04

The Great Pretender

Theo Jansen

简介

Description 

在《The Great Pretender》中，动态艺术家Theo Jansen表明，“我”的概念只是我们进化过程中的一个工具。 我们需要这个工具变得自私。 没有我幻想就没有自私。 自 1990 年以来，Theo Jansen一直致力于创造新的生命形式：用黄色塑料管制成的海滩动物。 由这些管子制成的骨骼能够行走，从风中获取营养。 他们进化了好几代，越来越擅长在风暴和海水中幸存。Theo Jansen的最终愿望是在岸边释放成群的这些动物。 可以说，在重演创世纪时，他希望通过遇到“创造者”必须面对的问题，在与现有自然打交道时变得更加明智。《The Great Pretender》讲述了詹森作为上帝的经历。

In The Great Pretender, kinetic artist Theo Jansen shows that the concept of "I" is merely a tool in our evolution. We need this tool to be selfish. There can be no selfishness without the I-fantasy. Since 1990, Theo Jansen has been engaged in creating new forms of life: beach animals made from yellow plastic tubing. Skeletons made from these tubes are able to walk, deriving their nutrition from the wind. They evolved over many generations, becoming increasingly adept at surviving storms and water from the sea. Theo Jansen’s ultimate wish is to release herds of these animals on the shore. In reenacting Genesis, so to speak, he hopes to become wiser in his dealings with the existing nature by encountering problems the "creator" had to face. The Great Pretender is a account of Jansen’s experiences as God.

推荐理由

Reason for Recommendation 

Theo Jansen像一个“造物主”， 用塑料做了一些个“生物”，让他们自己成长与进化。本书大多是艺术家的碎碎念，讲述他如何创造这些塑料管生物的过程，偶然与惊喜，自发与巧合。艺术家提供了一个视角：有生命的和无生命物体之间没有绝对的区别的，他们之间或有很多方式可以转换。 如果自然是进化的蓄意为之，或机遇巧合的结果， 那么在这许多有意无意之外，应该还有广阔浩渺的无限可能吧…

Theo Jansen is like a "creator", made some "creatures" out of plastic, allowing them to grow and evolve on their own. This book is mostly the artist's chants, telling how he created these plastic tube creatures, accident and surprise, spontaneity and coincidence. The artist provides a perspective: there is no absolute difference between animate and inanimate objects, and there may be many ways to switch between them. If nature is deliberately done by evolution, or the result of chance and coincidence, then there should be vast and infinite possibilities beyond these many intentional or unintentional...

05 

Delirious New York

Rem Koolhaas

唐克扬（译） 

简介 

Description 

《癫狂的纽约》（Delirious New York）一书中，库哈斯认为“曼哈顿的建筑是一种拥塞的开拓之范型，曼哈顿已产生自己的大都会都市主义――拥塞文化”，并提出了拥塞文化的三个定理：格子（Grid）、脑前叶切开术（lobotomy）、分裂（schism）。 格子代表曼哈顿的都市规划，表现出一种不自由和自由间的辩证关系；脑前叶切开术代表摩天大楼内外关系的决裂；分裂则代表摩天大楼叠豆腐式的空间构成造成上下楼层关系分裂的状况。库哈斯认为拥塞文化“解决了形式（外）与机能（内）长久以来的冲突，使曼哈顿的的建筑物兼具建筑和高效能机械；现代的和永恒的。”

In Delirious New York, Koolhaas believes that "Manhattan architecture is a pioneering paradigm of congestion, Manhattan has produced its own metropolitan urbanism-congestion culture", and proposed Three theorems of congested culture: Grid, lobotomy, and schism. The grid represents the urban planning of Manhattan, showing a dialectical relationship between non freedom and freedom; anterior lobe incision represents the rupture of the relationship between the inside and outside of the skyscraper; the split represents the split between the upper and lower floors due to the stacked tofu-like spatial composition of the skyscraper Status. Koolhaas believes that the congested culture "resolves the long-standing conflict between form (outside) and function (inside), so that Manhattan's buildings are both architectural and high-performance machinery; modern and timeless."

推荐理由 

Reason for Recommendation  

一千个人有一千个纽约。纽约如何是成为纽约，库哈斯在为这个纽约补写一个宣言中，给出的是观察，和更多的观察， 没有结论。欲望与资本，种族与文化，滚成了这个剪不断理还乱的大毛球。 它太复杂了，太矛盾了，它的每一个面都是无数硬币的正反面。可能正是由于这些矛盾与冲突， 撞击出了这个无与伦比的宇宙中心。对库哈斯的英文望而生畏的朋友， 推荐唐克扬老师的中译本。

“所分之土，未见人居；

所指之民，实属臆测；

所存建构，仍为幻影；

所征之事，尚未存在。”

There is a thousand New York for a thousand people. How New York became New York, Koolhaas made up a manifesto for this New York. He gave observations, and more observations, without conclusion. Desire and capital, race and culture, have become this big hairball that is constantly being organized and chaotic. It is too complicated and too contradictory. Every aspect of it is the front and back of countless coins. It may be precisely because of these contradictions and conflicts that this unparalleled center of the universe has been hit. For those who are intimidated by Koolhaas's English, I recommend Tang Keyang's Chinese translation.

06 

Mask of Medusa

John Hejduk

简介

Description 

海杜克的建筑就像他的诗一样关注点尺度很小，没有宏大叙事却诗意磅礴，因为它承载了现实的深度。亚伯拉罕说：“你的图画和你的言语，必须像刀削出来的铅笔一般锋利”，他的老师海杜克做到了，他总独具慧眼以思想者和诗人的风采去审视建筑，建筑在他笔下不仅是实体，还是思想的再现，他巧妙运用洗练的隐喻和生动的diagram带你走近理想中的建筑，充满表现力度、思想深度、严谨手法和敏锐洞察力，因为他注重的不是设计作品的物化，而是设计推敲过程本身。在这本《美杜莎面具》中海杜克希望在个人性与集体性之间寻找关系，通过观察者与被观察者的窥探方式重新定义自我和建筑，建构出自己的面具，所以读此书就是和海杜克的深沉激越极具创造性的建筑学愿景对话。

Hejduk’s architecture, like his poems, focuses on a small scale, without a grand narrative but poetic, because it carries the depth of reality. Abraham said， "Your pictures and your words must be as sharp as a pencil sharpened by a knife." His teacher Hejduk did it. He always has a unique eye to examine architecture with the style of a thinker and poet. His writings are not only entities, but also representations of ideas. He cleverly uses refined metaphors and vivid diagrams to bring you closer to the ideal architecture, full of expressiveness, depth of thought, rigorous technique and keen insight. Because what he pays attention to is not the materialization of design works, but the design process itself. In this Mask of Medusa, Hejduk hopes to find the relationship between individuality and collectiveness, redefine self and architecture through the prying method of the observer and the observed, and construct his own mask. So reading this book is a dialogue with Hejduk’s profound and creative architectural vision.

推荐理由 

Reason for Recommendation 

John Hejduk 似乎在中文世界是个冷门，很难翻到关于他的资料， 他的建成作品似乎也是有点怪诞无以言述。有人评价：“Too Radical to implement yet too relevant to ignore ”（太极端以至无法实现，太关乎现实以至于无法忽略）。他的探索带有一种道德与诗意，严苛而自由。书中大量Hejduk 的诗作，叙述，手稿，草图原稿，引导你走进他复杂的思想的迷宫。反复提醒：绘画作为一种研究，探索和记录的工具，切勿丢弃。

John Hejduk seems to be an unpopular person in the Chinese world, it is difficult to find information about him, and his completed works seem to be a bit weird. Someone commented, "Too Radical to implement yet too relevant to ignore". His exploration is ethical and poetic, harsh and free. There are a lot of Hejduk's poems, narratives, manuscripts, and sketches in the book. The author personally guides you into the labyrinth of his complicated thoughts. Repeated reminder: As a tool for research, exploration and recording, painting should not be discarded.

07

看不见的城市

伊塔洛·卡尔维诺

简介 

Description 

《看不见的城市》是意大利作家伊塔洛·卡尔维诺创作的中篇小说。该小说中的55个城市故事，显示了城市的秘密，城市的真正魅力在于它是柔软的，它吸纳众多，无所不包，始终是希望的体现，又是郁积负罪感的源泉。《看不见的城市》小说的历史背景带出真实存在过的两座城市：忽必烈帝国的都城和马可·波罗的家乡威尼斯。这两座城市的对峙显示了城市作为地理空间、社会空间和文化空间不同的价值。

This book is a novella by Italian writer Italo Calvino. The 55 city stories in the novel show the secrets of the city. The true charm of the city is that it is soft, absorbs many, all-encompassing, and is always the embodiment of hope and the source of accumulated guilt. The historical background of the novel "Invisible Cities" brings out two real cities: the capital of the Kublai empire and Venice, the hometown of Marco Polo. The confrontation between the two cities shows the different values of the city as a geographical space, a social space, and a cultural space.

推荐理由

Reason for Recommendation 

这本精简小书可以瞬间将你带离现实，去到700年前马可波罗与忽必烈的世界。 这些古代异域城市模糊又抽象，和熟知的世界没有一丁点相似，又似乎可以找到很多相互关联和隐喻。可以花很大的气力去解构作者构建的迷宫，也可它当做一个轻松愉快的小诗集，读起来轻松无负担。反正，这些城市都是作者虚构的。

This condensed little book can instantly take you away from reality to the world of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan 700 years ago. These ancient exotic cities are vague and abstract, and are not a bit similar to the familiar world, and it seems that many interconnections and metaphors can be found. You can spend a lot of effort to deconstruct the maze constructed by the author, or it can be used as a light-hearted collection of poems, which is easy to read without burden. Anyway, these cities are all made up by the author.

08

Poemotion 1, 2, 3

Takahiro Kurashma