During an evening event on March 4th 2013, FIU Professor and Chair of the Department of Architecture, John Stuart had the opportunity to share his thoughts about his first book, “The Gray Cloth: Paul Scheerbart’s Novel on Glass Architecture” to a diverse audience of 75 people including artists, and FIU students. Stuart, who wrote the translation and illustrated the book, analyses Scheerbart’s career by including his architectural and social ideas. The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens welcomed Stuart, Josiah McElheny, Award-winning artist, and Bill Horrigan, Curator-at-large at the Wexner Center for the Arts to discuss the work of Paul Scheerbart.
According to the book’s description, “the novel is set forward in time to the mid-twentieth century. The protagonist, a Swiss architect named Edgar Krug, circumnavigates the globe by airship with his wife, constructing wildly varied, colored-glass buildings. Fearing that his architecture is challenged by the colorfulness of women’s clothing, Krug insists that his wife wear all gray clothing “with the addition of ten percent white.”
The night discussion touched on Scheerbart’s innovative theories of Architecture and their impact on McElheny’s work. The film project “The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women’s Picture,” was screened as part of the event’s program.
