AR Reading List 040: most read archive stories

The AR archive presents us with an opportunity to hold up a mirror to the past. In it, we not only see the pages of past issues, but also the pieces left on the cutting room floor: a record of what was written and what was omitted. Our own editorial practice is also reflected in it, as we ensure that those voices that were not heard in previous issues come to the fore today. The archive keeps us searching for stories which are not disposable, revealing to us the power of past ideas that continue to prevail today.  Pieces in the archive explore ideas which are still today unfurling and can offer a glimpse into the past to amplify and illuminate contemporary architectural discourse.

At the end of a year of endless news cycles, we reflect on this slower form of journalism, delving into our archive to find the stories that our readers have taken refuge in against the unceasing breaking news. Since March, we have been carefully curating these Reading Lists as a way to unwrap architectural ideas and connect points through time. However, this week’s Reading List is curated by you, the reader, as we bring together the most read archive stories in 2020.

1. Critical Regionalism for our time, AR November 2019, Léa-Catherine Szacka and Véronique Patteeuw
‘There are many reasons for diving into old archives, dusty closets and faded smelly books. But what could it mean to reactivate a text which, it seems, never really died in the first place?’

2. Architecture becomes music, AR May 2013, Charles Jencks
‘In an era when museums and other building types emerge as a suitable place for musical ornament, and when expressive shapes can be produced digitally, architecture could reach its supreme condition once again and become its own particular kind of music’

3. Louis Kahn: The space of ideas, AR November 2012, William JR Curtis
‘Historical echoes are abundant, but it is possible to overplay these, and to forget that Kahn transcends his sources, establishing an order of his own. While it does condense and distil images, this order is above all abstract’

4. The strategies of mat-building, AR August 2013, Debora Domingo Calabuig, Raúl Castellanos Gomez and Ana Abalos Ramos
‘Form did not follow function; on the contrary, there were noaprioristic forms but certain human activities that would eventually define them. The city was not functional but relational, not made of isolated objects on a free ground floor’

5. Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland by Peter Zumthor, AR August 1997, Raymund Ryan
‘Through the rigour of his craft, Peter Zumthor has realised an extraordinary building full of sensory richness. From the earlier projects in Chur, and from the church of Sogn Benedetg west of Vals, Zumthor has now developed an architecture of complex spatial interpenetration’

6. ‘Complexity and Contradiction changed how we look at, think and talk about architecture’, AR December 2016, Martino Stierli
‘While his treatise was certainly not intended as a political statement, his words read to us today as a strong plea for civility, and as a call for a society that is inclusive rather than exclusive’

7. Revisit: Aranya low-cost housing, Indore, Balkrishna Doshi, AR July/August 2019, Manon Mollard
‘Ties between social activities and physical structures translate into specific elements: shared landings, tiny balconies, open terraces and the plinth with its added steps and ledges’

8. The Interlace in Singapore by OMA/Ole Scheeren, AR April 2015, Rowan Moore
‘If it is possible to feel part of a larger whole whether or not you engage with your neighbours, The Interlace certainly achieves this. For all its resemblance to architectural types commonly considered alienating, this is not the experience it offers.’

9. The New Brutalism, AR December 1955, Reyner Banham
‘The New Humanism was again a quasi-historical concept, oriented, however spuriously, toward that mid-nineteenth century epoch which was Marxism’s Golden Age, when you could recognise a capitalist when you met him’

10. Cuba’s urban farming revolution: How to create self-sufficient cities, AR March 2014, Carey Clouse
‘While food security hasn’t traditionally been considered the domain of architects, landscape architects and planners, designers bring an important lens to urban agriculture, where food production must be appliquéd onto extant urban fabric’