Seriousness Is a Crime
Book Review - MOS: Selected Works, 2016October 2023
(Reading Time: 7 min)
(Reading Time: 7 min)
I’ve always liked MOS’s work. And it is difficult to write critically about something we like. Sometimes predilections need no explanation. If anything, we get lost in our own imaginary enchantment over a body of work by sieving through the rational dust of thoughts. This is not to say returning to MOS’s work again with a more trained organizational eye is unproductive. Rather, this process pinpoints the affinity more precisely.
In this sequel to a monograph by MOS Architects, Hilary Sample and Michael Meredith suffuse the book with deadpan humor. Even though humor is involved, there seem to be multiple ways to access this designed object. We could entertain it as a coffee table book by leafing through the pages and drooling over the images and drawings. We could utilize it as an encyclopedia to learn what the office has to say about different building types. However, the book’s singular humor is only sensible if one were to read the monograph as a graphic novel by following the page numbers. The laughter builds up. By placing the office policies at the end, that is where the kicker hits and where the punch line of their humor resides.
As a designed artifact, visually, physically, and textually, it may be useful to find the deadpan humor from various angles. The humor has traceable footprints from the book design, the typography, the table of contents, the buildings and images, the drawing and images, and the combination of all the above with texts.
On the exterior of the book, there is a tensive interplay between small and heavy. This contrast arguably sets up a prelude of contradictions that taps into the humor that is presented. Although this is not surprising for a relatively young office at the time of publishing, the physical volume of the monograph is small and portable. However, the design choice of a hard cover implies that it is not a frivolous artifact and that there is weight to their argumentative position. Without a dust jacket over the hard cover, the book does not seek the need for blurbs or another façade to advertise itself.
Next, the typography designed for the monograph also encapsulates several inversive relationships. There is a combination of the tactile and the pictorial. It captures the readers’ attention by filling up the entire real estate of the front cover with the title text. The white ink-filled texts are debossed and induce us to touch the object, yet the familiar and abnormal fonts suggest the texts are really drawings. A drawing that one can turn upside down. The two alphabets, ‘M’ and ‘S’, become more legible. (‘H’ does have the same effect, but that is the letter’s inherent quality.) Throughout the book and on the cover, ‘W’ is represented as an inverse ‘M’. ‘S’ is made top-heavy when reading in the intended orientation, but it is more ‘normal’ and ‘legible’ than when reading the alphabet upside down. ‘S’ is essentially mirrored across a horizonal axis. If anyone were to read the monograph upside down, the identifiable ‘M’ and ‘S’ are Meredith and Sample’s signatures throughout. This inverse relationship signals a flip of the expected, a key ingredient in creating humor.
Another flip can also be found in the serif and sans-serif fonts. Serif fonts are easier to read when small. Thus, they are usually seen in denser texts. Sans-serif fonts, on the other hand, are comparatively less legible in denser texts. Therefore, they are spotted in instances such as book covers, subway signage, and posters. Here, MOS and the book designers flipped the usage of the two—sans-serifs are large and communicate the titles; serifs are the content, footnotes, and captions. Perhaps this inverse is not funny to a certain cohort of audiences. However, this is where we can use the acronym ‘iykyk’ to decode the monograph—”If you know, you know”.
We can begin to unwrap three notions that MOS has to utter through the contents page. First, the emphasis on ‘types.’ Instead of listing the projects sequentially by page numbers, the projects are organized under building types. This may be the first indication where MOS tacitly expresses an interest in Aldo Rossi’s ‘type.’ Sample further explained more explicitly in the preface that the archetypes, vernacular typologies, and domestic elements are the primary reference points that the office often works around. This notion is also clearly presented in the works presented. Secondly, the projects are named with numerical prefixes. This is more likely for an intra-office organization of project archives. However, listing the numbers here takes away the hierarchy within the library of projects. Within this volume of work, no single project has an ‘aura’. No building type possesses an ‘aura’. There are no projects that won the most awards or the most environment-friendly certificates. In this presentation of works, all objects are equal. Lastly, if not already clear, the table of contents shows a blatant disregard for page order. If we were to read from left to right and from top to bottom, the first project on the contents page starts on page 70. The last project ends on page 42. Page order, as one of the expected functions in a table of contents, is tertiary. This upending of our expectations can be humorous, but it also engenders other possibilities and invites new audiences to the book.
When introducing every project, MOS incorporates a short text right next to an image of the project. The texts often describe the context, the material, and the construction aspects in a deadpan manner. They are facts in a paragraph. They are delivered in a monotonous fashion. When such texts are paired with delicious images, the stark contrast triggers a smile every time. Sample tries to clarify the ‘lighthearted’ criticism the office often receives in the preface. She emphasized that the office is more interested in the ‘visual’ than the ‘real’. In a way, incorporating such texts with the images did not undermine the ’real’. It made the projects more ‘real’ because of the contrasts.
The pairing of matter-of-fact texts with the images also resembles an architectural working drawing. If the images, which Sample argues are different than working drawings, are graphic information in an architectural drawing set, then the factual paragraph might just be the callouts on a detail sheet. The only difference is that the information in drawings sets is duplicated. It is presented graphically and textually when they are inherently the same thing. MOS’s image and text hybridity evokes layered and coded information. Here, the projects can carry multivalent meanings and allow more nuanced readings.
The juxtaposition of buildings (or images of buildings) and images is also coded with metaphors and invites potential overreading. The spread in the monograph, where an intermission image of office objects and the introductory image of Element House almost speak to the audience emphatically. The stack of objects on the left seem to utter, “Our thoughts and works are powered by migraines.” On the right, the zoomed-out aerial view is not only about the emptiness surrounding Element House, but it also says, “We work really hard, but they are really not that important.” Presents a pile of shiny, unused staples in the middle of nowhere.
In the drawings and images that the book presents, there is a clear attraction to working with form. Sample also indicated this notion early in the book. Form is preferred over shape. However, in most drawings, shapes have a presence. Instead of buildings taking on the notion of shapes, which are flatter representations of forms, shapes are used to flatten contextual information. The shapes may represent trees, rocks, or other things. They are abstract things that sometimes have their own shadows. In MOS’s drawings, the contexts are also notational. Rather than rendering architectural elements as notational and abstracting them by notations, i.e., Peter Eisenman, the locations of the plantations are represented as glyphs. The elements that make up the drawing are also arguably notational. Hatches, color fills, dashed lines, continuous lines, gradients, glyphs, patterns, and coordinates are just a few that are abstracted consistently throughout all the projects.
Hejduk can also be observed in MOS’s drawings. Not the figural or 9-square Hejduk, but Hejduk’s representation and characters. MOS’s drawings are often in parallel projection. Utilizing the oblique, the flattening of forms is a constant reminder of Hejduk. It seems like the office is interested in form-finding through Rossi’s ‘types’, then cites Hejduk as a source to flatten the form in drawings. This is made clearer through the drawings when Sample writes that the making of images is different from prototyping. Another shadow cast by Hejduk is also visible in the worm’s eye drawings. To peek into the guts of a building from below. To be dominated by the object. To fetishize the objects. To see buildings rendered in images as objects that also look back at us.
Maybe it is too limiting to define MOS as an architecture office. It is more akin to an agency for humorists. At their best, all the mediums are simply tools to achieve humor. In the model photograph of House No. 6, the office adopted purist geometry as a basis for form, then placed multiple instances in a seemingly accidental way. It is almost as if a toddler got distracted and abandoned the toys at the playground. The invited chaos vanquishes the primitive forms. A declaration of war towards Colin Rowe’s Le Corbusier. This is also seen in MOS’s software experimentation. Instead of literally asking a child to perform, the machine enacts the childish behavior. The perfect circle slithers and snuggles with one another. Chaotic by controlled behavior. A tug of war between purity and mayhem.
MOS’s monograph’s most successful design in presenting its position is probably to let outsiders speak and reflect their work through words at the end. The works speak for themselves. They need no further reinforcement. Here I am, pointing out the jokes, and I might have ruined the jokes already. MOS found a niche in the architectural discourse, maybe because the 2008 financial crisis forced the discipline to return to their words and drawings.
However, what MOS does so well with their work just might be the silver lining we need for the proven failure of neoliberalism. Reading MOS again today after (or still in) another global fiasco, we can appreciate the little chuckles a little more, even if it is just for a specific audience. MOS is the dinky speakeasy in New York that you don’t want to spoil its whereabouts. It’s the indie rock band that never reaches mainstream but has a fervent fan base. That’s where the sweet spot is.