Maintenance Architecture

by Hilary Sample

An inventive examination of a crucial but neglected aspect of architecture, by an architect writing to architects. Maintenance plays a crucial role in the production and endurance of architecture, yet architects for the most part treat maintenance with indifference. The discipline of architecture values the image of the new over the lived-in, the photogenic empty and stark building over a messy and labored one. But the fact is: homes need to be cleaned and buildings and cities need to be maintained, and architecture no matter its form cannot escape from such realities. In Maintenance Architecture , Hilary Sample offers an inventive examination of the architectural significance of maintenance through a series of short texts and images about specific buildings, materials, and projects. Although architects have seldom choose to represent maintenance—imagining their work only from conception to realization—artists have long explored subjects of endurance and permanence in iconic architecture. Sample explores a range of art projects—by artists including Gordon Matta-Clark, Jeff Wall, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles—to recast the problem of maintenance for architecture. How might architectural design and discourse change as a building cycle expands to include “post-occupancy”? Sample looks particularly at the private home, exhibition pavilion, and high-rise urban building, giving special attention to buildings constructed with novel and developing materials, technologies, and precise detailing in relation to endurance. These include Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion House (1929), the Lever House (1952), the U.S. Steel Building (1971), and the O-14 (2010). She considers the iconography of skyscrapers; maintenance workforces, both public and private; labor-saving technology and devices; and contemporary architectural projects and preservation techniques that encompass the afterlife of buildings. A selection of artworks make the usually invisible aspects of maintenance visible, from Martha Rosler's Cleaning the Drapes to Inigo Manglano-Ovalle's The Kiss .

Genres: Architecture

208 pages, Hardcover

Published December 9, 2016

Reviews

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

was so excited to read and ended up being really let down by this - so many really interesting ideas that felt underexplored and underdeveloped. wish more time and space had been dedicated to fleshing out fewer ideas and examining fewer examples, rather than skimming the surface of so many topics. still interesting but a little disappointing in execution.

[Christian Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was captivated by the content of this book. The way Sample is able to break apart something as dry or cookie-cutter as maintenance may seem and make it feel essential and even profound is something I was surprised by. I wasn’t sure how approachable this work would be for me as a non-architect, but the author’s dive into both architect’s and artist’s perspective on maintenance brought a lot of color and humanity to the topic. There are many different examples of work she references for a variety of different reasons — and there is something for everyone in here to grasp onto to change how you think of maintenance in art and architecture, and how you think of the structure of your own life.

[Jacqueline Valencia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dunno what it is about architecture texts that philosophize on design that does me in. It's like when people say they get a rush in their skin when they hear certain music...I get that with texts like this. Please more on how we can make architecture more functional through it's sustainability.

[Naomi Kern · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good survey of case studies with regards to maintenance. Dope ass vibe ngl