Category : books

…the influential 2007 familial account of eating products grown close to home for a year by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, is one of the books I’m dusting off from my ‘to read’ list, finally able to finish with this lazy week on my hands up at the lake – and ..

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…in the Sabina of Lazio was the destination of our morning road trip to visit Oretta Zanini de Vita (the font of inspiration and information regarding cucina Italiana and staunch advocate for taking food seriously as culture at the highest level) at her house in the country – built in the 70’s with found windows ..

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…the iconic influential book by Christopher Alexander is standard issue to architecture students since it emerged out of the Berkeley in the 1970’s, which we were introduced to in our first year design studio, but I don’t recall ever actually reading it at the time (perhaps it seemed old fashioned, folksy, retrograde, and even conservative ..

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…conducted yesterday just blocks from my studio on the top floor of a modern Monteverde apartment building was with Gianfranco Baruchello (b. 1924) – the Roman artist whose book “How to Imagine” and 1970’s farm as art project Agricola Cornelia have been a recent inspiration – and we got comfortable in the living area of his ..

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…is the obliquely titled and themed 1990 book by Richard Sennett that I just finished reading which is about the divides between inner experiences and outer lives in urban spaces through time – continuing my on-going year of ‘stewing’ on a general constellation of loosely connected ideas – an expanding series of topics – an ..

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…is the illuminating well-written 1977 book of this well-trodden utopian territory by Robert Fishman – which gives a super great overview of the political and philosophical underpinnings of Howard’s Garden City, Wright’s Broadacre City, and Corbusier’s Radient City – continuing my recent reading list of titles growing out of my fascination with the way in ..

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…was conducted this morning with Livia and Franco – who met when they were 14 and have been married for 53 years – in their cozy long-time quarters (inherited from previous generations) in the Colosseum adjacent neighborhood of Monti where he used to own the local newsstand, so it’s hard to walk with Franco more ..

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…of 35 planned interviews with five generations of people living in Rome (about how they organize their homes and lives around food, their memories and current thoughts on Cucina Italiana/Romana, and how things are changing) was a fascinating two hour conversation with a distinguished 92 year old Italian film director who recounted amazing tales of ..

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…the 1996 book by Joan Retallack (subtitled ‘Cage Muses on Words * Art * Music‘) features fantastic reflections on, interviews with, and poetry by this humane, earthy, soulful, rigorous, funny, free-spirited, creative colossus of the 20th century who has always seemed like one of the critical figures for me to get my head around, but ..

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…the 1994 book by Oretta Zanini de Vita full of fascinating accounts of Roman’s relationships to food through time featuring folklore and recipes (with chapters including Mills on the Tiber, Pastoral Kitchen, Papal Table, Carnival, Osterias, Poet G.G. Belli, Jewish Cooking, Sweets, Tourists & Movie Stars, Tuscia, Sabina, Castelli, Ciociaria, Pontine Marsh, Ex-Terra di Lavoro, ..

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…the limited edition 150 foot long accordion book (with hand silk-screened covers by participating artists) documenting in words and photos the five years of events at my LA geodesic home was released last year by Evil Twin Publications and the publisher, designer, and editor, Stacy Wakefield has also shared PDF’s of the complete book online ..

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…is the book just out from Italy’s Mousse Publishing, which documents the one year of exhibitions, installations, projects, and events at the temporary non-profit art space spearheaded by Elizabeth Dee with curator Cecilia Alemani that was housed in the former Dia building in New York City for which I produced the Fall 2009 project ‘Dome ..

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