ARCHITECTURAL WORLD

The critic Robert Venturi has referred to gas stations and other vernacular structures located along commercial strips as “decorated sheds.” His use of the name of a utilitarian, work-oriented structure suggests that sheds, barns, and other such structures are most importantly utilitarian; nevertheless, they also possess meaning that is based on a definable structural program. Buildings used in American agriculture possess clear structural forms, but their emphasis as work buildings also allows them to function as a material artifact of changes in the social and economic context of labor on the American farm. The agricultural landscape is a composite of many structures designed around the natural cycles of planting, harvest, and maintenance that define farm labor. Such component structures might include those designed for a specific animal (such as chicken houses), specific storage (milk houses or springhouses), limited processes (smokehouses, summer kitchens, sugarhouses, evaporators)...

Architects, United States Agrest and Gandelsonas, Architects, is an internationally recognized firm that was established by its principals, Diana Agrest and Mario Gandelsonas, in New York in 1980. With a focus on architecture, urban design, and interior design in relation to the city, the firm has been an integral part of New York’s architecture community. Celebrated for their work in developing an understanding and practice of architecture through linguistics and semiotics, Agrest and Gandelsonas have been instrumental in advancing the course of contemporary architecture in the wake of late modernism. Establishing a selfnamed critical practice in which writing, drawing, and building would have equal weight, they have played a key role in the architecture community’s reevaluation of design as part of a larger cultural context. Natives of Buenos Aires, both Agrest and Gandelsonas were educated at the University of Buenos Aires School of Architecture and studied linguistics with the Fren...