James Wines

Years after I bought this book by James "SITE" Wines, I saw the outspoken architect lecture (I wrote about some of his talk here) when he asserted that he was practicing "green architecture" before it was a thing, before it could be labelled as such, before it became popular with mainstream architects. But he didn't do it by building earth-berm houses or the like in the 70s; he designed temporary structures and art installations that merged art, architecture and landscape in ways that others weren't doing at the time. One of his BEST Showrooms, in fact, was "green" in that it had a zone of trees between the detached facade and the showroom proper (it is now a church). So it makes some sense that Wines would pen a book of green architecture, reaching back far in time but focusing on recent exemplars of environmental architecture. The latter is not made up of LEED-accredited buildings or other mainstream examples, but instead follows his alternative means of seeing how architecture and landscape can relate, both intellectually and formally. His prose is not the most graceful, but the book is a good one for this clear eye for good green architecture and the strength of his convictions.… (mer)