CHRISTY AU

"The formal characteristics of building construction have evolved from the simple and straightforward assembly to steel columns and beams to maze of structural members that now collectively define a buildings shape.  Stanley Greenberg's Architecture under Construction series illustrates how far building techniques and construction technology and construction technology have come since the 1930s. 

 

Today's non-Cartesian architectural forms require innovative structural assemblies - most of which are conceived through digital technology... which is evident in the compound profiling of structural steel... Greenberg also illustrates another important spatial dimension of architecture - visual unflodings.  These are views mostly taken from inside the building that between occupiable space and the building's overall enclosure.  Here surfaces are identifiable at the foreground of the image, while the depth of the framed view recedes into a maze of structural members that either gradates into darkness or an illuminating light source from beyond a surface.  Greenberg's isolated framings of these geometric spatial unfoldings... allow one to draw a strong parallel to the brilliant Imaginary Prison etchings by Giovanni Piranesi's... Piranesi's complex visual spatial conditions pushed the medium of etching to create a bold contrast between light and shadow, creating fragmented mysterious space without visual boundaries."

​
 

- Greenberg, Stanely
Architecture under Construction;
Forward by Joseph Rosa
The University of Chicago Press, 2010