Values and Surfaces – Art, Economy, Architecture, by Philip Ursprung (gta Verlag & ETH Zürich, 2025), is a collection of fourteen essays analysing the connections among art, economy, and architecture.
In a plea for more speculative, experimental, and performative historiography, Philip Ursprung draws upon historical and contemporary cases to show how architecture, art, and economics are intertwined. By using the multilayered terms “value” and “surface,” he offers alternatives to measurable categories such as “price” and “space.” Is it legitimate to interpret Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and London’s Crystal Palace as two manifestations of industrial grandeur, their monumentality and incomprehensibility as exemplary symbols of early industrial capitalism? How should Adolf Loos’s essay “Ornament and Crime” be interpreted alongside economic pressure on the architectural profession? To what extent is the Bologna reform of European higher education reflected in the design of Lacaton & Vassal’s Nantes School of Architecture? The answers shed new light on buildings and works of art, encouraging a revision of customary views on history.
– Philip Ursprung, Values and Surfaces – Art, Economy, Architecture (gta Verlag & ETH Zürich, 2025), book description from the publisher’s website
The text is in English. The book is illustrated with some black-and-white photographs and other visual material. The book was first published in German in 2017.
