Wellington Reiter: Vessels and Fields (1999)

“A collection of Wellington Reiter’s experimental projects, presented through a series of drawings that owe as much of a debt to Lebbeus Woods for their frenetic and intense energy as they do to Piranesi for their ability to use simple pen-and-ink linework to create unusually complex spaces. These fantastical projects-a mix of architecture, museum installations, and public art-often involve the reuse of obsolete military installations (abandoned missile silos, historic battlefields, and decommissioned aircraft carriers), which adds to the provocative nature of the work.”

“This collection of images was drawn, for the most part, from a lecture entitled, ‘The Necessity of Fiction in Architecture,’ (MIT, June 1994). In essence, the talk buttressed the role of speculation within the discipline and expressed the need for an operative mythology for the city. Rather than recount the arguments of that appeal, this visual text offers sub-plots which link the various works in ways that could only be discerned through graphic comparison. The result is neither a chronological record of development, an explanation of the projects, or even an accurate portrayal of the works in question. Instead, several formal and metaphoric consistencies are revealed and compounded. … Believing that much of architecture exceeds construction, this document is part of a tradition of proposing alternative pasts and futures for architecture and especially for the city. It is believed that such hypothesizing can influence our recption of real sites and therefore must remain an essential component of practice.” (page 10)

Foreword by Patricia Phillips
Publisher Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1999
ISBN 1568981872, 9781568981871
188 pages
via tlukejones

WorldCat

PDF (68 MB)