AA’s issue 418 on modern vestiges has just come out. It features an article on James Wines’ BEST store façades, of which only a few still stand today. In 1979, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui published an article on the same theme – a perfect occasion for the AA Retro of the week to revisit it.

With L’Express, AA was the first european magazine to publish articles about the work of James Wines, the founder of SITE (Sculpture In The Environment) and today more than 3,000 books and essays have been written about the projects at issue.

Inventor of the concept of « de-architecture », James Wines conceives a type of architecture where the building is not an end to itself but a material shaped by the designer.

His structures do not bring any functional changes to the buildings, but tend – in their style – to cause a psychological shock on the passerby.

Wines roots his ideas on all the local data he can recover: how the buildings were first built, their orientation and the flora and fauna surrounding them. Buildings are no longer isolated objects in the landscape but become an integral part of it.

 

To read the full article, click on the cover.
And if you wish to complete your collection of AA’s vintage issues, click here.