Salmela Architecture

by: Thomas Fisher with a Preface by Dabid Salmela

photographs by: Peter Bastianekko-Kerze

Salmela Architect provides an in-depth look at one of America’s leading “critical regionalist” architects. Salmela’s buildings resolve a central question of our time: how to balance the various extreme positions that characterize contemporary architecture and culture. Salmela accomplishes this by juxtaposing opposites: modernist and traditional forms, open and cellular plans, large and small scales, familiar elements used in unfamiliar ways. His projects range from a small stand-alone sauna to commercial spaces visited by thousands of people, and his buildings, mostly located in the upper Midwest, have become nationally and internationally known.

Salmela Architect showcases twenty-six completed buildings and sixteen current projects in lavish color photographs and architectural drawings, enabling readers to get a full sense of the practicality, ethnicity, and playfulness apparent in David Salmela’s work. Architecture critic Thomas Fisher explores Salmela’s propensity to draw from regional roots as he creates designs particular to individual places and cultures yet with universal appeal. Fisher illuminates this synchronicity with buildings as prominent as the Gooseberry Falls Visitors Center and Wild Rice Restaurant as well as residential projects, including the acclaimed Jackson Meadow community and photographer Jim Brandenburg’s Ravenwood Studio.

University of Minnesota Press, 2005

200 pages, 56 b&w photos, 154 color plates, 9 1/2 x 10 1/2