Help me find journal articles for a paper about Santiago Calatrava's Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum

April 26, 2009 7:11 PM

I'm writing an undergraduate paper (not to be published) on whether or not Santiago Calatrava's Quadracci Pavilion at the Milwaukee Art Museum is just a reworking of architectural history, or if it's a completely new take on architectural design, kinetics, and art. Help?

I need to find reliable, peer-edited journal articles or books that discuss:

relevant architectural historical trends (modernism, Bauhaus movement, Le Courbusier, etc.)

and/or

relevant architectural developments (Jefferson's dumbwaiters in Monticello<>the brise soleil, use of reinforced concrete, use of biological forms in architecture, etc.)

and/or

things that influenced Calatrava's career/ideas

and/or

specs or detailed photos of the Quadracci Pavilion itself.

Can you help?

posted by cmchap to media & arts (8 comments total)

specs or detailed photos of the Quadracci Pavilion itself.

The book Santiago Calatrava: Milwaukee Art Museum, Quadracci Pavilion has gorgeous photos of the Quadracci Pavilion. One Amazon commentor says "Every detail, plan, and section is also included... So if you are a student that needs plans/sections/elevations/details this is the only book that I have found that has good solid representations of each."
posted by RichardP at 7:21 PM on April 26

The reference librarian at your university can help you learn to use search engines that will get you the sources you need.
posted by amelioration at 7:29 PM on April 26

As seen above, go visit your local reference librarian.

Flickr is your friend for high resolution architecture photography
posted by limited slip at 7:35 PM on April 26

I need to find reliable, peer-edited journal articles or books that discuss

Step 1: find appropriate databases using something like Gale, then find appropriate journals indexed by those databases. Look through some recent issues. Figure out which look appropriate.

Step 2: find a handful of books that seem like decent matches.

Step 3: take all of these to a reference librarian, show them what you have, ask them how to extend your search to materials you haven't thought of yet.

Step 4: follow their advice, it will be good.

Step 5: take the materials (or just the names) to a prof. in the area and run them all by - you'll get a good idea of what's respected and what's "WTF is this?". You'll also figure out if you missed anything.
posted by devilsbrigade at 8:10 PM on April 26

Here's a New Yorker article from last year, which isn't really peer-edited (i.e. not by architects or structural engineers), but may provide some insight.

There's also a Spanish architectural periodical called El Croquis that basically does a monograph for every issue - they did one on Calatrava's career from '83 to '89. If you're in architecture school, and your school has a decent library, it might have this. Metropolis has also had a couple articles on him, and it probably wouldn't hurt to check Architectural Record as well.

In my opinion though, answering the central question of your essay is pretty simple - any work of architecture (or just about any other form of art) is more or less a reworking of its precedents, with a couple innovations thrown in. Trying to argue that anything is a "complete departure" from everything that came before it is a non-starter. Like nothing's ever been done in the field of ribby biomorphic concrete before? The only aspect of the building that I can't really account for with precedents is the kinetic thing, which may have been done before, but probably not to such a large degree; that alone does not a complete departure make, however. If this topic came down from your professor, and he or she has really drunk the Calatrava kool-aid, I feel for you.

Precedents you'll probably be interested in for Calatrava will most likely include: French and English gothic cathedrals, Hector Guimard and other Art Nouveau architects, Violet-le-duc, Claude Ledoux, Eero Saarinen (TWA terminals at JFK and Dulles), Alvar Aalto (for a lot, but the thing that first comes to mind are the roof beams at Saynatsulo Town Hall), Antonio Gaudi, and Pier Nervi, as well as Corb's later stuff, which it looks like you've already got. Maybe some John Lautner, but he's a little more on the geometric side.
posted by LionIndex at 8:24 PM on April 26 [2 favorites]

You really need to go to a library for this sort of thing, if you really don't know where to start.
posted by jessamyn at 6:15 AM on April 27

contact the resource center at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
posted by desjardins at 12:18 PM on April 27

IANA Study skills teacher, but - you should go to the library and base the essay on max 5 books (maybe from your course reading) or on articles listed in the references of your main texts. You could also search through the archives of architecture journals which your university may or may not have made available online (I spend hours on JSTOR just collecting relevant papers), using as keywords the terms you posted. Read articles, look at references, find more articles, etc. - the best way seems to me to stick to a few books and maybe spice it up with a paper or two. (btw 'getting help from third parties' is one of the criteria of plagiarism at my uni, so be careful.)
posted by yoHighness at 5:06 PM on April 27