From New Delhi to Nanjing, Tohoku to Tulsa, Maputo to Mito, Log 51 (Winter/Spring 2021) gathers essays and observations from architects, historians, designers, and curators around the world on topics that range from the potential of images and architectural representation to the power of art and politics. In this open issue, Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley reimagine the early work of Bruce Goff, Christophe Van Gerrewey assesses Jan De Vylder’s sketches and Excel drawings, and Thomas Daniell explores Sei’ichi Shirai’s unbuilt atomic memorial. Dijia Chen follows how a single photograph shaped the career of Zhang Lei, and Ruo Jia defines post-Maoist architecture in China. Max Kuo maps postdigital/postinternet architecture, Iman Fayyad sees flatness as a productive framework, and Kyle Miller unpacks a deadpan tonality. In addition, Harish Krishnamoorthy questions India’s new government district, while Courtney Richeson digs into the alt-right foundations of the 2020 US Federal Civic Architecture mandate. Véronique Patteeuw and Clara Leverd visit a collector’s London flat, Tatiana Knoroz discovers ingenuity in Japanese danchi, and much more. . . .
One-quarter of the 200-page issue is devoted to Excursions in the Ecosphere, the sequel to The Return of Nature in Log 49. In this special section guest edited by Sanford Kwinter, Aleksandra Jaeschke synthesizes systems theory, greenhouse architecture, and banyan trees, Gökhan Kodalak plays with lines of forces in a David Foster Wallace memoir, and Kwinter and Bruce Mau discuss shifting paradigms of design.