Perspecta 29: The Yale Architectural Journal

Perspecta #29

by William Deresiewicz (Editor), Garrett S. Finney (Editor), Sam Kirby (Editor)

The issue presents contemporary American projects that represent another generation of commitment to activist practice--continuing to approach design as a socially engaged, oppositional mission.

Perspecta 29 examines the legacy of the academic and professional confrontations of the 1960s. The issue is assembled around the transcript of the 1992 conference Rethinking Designs of the 60s (with Denise Scott Brown, Ed Logue, Cedric Price, Martha Rosler, Paul Rudolph, Ron Shiffman, Susanna Torre, Michael Webb, and others). It includes documents from the Architects' Resistance (1967-70), a student group whose activities coincided with the dissolution of Yale's Department of City Planning and an explosion and fire at the Yale Art and Architecture Building in 1969, as well as internal documents from the university related specifically to these events. The issue presents contemporary American projects that represent another generation of commitment to activist practice--continuing to approach design as a socially engaged, oppositional mission. Also included are an interview with Virginia Schaff and essays by Susan Piedmont-Palladino, Michael Sorkin, Thomas Fisher, Graham Finney, William McDonough, and Robert Goodman.

120 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 1998

About the author

William Deresiewicz was an associate professor of English at Yale University until 2008 and is a widely published book critic. His reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Bookforum, and The American Scholar. He was nominated for National Magazine awards in 2008 and 2009 and the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2010.

Wlliam Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent college speaker, and the best-selling author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. He taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer in 2008.