Alumni Publications
Books
- Revolving Architecture: A History of Buildings that Rotate, Swivel, and Pivot (Chad Randl)
From the Princeton Architectural Press: Alternately lauded as the future of architecture or dismissed as pure
folly, revolving buildings are a fascinating missing chapter in
architectural history with surprising relevance to issues in
contemporary architectural design. Rotating structures have been
employed to solve problems and create effects that stationary buildings
can't achieve. Rotating buildings offered ever-changing vistas and made
interior spaces more flexible and adaptable. They were used to impress
visitors, treat patients, and improve the green qualities of a
structure by keeping particular rooms in or out of the sun.
The follow-up to his critically acclaimed book A-frame, Chad Randl's Revolving Architecture: A History of Buildings that Rotate, Swivel, and Pivot
explores the history of this unique building type, investigating the
cultural forces that have driven people to design and inhabit them.
Revolving Architecture is packed with a variety of fantastic revolving
structures such as a jail that kept inmates under a warden's constant
surveillance, glamorous revolving restaurants, tuberculosis treatment
wards, houses, theaters, and even a contemporary residential building
whose full-floor apartments circle independently of each other.
International examples from the late 1800s though the present
demonstrate the variety and innovation of these dynamic structures.
- A-Frame (Chad Randl)
From the Princeton Architectural Press: "A" was the architectural letterform of leisure building in postwar
America. Eager to stake out mountain and lakeside retreats, an entire
generation of high-end homebuilders and weekend handymen found the
A-frame an easy and affordable home to construct; its steeply sloping
triangular roof distinctive and easy to maintain (almost no exterior
walls to paint!). Fueled by A-frame plans and kits, the style became
something of a national craze, with tens of thousands of houses built.
Indeed,
the A-frame was an icon for recreation, an acceptable form of modernism
(although its origins go back thousands of years), and a convenient
tool for marketing a wide range of products, including gas-powered
toilets, motorcycles, and canned vegetables; Fisher-Price even made one
for children. So popular on the domestic front, the A-Frame was
eventually adapted to other building types, from roadside restaurants
to churches.
In a fascinating look at this architectural
phenomenon, Chad Randl tells the story of the "triangle" house from
prehistoric Japan to its lifestyle-changing heyday in the 1960s. Part
architectural history and part cultural exploration, A-Frame documents
every aspect of A-frame living using cartoons, ads, high-style and
do-it-yourself examples, family snapshots, and even an appendix with a
complete set of blueprints in case you want to build your own!
- Tinged With Gold: Hop Culture in the United States (Michael A. Tomlan)
From the University of Georgia Press: Today hop growing remains a viable commercial
enterprise only in parts of the far western United States-notably in
Washington. But, as James Fenimore Cooper remembered, the
mid-nineteenth century in Cooperstown, New York, was a time when "the
'hop was king, ' and the whole countryside was one great hop yard, and
beautiful".
In Tinged with Gold, Michael A. TomIan explores all
aspects of hop culture in the United States and provides a background
for understanding the buildings devoted to drying, baling, and storing
hops. The work considers the history of these structures as it
illustrates their development over almost two centuries, the result of
agrarian commercialism and nearly continuous technological improvement.
In examining the context in which the buildings were constructed,
Tomlan considers the growth, cultivation, and harvesting of the plant;
the economic, social, and recreational activities of the people
involved in hop culture; and the record of mechanical inventions and
technical developments that shaped hop kilns, hop houses, and hop
driers and coolers in the various areas where the crop flourished. The
work challenges assumptions about the noncommercial nature of American
agriculture in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and raises
important questions about the "folk" tradition of hop houses, arguing
that the designs of these buildings were rational responses to
commercial imperatives rather than the continuance of arcane English or
European customs.
Tinged with Gold brings hop culture to life as
it explores the history of this neglected aspect of rural agriculture.
Because the work demonstrates that the significance of a relatively
obscure building type can befully appreciated if placed in its
historical context, it provides a model for studying other rural
structures. Drawing upon an impressive array of primary and secondary
sources, this work is a definitive history of hop culture in the United
States.
- Richmond Indiana: Its Physical Development and Aesthetic Heritage to 1920 (Mary Raddant Tomlan, Michael A. Tomlan)
From Amazon.com: A city’s history is made visible in its buildings, structures, sites
and landscaping. A history of the architecture of Richmond, Indiana, is
explored in this new book through more than 130 illustrations,
including maps, subdivision plats, aerial views, and streetscapes that
put individual buildings in their urban settings. The book gives
readers access to Richmond’s history by examining its physical nature
along with a broad range of factors involved in decades of growth and
change. For readers who are familiar with Richmond, the book brings a
fresh understanding of a well known place; for those just being
introduced to Richmond, the book presents ideas applicable to the study
of other communities, and an understanding of how developments in one
community contribute to a broader state or national picture.
