and grey papers to display the exhibit -- so that people could bring the content with them to new places. Together, we wanted both exhibits to be not an academic exercise, but the start of a public discussion and a public takeaway.

With these two histories -- the history of architectural publishing, and the history of Boston's heroic era -- do you think a conversation has started?

Yes! At the opening, people were leafing through the papers, pocketing them, and having really hybrid discussions. There is a real disconnect between education and practice, as we all know, and I think Pinkcomma and these type of provocative exhibitions will really become the platform to bridge it.

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Assistant Professor of Architecture Liam O'Brien closely scrutinizes the timeline and corresponding survey results around the 1950 mark.

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Architecture and Visual Arts student Sam Kronick muses over which concrete building page he would like to take home with him.

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  • Published: October 2, 2009

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