Form and Purpose: Is the Emperor Naked"
Moshe Safdie, edited by John Kettle
International Design Education Foundation, 1980

Paperback | 9 x 9 inches | 144 pages | English | ISBN: 9780395316641

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dDAB COMMENTARY:
Forty years before his latest book, With Intention to Build, architect Moshe Safdie wrote Form and Purpose, a little known publication compared to his books Beyond Habitat, For Everyone a Garden, and The City After the Automobile. Form and Purpose was written by Safdie with John Kettle (also his editor on Beyond Habitat) on the occasion of the 1980 International Design Conference in Aspen, for which Safdie served as chairman. The title/theme chosen for the conference and the book given out there "was to be primarily a platform for debating the issues facing architecture," per Safdie's introduction in the book. "The conference soon became one of diversified concerns," he continues, "an attempt to explore the full range of issues relating to form and purpose." It was "concerned more with raising questions than with offering answers" and was "meant to provoke, to raise issues that are relevant to our understanding of the subject, and to serve as a catalyst for the presentations and discussions the conference will offer." It was to be followed by another publication, Form and Purpose, Aspen 1980, summarizing the proceedings, but best I can tell that book was never published. Al...