editorial – print
Jafar Tukan: Poetry in Stone
Editorial design for Professor James Steele's monography on Jafar Tukan,
a Palestinian-Jornanian architect pioneer in the country's modernist era.
Edited by Casey Steele and published by Gulf Pacific Press.
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"This is the first in-depth study of the life and work of Jafar Tukan, who is inarguably one of the most influential architects in both his adopted nation of Jordan and the Middle East in general.
It clearly demonstrates the full impact of his efforts in raising the professional standards of the entire region and completely altering the design aesthetic of architecture in his home base of Amman, over the course of his remarkable career. As a result the entire image of his homeland and its capital city have been irrevocably changed. This is a complete record of that stunning achievement.
Unlike others in his field, that Herculean task has been accomplished through a wide variety of building types, which provide ample evidence of his impressive spectrum of expertise. These include, but are not limited to mosques, private homes, housing, hotels, recreational facilities, museums, commercial complexes, office buildings and embassies, banks and universities at a micro-scale, to the master planning of entire cities at a macro equivalent. In each instance, Jafar Tukan demonstrates his unparalleled skill at maintaining the delicate balance between past, present and future, tradition and technology, rationality and passion, to an extent not found in the work of any other architect of his time."
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James Steele is an architect and Professor based at the University of Southern California School of Architecture, where he has taught both Design Studio and History since 1991. Prior to that, he has worked and has had his own practice in and around Philadelphia, after graduating with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He has also taught at King Faisal University (now Dammam University) in Saudi Arabia, University College, London and the Prince of Wales’s Institute for Architecture in London. He is the author of several books on the architecture of the Middle East, including: Hassan Fathy: Architectural Monograph #13, by Academy Editions/St. Martin’s Press, London, An Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy, by Thames and Hudson, London, and The Architecture of Rasem Badran, Narratives on People and Place, by Thames and Hudson, London.
