ARCHITECTURE OF NORMAL BY DANIEL KAVEN
ARCHITECTURE OF NORMAL BY DANIEL KAVEN
Published by Birkhäuser | $75 | ISBN 978-3-0356-2438-0
456 pages | 8.5 x 11 in. | Cloth-covered hardback
"An instructive and aesthetically stunning collage."
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
Daniel Kaven’s Architecture of Normal explores the dissonance between the overwhelming American landscape and the underwhelming architecture of its strip malls, fast food chains, motels and tract housing. Part travelogue, art book and architectural survey, the book charts the patterns created by reigning modes of transportation and examines how we came to accept the bland, branded boxes lining America’s streets and freeways. Beginning with a portrait of ambulatory Native American societies and the introduction of horses by the Spanish, Kaven discusses the built environment as it has been shaped by trains, cars, planes and rockets, and looks toward a future architecture defined by autonomous cars and air taxis. This highly visual narrative includes extensive historical photography and Kaven’s own art.
“Part Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and part Learning from Las Vegas, this honest portrayal of the connection between urbanization and colonization is a cornucopia of visual imagery.”
"An instructive and aesthetically stunning collage."
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
"Kaven has assembled an enticing visual narrative that includes extensive historical photography, architecture commentary, personal anecdote and original art. It serves as a critical travelogue of what the world accepts as the American landscape, but leaves the door open for further debate over whether it is a dream-scape or nightmare."
“Daniel Kaven has deployed memory and mobility, archives and architecture, to take us on a tour into modernity and then to retrieve from it concrete examples of its specificity.”
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS
“Architecture of Normal: The Colonization of the American Landscape reads like an enthralling textbook—a breezy history teeming with photography, original artwork, and timelines—even as its author offers a more cautionary take on what we have wrought.”
"If you’re a visual learner and a lover of history and design, this book is for you. Bookseller Brad Lennon said Harvard Book Store shelves the book in the architecture section, but it’s one of his favorite history books: ‘Through images, narrative, and a detailed timeline, Kaven shows how the American Southwest went from a pristine landscape populated by people who were one with the land to a giant homogenized strip-mall,’ he said."
"Kaven has crafted a thoroughly researched and well-reasoned treatise in which he argues that historical eras’ dominant modes of transportation — walking on foot, riding horses, trains, cars, and airplanes — have inexorably influenced our public and private spaces."
“Kaven’s book traces the development of architecture, particularly in the American West, as it’s been influenced, for good and bad, by the evolution in transportation, starting with Native Americans on foot, to the introduction of the horse by the Spanish, to trains, to automobiles.”
WESTERN ART & ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE
"There is a clear chronological progression to the chapters, one that traces the physical history of the United States from Native American building complexes in the Southwest around 1500 years ago to the present, and billionaires building rockets that take off from spaceports in the same part of the country.”
“The book blends text and extensive imagery to document and reflect on the impact that the evolution of transport has had in the country: accelerating urbanisation and enabling urban sprawl, carving up rural landscapes, and colonising places with cars and strip malls.”
“Part travelogue, part art book, and part architectural survey, the volume also traces how the evolution of modes of transportation (starting with the introduction of horses by the Spanish to Native American societies) has influenced design and development in the United States over the past 200 years. Featuring historical photos, as well as Kaven’s own artwork, Architecture of Normal examines how the past shaped the present, and how emerging technologies, such as the autonomous vehicle, will influence the built environment for decades to come.”
"The bland sameness that characterizes much of the American built environment is fertile ground for architectural criticism. Daniel Kaven, architect and artist, offers a new entry in this genre describing the impact on the United States of successive eras of transportation technologies in Architecture of Normal: the Colonization of the American Landscape."
ART LIBRARIES SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA
IN THE DESIGN LOUNGE: Daniel Kaven, an American artist, architect, and co-founder of William / Kaven Architecture, visits Brandon In the Design Lounge to discuss his new book, Architecture of Normal, and how the evolution of transportation has shaped the future of the built environment.