A Debate with Marianela D'Aprile, Mark Foster Gage

Wednesday, 7pm: The Book Will Kill the Building

Information wants to be free and fast. Cheap and mobile. Durable and dispersible. Whether the medium be a book, a computer, or a phone, ideas will – and should – choose the fastest path. Why slow them down by inscribing them in stone? Buildings, for their part, need to serve, need to perform, need – now more than ever – to stay affordable. Why spend an extra dime in the service of narrative? Perhaps Victor Hugo was right 150 years ago when he wrote, in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, “THE BOOK WILL KILL THE BUILDING,” and when he went on to say: “Let the reader make no mistake; architecture is dead; irretrievably slain by the printed book—slain because it endures for a shorter time—slain because it costs more.”

And yet, do we judge a city by its books, or by its buildings? The built environment may not be the quickest nor the most effective messenger for new ideas, but perhaps it is the billboard for the most important ideas? Buildings - especially public ones, like Hugo’s cathedral - represent public compacts, a mirror to the society that built them, a collective memory somehow much more valuable than any other record, a chance to hear and even spar with generations past. Can a slug of type, or a string of digits - or an instagram post - really be an able substitute?

Join us this Wednesday at 7pm as we distribute our new issue and debate the resolution, “The Book Will Kill the Building”, with architect Mark Foster Gage and critic Marianela D’Aprile.

The debate will be on zoom and in person, fittingly, at the location of our printer, the gallery and printing press a83, whose current show, BITS, will be on display.

https://nyra.nyc/rsvp

ps:
A free subscription for the first to identify the building in the rat’s printing press.