Publisher: Canalside Press, ISBN: 9781527240506, Edited by: Patrick Lynch, Format: Hardcover, 220 x180 mm, 288pp
On Intricacy is perhaps unusual in that it’s not a monograph, nor is it a hagiography: John Meunier is still alive. It celebrates and proselytises the ideas that John has articulated throughout his career. It is not a book about him as such, nor simply a book by him, but a book with him, and it reflects his life’s work as an architect and teacher, in the UK and USA. On Intricacy continues conversations between John Meunier and Patrick Lynch that first appeared in Issue 2 of the Journal of Civic Architecture. It also includes essays by Meunier, Lynch and the architect Simon Henley, as well as new photography of the Meunier House at Cambridge by David Grandorge.
On Intricacy also documents projects undertaken in collaboration with other architects including The Burrell Collection at Glasgow (with Barry Gasson and Brit Andresen, colleagues in the department of architecture at Cambridge University); the Wendon House and Edington House at Cambridge, and the sports pavilion at Essex University (with Barry Gasson); student housing at New Hall Cambridge (with David Handlin); and the Gordon House at Cincinnati, where Meunier was head of the architecture school at the university.
This publication is a visual and written polemic reflecting the hard-won wisdom of a practical life. It is also a biography of sorts of a man born into a relatively recent, but also a very different age and tells an inspiring story from a period of hope and opportunity in the 20th century. On Intricacy will be welcomed by students, historians and practising architects, and by anyone concerned with the deep reciprocity of ethics and aesthetics in human ecology and culture.