Ben Jacks' Book Now Available

Culicidae Architectural Press is pleased to announce the release of Ben Jacks’ new book The Architect’s Tour:Notes for the Design Traveler. 

If you want to be an effective designer, set aside the glossy magazines, turn off your computer, and seek out first-hand encounters with good design. When it comes to cities, buildings, and art, actual experience is almost always better than the virtual kind. No image can replicate Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp when the light is just right, or capture the silent speech one hears on a stroll through Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta or explain hours dissolving in Peter Zumthor’s baths at Vals. That is the reason for this book: to encourage you to actively pursue direct aesthetic experience in the built environment, and to reflect upon the best reasons and ways to be a dedicated design traveler.
Traveling to learn is an integral part of the education of student architects and designers. In the age of overwhelming digital information a contemporary Grand Tour devoted primarily to exploring the built environment in all of its richness affirms that learning about design depends on experiencing places and buildings in their complete physical reality. Although this book consists of words and photographs once removed from their subject, it presupposes a philosophy of architecture in which senses such as sound, temperature, time, and touch are at least as important as the visual sense. Design travel is a particularly focused way to bring together experience, narrative, and image for greater understanding of the designed environment.

The photographs in this book focus mainly on Modern and contemporary architecture in Europe. Europe is compact, it boasts an extensive public transportation network, and its post-World- War- II built environment has been shaped by well-developed public policy that values design. For these reasons, it is a model destination for the design pilgrim. It is of course possible and desirable to pursue a rigorous program of design touring both close to home and further afield on any of the world’s continents. The photographs here are not meant to imply a canon or a prescriptive itinerary, rather they offer a personal collection—one example of a stepping off point for approaching, understanding, and benefiting from the experience of design travel. One of the central premises of this book is that beautiful design can be found just about anywhere if you work at it and look.

Ben Jacks, a designer, architect, writer, and teacher, holds degrees from the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine. When not looking at buildings and making photographs, he teaches at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, including courses in beginning design, human behavior, design detailing, and understanding architecture through drawing.

In 1991 Ben walked the Appalachian Trail 2000 miles from Georgia to his home in Maine. This half-year experience of walking and living outdoors inspired and continues to inform his thinking and writing about architecture, aesthetics, landscape, and place, which has been published in Journal of Architectural Education, Places, and Landscape Journal.

As a designer Ben focuses on detail and craft, seeking to develop the potentially rich and intimate relationship between landscape, building, dwelling, and interior. He is currently at work designing and building a family home meant to last: a flexible- family-structure, aging-in-place, LEED Platinum, near net-zero Passive House in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Readers’ Responses
Pointed, focused, and meditative, this book exemplifies the traveling architect realizing built form.

John R. Stilgoe, Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape, Harvard University 

The message of The Architect’s Tour is an important one: whether conceived in the abstract realm of paper or a computer screen, architecture’s ultimate sphere of power is and always has been in the
real world. The laboratory and classroom of the student architect is ‘out there’: and it is stocked
with wonderful places to visit and awe-inspiring buildings to study. Ben Jacks insists you go out into the world and look...because he knows you will become a better and better architect by filling your imagination with memories of great architecture! He also helps...by providing handy pointers to planning your own architectural tours.
Interior: Full Color Bleed on White paper, 172 pages

Simon Unwin, author of Analysing Architecture 

Book Details

Paperback List Price: $32.50 in the US, £20.89 in the UK, €26.65 in countries of the European Union. Dimensions: 5.5” x 8.5” (13.97 x 21.59 cm)
Publisher: Culicidae Architectural Press, an Imprint of Culicidae Press, LLC ISBN-13: 978-1941892022

The Architect’s Tour is available now worldwide at culicidaepress.com, amazon.com and other retailers. 

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For further press information about the book, or to schedule an interview or reading featuring Ben Jacks, please contact:

Culicidae Architectural Press
Mikesch Muecke, Publisher + Editor | editor@culicidaepress.com | +1 (352) 388 3848 Ben Jacks, Architect + Author | jacksbm@miamioh.edu | +1 (513) 658-0925 

Press Release for Frank Moe's "Sled Dogs to Saint Paul"

Wraparound cover for "Sled Dogs to Saint Paul"

Ames, Iowa, September 15, 2014.

Legislator and Wilderness Guide Frank Moe goes the Distance

Ames, IA – Culicidae Press is proud to announce the publication of a memoir by acclaimed adventurer and environmental educator Frank Moe. This moving personal narrative recounts his life as a musher and environmental citizen in the north country of Minnesota. The story culminates with a 350-mile dog-sled journey to Minnesota’s State Capitol of St. Paul, where Frank delivered a petition to the Governor signed by over 13,000, protesting proposed sulfide mines in the Lake Superior Watershed and on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

What readers have said:

What a ride! Educator, legislator and wilderness guide Frank Moe takes us on a riveting journey from his patchy upbringing through his personal epiphany with mushing and onwards by sled to the steps of the state capitol. Lots of thrills and spills await you along the way. But what shines through this fine piece of wordsmithing is devotion: to his bride, to his friends, to his northwoods home and to his beloved sled dogs. Although sled dogs have taken me across Siberia, Greenland, Arctic Canada and to the North Pole, none of those adventures were as creative as the sled dog trek that took Frank deep into political action.

Paul Schurke, Polar Explorer, Founder and Director Wintergreen Dogsled Lodge, Ely, Minnesota

What an inspiring tale of dogs, loyalty and bravery! Frank Moe weaves together into a page-turner of a memoir the story of his love of sledding and his animal companions, with a powerful passion for the wild and beautiful landscape he calls home. An adventurous memoir that is also reflective and candid about Moe’s own personal demons, this is a book you won’t be able to put down. And if you didn’t love and admire dogs before reading this book, you will afterwards.

Sheryl St. Germain, author of Swamp Songs: the Making of an Unruly Woman

and Navigating Disaster: Sixteen Essays of Love and a Poem of Despair.

Sled Dogs to Saint Paul is a must-read for those who know the undying companionship of a canine as well as those who seek to protect our natural environment for future generations.

Dave and Amy Freeman, Directors, Wilderness Classroom,

2014 National Geographic Adventurers of the Year

Once in a while a book comes along that speaks from Minnesota’s heart and helps us understand why we care so much about protecting our homeland. This year that book is Sled Dogs to Saint Paul, authored by Frank Moe. It’s the story of a man from northern Minnesota who becomes enchanted with the world of sled dogs and the gorgeous wilds in which they race. The book is no environmental manifesto but does link the sense of place that comes from living amidst the north’s beauty with the imperative to stop destructive mining proposals.

Dave Demsey, Minneapolis Star Tribune Conservation Minnesota Blog

About Culicidae Press

Culicidae Press serves creative writers and readers worldwide with exceptionally well designed books.

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Info and Contact

Sled Dogs to Saint Paul is available now worldwide through Amazon and other retailers. For more information about the book, or to schedule an interview or reading featuring Frank Moe, please call Mikesch Muecke at 352-388-3848 or send an email to editor@culicidaepress.com