James Wines Gets His Monograph: 400 Images, One Surviving Store

Nine deconstructed big-box stores made SITE's name, and only one of them still stands. What Else Could It Mean?, a new monograph edited by architectural historian Phillip Denny and published by Skira at £50 / $65 / €60, gathers what remains of James Wines's firm: over 400 images and sketches spanning roughly 100 completed works, many of them long since demolished.

Wines, born in 1932 and trained as a sculptor and graphic designer, founded Sculpture in the Environment (SITE) in New York in 1970. The firm, described as an 'environmental arts organisation', produced some of the defining works of architectural postmodernism. Most now survive only as ideas, writings and images. The book, as its subtitle promises, leans on drawings and writings — Wines's preferred medium for, as the material puts it, making human connections with spaces.

Why does a catalogue store matter?

The core of the story is Best Products Company, Inc., the retailer set up by Sydney and Frances Lewis in the late 1950s. The Lewises had an artistic eye and the commercial nerve to use it; they hired SITE to shape nine of their big-box stores. SITE's approach was a literal take on building-as-billboard: deconstructing, twisting, tilting and expanding envelopes so the stores would stand out against suburban sprawl.

The monograph revisits the best-known results:

• The 'Indeterminate Façade' in Houston, which appeared to be crumbling
• The 'Notch' in Sacramento, with a sliding, fragmented corner that opened to form the entrance
• The 'Forest Building' in Richmond, Virginia — the only surviving Best store, now a church, with a stand of trees behind a false façade giving the impression of a long-abandoned structure

Suburban retail rarely gets this treatment twice.

What else does the portfolio cover?

SITE's output extended well beyond showrooms. The book documents pavilions, interiors and public art installations, including the Ghost Parking Lot in Hamden, Connecticut — a group of tarmac-swathed vehicles that appeared to grow, or melt, out of the infrastructure. Wines also collaborated with the late Virgil Abloh on stores for Off-White, a pairing that suggests his drawing habit aged better than most of his buildings.

Now in his nineties, Wines still advocates for the environment and the handmade. Denny, who teaches at Harvard and Pratt Institute, frames the monograph around what the source calls a 'never-ending fascination with architecture's relationship to nature'.

The Best stores got the publicity. The book argues there was considerably more to the file, and it lands at a moment when architects are again asking what a façade is actually for.

What Else Could It Mean? Drawings and writings by James Wines & SITE, edited by Phillip Denny, is published by Skira, £50 / $65 / €60.