Disorientation: Bernard Rudofsky in the Empire of Signs

The seventh publication from the ongoing CSP series focuses on postwar Japan
through the eyes of Viennese émigré architect and social historian Bernard
Rudofsky (1905 1988), who famously described it as a rearview mirror of the
American way of life. In this volume, illustrated by noted contemporary painter
Martin Beck, architectural historian Felicity D. Scott revisits the architect s readings
of the vernacular in the United States and Japan, which resonate with his
attempts to imagine architecture and cities that refused to communicate in a
normative sense. Best known for curating Architecture without Architects, the
famous 1964 photography exhibition of vernacular, preindustrial structures at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, Rudofsky drew on decades of speculation
about modern architecture and urbanism, particularly their semantic, technological,
institutional, commercial and geopolitical influences. In a contemporary
world saturated with visual information, Rudofsky s unconventional musings take
on a heightened resonance.