Architectural Record 2015-02

perspectivebooks
According to Plan, by Rob Kovitz. Treyf Books,
November 2014, 664 pages, $30.
Reviewed by Philip Nobel
the only bit of original text in Rob Kovitz’s
diverting According to Plan is a last-page mission
statement about his imprint, Treyf Books.
The objective of that publishing project is
described there as making “unusual books of
an indeterminate type, sort of story-picture
remix books for people who can’t stomach
any more schmaltzy Chicken Soup for the Soul.”
If we are to take that title, volume one of the
enormously popular self-help series, as a
stand-in for all things that
limit creative possibility
through oversimplification,
overdetermination, and, yes,
schmaltz, then Kovitz is
serving up a proper antidote:
books that mean absolutely
nothing until you make
meaning out of them yourself.
Like Treyf’s other books,
According to Plan is a compilation,
a collection, a farrago
of found objects. Reading it
is like holding in your hands
a discrete piece of that great,
galling, joyous abyss we’re
used to falling into via our
search boxes—in this case, a
search for writing (and associated images)
that contains the loaded word “plan.”
Even the book’s about-the-author blurb is
poached—from a literary biography of the
novelist Chaim Potok (“I don’t ever have an
idea . . . The material does it all . . . I know I
could never plan a plot . . .”). Between those
end-thoughts and the first excerpt, from a
policy statement by the Association of
Newfoundland Land Surveyors (“Therefore,
under fair use, a surveyor has the right to
use the information from a plan in the
preparation of another plan . . .”), we find a
rich, strange, very broad sampling—from
poems and instruction manuals, television
and film, Moby Dick and urbandictionary.com.
Along the way, the idea of making, following,
and even completing that thing we call a
plan is subjected to a furious and entertaining,
if purposefully vague, curatorial critique.
The book is arranged as a sequence of excerpts
in (possibly) thematic chapters; allusion
and smash-cut are the principal techniques.
There is always the specter of irony; a chapter
called “Easy Enough to Plan” contains every
sentence in Don Quixote that uses the subject
word. But According to Plan is never winking:
the author, so epically absent, is never there
to wink. So, flipping through, skipping over,
diving into its many pages, one may experience
something else: a sort of pleasurable tug
at your habits of ratiocination, an insistent
voice (perhaps that of Kovitz himself) telling
you that there are a host of connections to
be made, if you feel like making them.
Whether the book offers a way forward
for architects is, by design, an unanswerable
question. The material is far from architecture-centric;
there are, for instance, many
well-placed excerpts from Battlestar Galactica
where the plan in question was to eradicate,
not build for, the human race. But with a
photograph of Paul Rudolph’s Manhattan
office on the front cover and
a paragraph on architectural
composition on the back,
architects appear to be intended
as a primary audience.
And what might the book
tell us about our field, and
the hopeful, limiting, optimistic,
outdated, futile, and
necessary habit of planning
at its core? What insight
might it contain about the
best plans for an era of rippling
change, one that can
produce a wonderful book
made of nothing but repurposed
words and pictures?
Perhaps not a single thing.
Or, possibly, that, like Kovitz’s book, the best
plans now are different from what we were
taught to make and draw in simpler times:
nimble and inclusive, open-ended and brave,
unafraid to break the rules.
Not plans at all, maybe. Just loosely framed
action. ■
Philip Nobel is the editorial director of SHoP
Architects and the author of Sixteen Acres:
Archi tec ture and the Outrageous Struggle for
the Future of Ground Zero.
[ BRIEFLY NOTED ]
Building for a Changing Culture and Climate:
World Atlas of Sustainable Architecture, by
Ulrich Pfammatter. DOM Publishers, May 2014,
584 pages, $116.
This well-documented volume casts a wide net
in gathering sustainable projects from around
the world—including floating reed houses in
Iraq and the glass-and-steel headquarters
Christoph Ingenhoven designed for Swarovski
in Switzerland (record, June 2013, page 131)—
and has a foreword by Stefan Behnisch.
now,
you can
imagine
it and
submit it.
For the third year, Sunbrella ®
has partnered with Architizer
for the Future of Shade
Competition. Enter for a
chance to win $10,000. Learn
more at futureofshade.com