Bedtime Stories for Architects: Peter Wilson

Bedtime Stories for Architects, is a compendium of texts, built works and graphic work by Peter Wilson. It offers glimpses of buildings by the German based office of BOLLES+WILSON, but it is not a monograph, it presents a cloud of discursive subjects and narratives, evidencing Wilson’s take on a wide range of academic, technical, cultural, and architectural issues. It has been called ‘tremendously cutting-edge’, perhaps because of the wry humor of the stories and Wilson’s witty and intelligent drawings – these extend to satirical portraits of – bankers, estate agents, property developers and a few OK people. Much of the book is organized alphabetically like a children’s book – A is for Albania, C is for Counterfactual Histories, G is for Guggenheim, M is for Malevich, O is for Olgiati, R is for Ritual. Counterfactual Histories (a concept from Borges) are paint-shop illustrated as surprising, poetic and enigmatic landscapes. ‘A Blue Review’ deconstructs a book on colour in architecture. Between the enigmatic graphic works are longer texts including Wilson’s extensive analysis of Studio Mumbai (first published in El Croquis), a longer investigation of the Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati and a history of Modernism in Wilson’s home country Australia.