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Salmela Architect Thomas Fisher |
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A stunning and informative portrait of one of today’s most honored architects. Salmela Architect provides an in-depth look at one of America’s leading “critical regionalist” architects. Salmela’s buildings resolve a central question of our time: how to balance the various extreme positions that characterize contemporary architecture and culture. Salmela accomplishes this by juxtaposing opposites: modernist and traditional forms, open and cellular plans, large and small scales, familiar elements used in unfamiliar ways. His projects range from a small stand-alone sauna to commercial spaces visited by thousands of people, and his buildings, mostly located in the upper Midwest, have become nationally and internationally known. Salmela Architect showcases twenty-six completed buildings and sixteen current projects in lavish color photographs and architectural drawings, enabling readers to get a full sense of the practicality, ethnicity, and playfulness apparent in David Salmela’s work. Architecture critic Thomas Fisher explores Salmela’s propensity to draw from regional roots as he creates designs particular to individual places and cultures yet with universal appeal. Fisher illuminates this synchronicity with buildings as prominent as the Gooseberry Falls Visitors Center and Wild Rice Restaurant as well as residential projects, including the acclaimed Jackson Meadow community and photographer Jim Brandenburg’s Ravenwood Studio. “David Salmela’s architecture, evocative and eclectic, blends in with the rural environments where he has been building. The book itself contains Thomas Fisher’s short essays about some 25 finished buildings and 16 works in progress, splendidly illustrated with photographs by Peter Bastianelli-Kerze.” —Leonardo Review “Lavishly illustrated with both color photographs of interiors and exteriors of his work as well as architectural sketches and drawings, provides an in-depth look at the man who has been called ‘one of America’s leading critical regionalist architects.’ With clearly understandable text that even a layman could comprehend, it takes the reader from one construction to another, revealing Salmela’s use of juxtaposing opposites of both modern and traditional forms and—most significantl—by following a design that frequently uses the wood of the north forests.” —Finnish American Reporter “Personally and aesthetically rooted in northern Minnesota, the Duluth architect is making waves across the country. This year he won two American Institute of Architects’ Honor Awards, for the sauna and a subdivision called Jackson Meadow near Marine on St. Croix.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Aimed at architects and general readers.” —St. Paul Pioneer Press “Salmela’s work has a distinctly modern feel, it’s far too traditional, despite being occasionally whimsical, to fall into the modernist camp.” —The Rake Thomas Fisher is dean of the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Minnesota. He is the former editor of Progressive Architecture magazine and is the author of In the Scheme of Things. David Salmela is a self-trained architect practicing in Duluth, Minnesota. Since 1985 his projects have won fourteen Minnesota AIA Honor Awards and sixteen national awards, including a National AIA Honor Award for Architecture. 200 pages | 154 color photos, 56 figures | 9 1⁄2 x 10 1⁄2 | May 2005 |
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$34.95 Paper