EDITOR: BENJAMIN WILKE

'Source Books in Architecture No. 15: Johnston Marklee' includes conversations with the architects and documentation of a range of built and unbuilt works. As the Baumer Visiting Professors at The Ohio State University, Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee engage with students at the school in conversations that range from developing a critical practice to idea formation with respect to projects to the pragmatics of working in the field or architecture today. Documentation of work includes drawings, diagrams, photos, and models.

'Source Books in Architecture' is a product of the Herbert Baumer seminars, a series of interactions between students and seminal practitioners at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University. Following a significant amount of research, students lead discussions that encourage the architects to reveal their architectural motivations and techniques.

I found the work of Johnston Marklee odd at first. I couldn’t identify a consistent or recognizable signature. There was some repetition to motifs and forms, but the work felt too flexible and varied to signal a constant disciplinary project. Of course, I was comparing Johnston Marklee to other architects in this publication series, most of whom have a manner of form-making or representation—or some other sine qua non—that marks an identity that has formed, maintained, and shifted. I couldn’t find the constant that provided a path to understanding this particular body of work. But there was one thing that was consistent: the collages. Every Johnston Marklee project has a collage that provides a shorthand representation of that project and that uses strategies of both nothing and everything to do its job.

 “This blankness that marks the presence of the project is devoid of resolution or detail except for what the silhouette itself gives away.” 

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