Boundaries
by Maya Ying Lin
 |
After designing the starkly symbolic Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington,
D.C., when she was still an undergraduate, Maya Lin might have been doomed
to spend the rest of her architecture career vainly trying to top herself.
But 18 years later, her concerns clearly have nothing to do with self-aggrandizement.
In Boundaries, Lin's lucid, soft-spoken collection of writings, she discusses
how her work evolves, after a lengthy gestation, as a way of heightening
viewers' awareness of a specific environment and perception of the passage
of time. This temporal aspect can be a sequence of historical events (as
in the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama) or a purely aesthetic
quality, like the shifting play of light over a grassy field of sculpted
earth (Wave Field at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). "I like to
think of my work as creating a private conversation with each person,"
Lin writes, "no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people
are present." Understandably, Lin writes in greatest detail about the Vietnam
memorial, a high-profile commission fraught with controversy because of
its unusual form as well as the age, gender, and ethnicity of its American-born
architect. But this engrossing, amply illustrated book also details the
thinking and experimentation behind myriad other projects, including elemental
sculptures, interiors, and furniture designed with an unusual degree of
consideration for the user's needs. Influenced by her ceramist father,
Lin always gravitated toward working directly with malleable materials--an
experience that complements the rational precision of plans and blueprints
(the Vietnam memorial first took shape as a mound of mashed potatoes).
Boundaries reflects the same blend of close analysis, intuition, and quiet
humility that marks Lin's public projects. --Cathy Curtis - Amazon.com
Hardcover: 224 pages
Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 0684834170; (October 2000)
Maya
Lin Architect (Set of 6)
by Lynn Yokoe
(Paperback -- January 1, 1996)
Special Order
Beginning
Biographies : American Women - Maya Lin (Six Pack)
by Lynn Yokel
(Paperback -- 1994)
Special Order
Maya Lin : topologies
by Maya Ying Lin
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Maya Lin : [American Academy in Rome, 10 dicembre 1998-21 febbraio
1999
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