Turner Brooks: Work

Perhaps the most important thing I can recommend is that you read the architect’s introduction and Kent Bloomer’s essay before looking at the various projects. Without this primer, you might come to the conclusion that the work is something like an unrefined fusion of Venturi and Mockbee Coker tropes. (I acknowledge that Mockbee didn’t do his first ad-hoc rural assemblage until 1985 or so – after many of Brooks projects were completed. Sambo’s first bricolage of scraps burned down within two years, btw.) When you understand the architect’s intent with these works, the design sophistication quotient increases dramatically.

Yes, his fetish about mobile houses and deep, circuitous and mysterious pathways might seem like typical show more one-liners to justify his quirky formal approaches but, at least the former really goes a long way in justifying the idiosyncratic nature of the work. The mysterious aspect doesn’t necessarily come through in pics, plans, and, I’m sure, the low budget realizations. Per his ghostly renderings, the mobility thing is not so much in regards to ubiquitous “manufactured homes” but literally pitched-roof, archetypal houses driving down dark roads with their own headlights!

There is a seeming conflict in a design ideal rooted in a particular place, yet one that is also inspired by and formally redolent of mobile things (roving machines, insects, Airstream trailers, or whatever). This dilemma seems best evidenced by his physical models. Bloomer writes about how, as a student, Brooks made a gargantuan plaster site model to relate his studio project to a much larger contextual sphere than the mere property boundaries – and this approach is obviously standard fare for any architect(s) who claims a rooted interconnectedness to a particular context. Yet the models Brooks created for these projects are placeless. Much like John Hejduk’s miniature study models that he supposedly carried around in his pocket, Brooks’ constructs have no site whatsoever and are occasionally photographed in piles. This seems to relate to the nomadic theme, infusing the projects with the placeless universality of an automobile. But the other, and I think more important, aspect is how a home occupies a particular landscape. He speaks about axial connections to wood bridges two miles away for Chrissakes! What happened to the model bases?

As this is another fine Princeton Architectural Press offering, I find it unbelievable that there don’t seem to be any major spelling or grammatical errors! The monograph has some typical problems though. Rather incomplete documentation disables any kind of holistic reading of many projects; for instance, the “Alley Stair” proposal includes one sentence and two model pics not showing the alley nor the building that the stair is supposed to occupy and serve! Many works are missing key floor plans (and a few are no better than smudges on the page) and there are plenty of pointless, postage stamp-sized photos of the houses positioned way off yonder in a field. Despite a purportedly comprehensive oeuvre up to 1995, when you see the list of houses previously published elsewhere – such as in Architectural Record “Houses” issues - and even some of the references in Kent Bloomer’s essay, there are some inexplicable project omissions.

This is strong work generally. Brooks approaches these projects in a peculiar but compelling way in relation to specific sites – if less so on the basis of rusting classic automobile metaphors. Importantly, the written narratives enable one to smile genuinely at (or “with”) the work – the odd formal/spatial contortions and “diabolical inflection of elevations” as Bloomer has it – as opposed to the troubled, head-scratching process I went through upon a quick visual survey a few years ago. show less