A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Sunday's Chicago Tribune carried a piece by its architecture critic Blair Kamin that optimistically spoke about the city's young talents, architects that are helping to pull Chicago out of its recent funk of bland developments and neo-traditional design. I bring up the article not for its subject, but because Kamin again mentions Soldier Field, something he seems to do in every one of his pieces no matter what the topic, as my friend Frank has noted in the past. In the last paragraph of " Ones to watch " he writes, "It's also possible to forgive those in their ranks who admire such flops as Soldier Field...everyone has youthful indiscretions." Kamin lost his battle against the Mayor and the new design by Wood + Zapata, but now he seems to be using ones opinion of Soldier Field as a measure against how they're judged. Sure, these young architects are forgiven for their indiscretions, but does that mean older architects aren't? If Stanley Ti...

In a link I found at kegz.net , the Times of India reports that Brad Pitt will be taking a break from acting for an informal apprenticeship at Frank Gehry's office in Los Angeles. Recently Pitt has been involved with Gehry's efforts to revitalize downtown Los Angeles and wants to spend a year learning CAD with Gehry. Pitt's love of architecture is well known. He's quoted in a USA Today article , "[architecture] moves me like music. Done best, I can feel it moving. It has rhythms, harmonies -- it's symphonic." David Fincher , friend and director of Pitt's films Fight Club and Se7en , even boasts, "The stuff he's doing is truly great...I think in the end he may be remembered more for what he'll bring to [architecture] than what he'll bring to movies." Personally, I think it's great and I hope the news brings more attention to architecture, increasing its appeal with the public. Sure, Pitt's way of learning archite...

Unexpected Chicagoland by Camilo José Vergara and Timothy J. Samuelson, published by  The New Press, 2001. Hardcover, 208 pages. ( Amazon ) Photographer Vergara's collaboration with Chicago historian Samuelson was published in 2001, in conjunction with an exhibit at the Chicago Architecture Foundation . His focus is the overlooked pieces of cities and their changes over time, due to neglect, gentrification, politics, commercialism, etc. Sections include obvious choices like George Pullman's company town (its administration building gracing the cover) and Frank Lloyd Wright houses fallen into disrepair, but also many ordinary objects taken for granted that gain a certain meaning over time, like publi...

Square of the Patriarch in São Paulo, Brazil by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 1992 The Square of the Patriarch is an important place in São Paulo, Brazil. Its location makes it part of a connection between the old town and its new extension. So it seems appropriate that a project for the Square by Paulo Mendes da Rocha would be forward thinking while respecting the historical context of the city. So far, from da Rocha's designs, the mosaic pattern on the floor of the Square and a canopy covering an underground entrance to an adjacent museum have been completed. The former is a reconstruction of an existing Portugese mosaic now covering pedestrian areas for meeting and gathering. The latter is a parabolic covering , constructed like ...

Earlier today, the CBS News Sunday Morning show reported on the " Masonry Variations " exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. Chicago architect Stanley Tigerman , the impetus and curator of the exhibit, and CBS's Bob Orr took the viewer through the four pieces in display: Stone , fellow Chicago architect Jeanne Gang and stone mason Matthew Stokes Redabaugh's hung marble "shower curtain", Brick , Houston architect Carlos Jimenez and mason J. Keith Behrens' brick and steel gyroscope, Terrazzo , California architect Julie Eizenberg and terrazzo craftsman Mike Menegazzi's stone and cement wave, Concrete Block , New York architect Winka Dubbeldam and expert mason Robert Mion Jr.'s organic sculptures. Stone Each piece uses its material of choice to rethink their common applications. For example, Gang and Redabaugh take a material typically laid flat in compression or hung as cladding and cut it thinly and place it in tension to ...

Sunday's New York Times features another article (registration req'd) on Zaha Hadid by the paper's architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. Without mentioning the controversy around the Pritzker Prize, Muschamp professes his love for the British architect's buildings, projects and drawings. While the article contains boisterous sentences like, "...designer of some of the greatest architecture never built" and, "she is the greatest virtuoso of form now living," his attempt to elucidate the appeal of her work and persona is partly successful. Muschamp's statement, "Hadid is a great poet of circulation as a modern way of life," may also be boisterous, but to me it comes close to summing up her work. I have mentioned elsewhere that her designs have a consistency in form, specifically long and skinny spaces. From early, unbuilt projects like the Peak in Hong Kong to an office building in Hamburg, she's squeezed functions and circulation i...

Click here for an update on the Virgin Atlantic urinal post.

About ten years ago I attended a lecture by Paul Shepheard, author of the long-form essay What is Architecture , at Kansas State University. For some reason, one of the tidbits from his talk that I remember to this day is his mention of St. Paul's Cathedral and a tv/radio tower being the tallest structures in London, each roughly the same height and both equal to (or slightly higher than) the distant hills surrounding the city. He contended that this wasn't a coincidence but a way the city connected itself to the surrounding landscape: the Cathedral symbolically and the broadcast tower technologically, so the signal could reach beyond the hills. All this came to mind as I read an article in yesterday's BBC News online about the transformation of London's skyline by skyscrapers that are finally puncturing the building cap set by the Cathedral's pinnacle. Of course, Canary Wharf, near Greenwich, is an exception to this rule, as witnessed by the two completed buil...

Archiseek is featuring an online poll where you can let everybody know if you think Zaha Hadid is worthy of winning the Pritzker Architecture Prize. At the time of my vote, these are the results: Yes ..................22 votes (46.81%) No ...................19 votes (40.43%) Undecided .......6 votes (12.77%) Total ...............47 votes (100%)

A lot is being said about Monday's award of the Pritzker Prize to London's Zaha Hadid. Here's a sampling. Herbert Muschamp in The New York Times : "Zaha Hadid is a woman and Iraqi-born, and her identity is news in its own right. It would not surprise me if the jury that has awarded Ms. Hadid this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize took these factors into account." James S. Russell at ArtsJournal.com : "Prestige awards like the Pritzker are best given to those with talent that is obviously prodigious (which Zaha’s is) even if arguably undeveloped (she hasn’t built very many buildings)." Chrisopher Hawthorne at Slate : "It's possible that the [CAC] will prove to be an aberration for Hadid. For a true measure of her place in architectural history, we'll have to wait until her major projects are built, particularly a new museum in Rome and a BMW factory in Leipzig, Germany, both of which are now under construction." Giles W...

Being a fan of artist James Turrell's works, both big and small, after reading " The Sky Box " in today's New York Times I tried to find more information on his latest " skyspace ", designed for Century City businessman James Goldstein. But finding the client's own web page , I became intrigued by his personality and his tastes in architecture, landscaping and fashion . Goldstein's residence is a dramatic structure designed by Frank Lloyd Wright disciple John Lautner in the 1960s for Paul and Helen Sheats, who could only afford to live in the house a few years. When Goldstein bought the house many years later, its condition worsened by other owners, he decided to solicit the architect to remodel and extend the house to suit in 1981. Although pictures of the house and its dramatic vistas are well-known, it is probably more famous for its portrayal as the abode of Jackie Treehorn in the Coen Brothers movie, The Big Lebowski . Goldstein Residence. In ...

Octospider in Bangkok, Thailand by Exposure Architects Featured in Domus 868 , the "Octospider" is the brainchild of Schle Wood, owner of Satin Textiles and the architecture firm, Exposure Architects , who designed the unique building. Added to the textile company's existing campus in Bangkok, Thailand, the "Octospider" acts as a dining hall and gathering place for its employees. The novel, yet simple, plan is made up of three linear bars that radiate from a single point and are each supported by a line of round concrete columns. Two curved ramps rise to meet the bars, the former's slim, angled structure playfully contrasting the regularity of the latter's structure. The journey over water sep...

Once again the great people at ARCHINECT provide a valuable link, this time to the Mexico Skyscraper City Forum , with images on the masterplan of the JVC Center in Guadalajara, Mexico. A brief background: The JVC (Jorge Vergara Cabrera) Center for Culture, Conventions and Business in Guadalajara is "an unprecedented architectural project that revolutionizes how multi-functional urban complexes are conceived and developed. With an investment of over $500,000,000 and the creation of 8,000 jobs, the Center consists of eleven buildings designed by world-renowned architects for conventions, commercial fairs, sporting events and concerts," sponsored by Grupo Omnilife . According to the Forum, construction has already begun. Site Plan 1. Coop Himmelb(l)au - Shopping and Entertainment Center 2. Toyo Ito - Museum of Contemporary Art 3. Philip Johnson & Alan Ritchie - Children's World 4. Daniel Libeskind - University of Success 5. Jean Marie Masaud - Stadium 6. Morphosis...

On the first day of Spring - aka the Vernal Equinox - I thought it would be appropriate to feature The Snow Show , a showcase of collaborative designs in Finland's Lapland that use snow and ice as primary building materials. Curated by New York's Lance Fung, The Snow Show is open until March 31 in the towns of Kemi and Rovaniemi. For those unwilling or unable to trek to the Arctic Circle in time, The Snow Show's web page features extensive documentation on the fifteen built works , as well as participants in the Venice Biennale's exhibition before the final fifteen were chosen. The ephemerality of the projects is its most unique characteristic. As each team is made up of an architect (or firm) and an artist, the former must deal with a material that speeds up the lifespan of the structure and therefore questions their typical design process. Working with artists further affects the designs, though the extent differs. Ando and Miyajima, image by Jeffrey Debany In Tadao ...

Yesterday, ARCHINECT posted news on Virgin Atlantic's new lounge at New York's JFK airport. Business class passengers will be able to relax in brightly upholstered lounge chairs while sipping their cocktails and gazing out at the runway. When nature calls the gentlemen can retire to the washroom and relieve themselves into a wide-open woman's mouth, though not literally, of course. Titled "Kisses", the urinal is the design of Dutch company Bathroom Media, though at first glance I figured Keith Richards dashed it off on a napkin one night at the pub. In a New York Post article , the designer is quoted as saying, "this is one target men will never miss." Unfortunately, I can think of a handful of other "catchphrases" to promote this man-friendly design. "Kisses", from the New York Post Searching around the internet, responses to the design range from negative to appalled . Personally, aside from the obvious sexism and gross symbolism...

Eight semi-finalists were named yesterday in the design competition for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights on a prominent site in downtown Winnepeg, referred to as The Forks. The international selection seems to favor architects whose designs respect both the site and historical context. The finalists are: - Antoine Predock from the United States - Charles Correa from India - Dan Hanganu and The Arcop Group from Canada - Mashabane Rose from South Africa - Michael Maltzan from the United States - Saucier + Perrotte from Canada - Schmidt Hammer & Lassen from Denmark - Schwartz Architects and EHDD Architecture from the United States The competition site has all eight entries' design boards available in pdf format full size, yes full size. Since they take a while to download I only looked at a few. Top-Bot: Predock - Saucier + Perrotte - Correa On its web page, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights describes itself as, "an incubator for change...a state-of-the-art ce...

Earlier today I opened the new issue of Architecture magazine and only got as far as the two page spread on the inside cover. At first glance I thought it was an ad for some prescription drug like Provasic or another highly-advertised pill to improve our lives in some way, but it turned out to be an ad for the latest release of AutoCAD. Yes, AutoCAD 2005 is parodying those popular drug ads to...to...to do what? I'm not really sure. Architects and architecture firms don't purchase ACAD because of a funny or ironic advertising scheme, but because it's the industry standard software, or at least the most popular software for architects, engineers and other related professions, among other reasons like coordination and the fact they already use it. Maybe autodesk is touting their newest release as the release that will solve your ills and give you lots of free time and make you feel a lot better. From the images of people clapping, jumping and having fun to text like, ...

Three pieces of news in today's ArchNewsNow put me on a little "Green" kick today: John King covers the California Academy of Sciences' future home , particularly its green roof. Designed by Renzo Piano, and scheduled for completion in 2008, the 2-acre-plus project is being touted as, "probably the most challenging living structure that's [ever] been done." The New York Times notes the environmental concerns being raised over the reconstruction projects at the World Trade Center site, including the memorial's water source. And Greenbiz.com features a piece on a European consortium testing and developing construction materials that can absorb air pollution. And any talk of Green today must acknowledge St. Patrick's Day and, yes, beer. The March 18 issue of Newcity Chicago brings good news for lovers of foamy brew: Smithwick's - a red-ale from Ireland, non-existent in the U.S. for thirty years due to ownership and market conditions - is n...

Added Sustainability as a new category to the Architectural Links at the right. Also added an eco-relevant link to the "other blogs of interest", Earth Architecture . So check these out and let me know if you have additional links. I would be glad to add more.

Sunday's New York Times ran an excerpt from James Traub's forthcoming book, The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square , on the upcoming (April 8th) 100th anniversary of Times Square. The online version (registration req'd) also features a brief slide-show history narrated by the author, taking us through the early years, the decline and the reinvention of Times Square. Image from the New York Times Like many people, Traub is torn between loving and hating the current situation in Time Square. While it is safe and full of life it is also full of "restaurants and shops [that] are the local sites of global retail and entertainment businesses...and headquarters for some of those very companies." Not to mention Disney's role in the reinvention of Time Square, what Traub refers to as, "the methodical corporate engineering of the fun experience." As much as I agree with the author that big business has taken over much o...

Lipson Alport Glass & Associates Headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois by Valerio DeWalt Train Associates, 2004 Marketing and branding firm Lipson Alport Glass & Associates renovated an existing one-story structure in Northbrook - a North Shore suburb twenty miles from downtown Chicago - into their headquarters. Chicago architect Valerio DeWalt Train Associates ' design adds a two-story bar beside the old building, also adding a new studio and renovating the existing into studios and support facilities. With nearby access to - and visibility from - the Edens Expressway, the building recalls one of the architect's most well-known buildings, the 3Com Headquarters in northwest-suburban Rolling Meadows which is situa...

Earlier today, WTTW , the local PBS television station, broadcast Chicago's North Shore , a documentary covering the history, architecture and people of the city's well-known northern suburbs. One suburb covered that concerns me is Glenview , located about twenty miles NNW of downtown Chicago.  Growing up next door in Northbrook, as a child if I heard the word Glenview I thought of the Glenview Naval Air Base. Located just across Willow Road on the border of the two 'burbs, the base was a huge, over 1000-acre presence that one could only travel around except during the Chicago Air and Water Show when it would open its doors to the public. Then we were allowed to walk around parts of the base and get close to the jets and other planes and vehicles present. Moreso I enjoyed when my family would drive to Willow Road and park on the side of the road to see the planes leaving and returning from the show, the planes always wiling to put on an extra performance for the parked cars...

As reported by Crain's Chicago Business and the Chicago Tribune , New York-based MetLife is selling the Sears Tower to an unidentified buyer for $835 million, or approximately $240 per square foot. Sears Tower during an air show, Photo from Chicago Tribune Not surprisingly, since September 11, 2001, the building and its manager Trizec Properties (who MetLife took control of the building from last August) have had difficulty keeping tenants in the 110-story skyscraper, the tallest in the United States, designed by SOM and completed in 1976. According to Trizec's Tower web site , approximately 400,000+ s.f. of rentable space is available, or 11% vacant. Around 1990 Sears moved its merchandise operations from the Sears Tower to a new suburban location in Hoffman Estates, about 35 miles from downtown Chicago. I remember the announcement of the move and about my only concern was, "Will it still be called the Sears Tower?" Of course it still is and probably will be for a ...

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the five finalist designs for the proposed 2012 Olympic Village , also located in Queens. Finalists are Henning Larsens Tegnestue A/S of Copenhagen, Denmark; Santa Monica, California's Morphosis ; Rotterdam, The Netherlands' MVRDV ; New York's Smith-Miller Hawkinson Architects and London, England's Zaha Hadid Architects . The NYC2012 web site features a slide show for each design, my at-first-glance favorites being MVRDV's angled, vertical spires and the vertically landscaped design of Henning Larsen. The winning design will be submitted along with New York City's proposal to the International Olympic Committee in November of this year. And this week's Onion features a piece on urban planner and traffic-flow modulation specialist Bernard Rothstein of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as he is "stuck in traffic of his own design."

A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel De Landa, published by  The MIT Press , 2000. Paperback, 333 pages. ( Amazon ) To present the last one thousand years of historical developments, De Landa separates his book into three overlapping categories: Economic, Biological and Linguistic. Each chapter is further broken down into three parts with a philosophical inquiry bookended by roughly chronological histories (1000-1700 and 1700-2000). The author focuses on the flow of "stuff" (i.e. matter, energy, money, information) and their respective emergence and effect upon the flows from whence they emerged. This abstract notion goes against the typical "cause-and-effect" histories and ...

Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin recently published two pieces covering the preservation of a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Lisle, Illinois, last Friday and again yesterday . After mounting an unsuccessful print campaign to disturb the renovation of Soldier Field by da Mayor and Boston firm Wood + Zapata, Kamin - this city's sole newspaper architecture critic - is back promoting a preservationist cause. Not that there's anything wrong with that in and of itself, but the double coverage of a minor Wright house being transported to Pennsylvania seems less a reason to rejoice than it appears. As I mentioned the house is one of Wright's many minor works, a prefabricated house built in Lisle in 1957. Some Wright scholars contest that the architect's hand in many of these jobs may have been minimal, so saying that every design that came out of Wright's office is equal and deserves preservation does not make sense. In my opinion the house does no...

Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell's recent article brought a disturbing piece of news to my attention: a group of losing competitors (about 400 currently) in the WTC Memorial Competition, headed by Jeff Johns (a NYC transit authority employee), is going to file a lawsuit that alleges the jury chose a design that broke the competition guidelines. Called the World Trade Center Memorial Focus Group , they cite two problems that are mentioned in the article: 1. "The guidelines said the memorial competitors should work within the master plan for the whole World Trade Center, created by Daniel Libeskind. But in Libeskind's plan, the memorial site was to be located in an area sunk 30 feet below street level. The winner brought it up to street level." 2. "The guidelines said nobody was allowed to be a member of more than one competing team. But after being chosen as a finalist, Arad added to his team a well-known landscape architect, Peter Walker, who...

Last night I watched Winged Migration , a 2001 documentary by French actor Jacques Perrin that follows the flight of different birds over all seven continents in their semi-annual search for food and warmer climes. The film is an amazing visual feast that places the viewer alongside the birds during their north-south journeys. Besides reminding me of a typically funny Simpsons moment (Colonel Leslie "Hap" Hapablap - voiced by R. Lee Ermey - as he intros the Springfield Air Show: "To fly! The dream of man and flightless bird alike,") the film reminded me of something I read in the RIBA Journal (free registration req'd) concerning a project in Barcelona by Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron. Winged Migration - The Forum - Winged Migration The Forum, sited at the intersection of Via Diagonal and the city's ring road near the coast, is a huge, triangular building lodged in the ground at one end and raised at the other to create a new public space undernea...

EMPAC in Troy, New York by Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners, 2004 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 's Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) is a $142 million, 203,000 s.f. project on the edge of the school's main campus overlooking Troy, New York. EMPAC's goal is to "enable artists, engineers and scientists to meet in a way that they respectfully challenge and change one another, while building on the distinct characters of their disciplines," according to director Johannes Goebel. Designed by Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners (with local architect David Brody Bond ), the unique program posed many challenges, including the combination of traditional and experimental performin...

It's not often that restaurants in Chicago use their interiors to draw a crowd like, say, New York City. So when I saw a picture of Avec , the new wine bar and restaurant by a chef from next door neighbor Blackbird on West Randolph Street, I couldn't resist going just to experience the space. Cedar strips line the walls, the ceiling, the floor, and even the front door, its continuity broken only by the storefront, the deep-set windows overlooking the alley and a stainless steel counter running from the front door back to the kitchen and a wall of wine bottles. Oak wood chairs and tables reiterate the warmth of the small, cozy interior. Avec's focus is wine and small plates of Mediterranean-style tapas, the former chosen from a list of 150 bottles and available in 1/3 bottles instead of glasses, the latter specializing in homemade salamis and artisanal cheeses, among many other choices. I definitely recommend Avec for its food and wine selection, though weeknights might be ...

Last night, an opening reception was held at the I space gallery in Chicago for an exhibition of James P. Warfield's photographs, which focus on the relationship between architecture and landscape. Although I didn't attend, the exhibition is highly recommended by a friend who did, stating that the images are predominantly stone architecture, hence the show's title: "Stone Poems: Architecture and the Land". Warfield is the ACSA Distinguished Professor in Architecture Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ortahisar, Cappadocia, Turkey , James P. Warfield. In a quote from the news bureau at the University, Warfield says the photographs “illustrate how some cultures around the world have, through time, established principles of design that honor nature and how some cultures have found a balance between what they take from the land and what they return to it.” The show runs until March 27 at I space, 230 West Superior, where paintings by Marie...

Chicago architect Jeanne Gang ( Studio-Gang Architects ) is a contender in two rather diverse competitions this month: the Wired Rave Awards and The Hoboken September 11th Memorial . Wired Magazine nominated five people - or groups - in each of fourteen categories, from Architect and Artist to Game Designer and Medical Scientist. Along with Jeanne Gang for her design of the Starlight Theater in Rockford, Illinois (which features an operable roof that opens to the stars in, appropriately, a star-shape) are superstar architects Norman Foster ( Swiss Re Headquarters in London), Frank Gehry ( Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles), Zaha Hadid ( Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati) and Herzog & De Meuron ( Prada Store in Tokyo). Aside from Gang's Theater, each project has received international recognition equal to the international recognition of the architect behind the design. Regardless of the winner, the fact that she was nominated is testimony to h...

Mercer Human Resource Consulting , the world's largest consulting firm, released their Overall Quality of Life Survey on Monday. Based on almost forty criteria that include political, social, economic and environmental factors, personal safety and health, education, transport and recreation, Zurich, Switzerland is ranked first and Baghdad, Iraq is ranked last. Here's the top 10 (last year's rank in parentheses; and FYI: the ties arise from the point system used in the the ratings): 1 . Zurich, Switzerland (1) 2 . Geneva, Switzerland (2) 3 . Vancouver, Canada (2) 3 . Vienna, Austria (2) 5 . Auckland, New Zealand (5) 5 . Bern, Switzerland (5) 5 . Copenhagen, Denmark (5) 5 . Sydney, Australia (5) 10 . Amsterdam, The Netherlands (10) 10 . Munich, Germany (10) The absence of U.S. cities at the top of the list is attributed mainly to the tighter restrictions for entry into the country, an important factor since the list is compiled to help companies and govern...

In a move that's sure to overshadow Daniel Libeskind's presence in the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan, Santiago Calatrava released his design for a residential tower at 80 South Street in New York City. Coming just over a month after he unveiled his design for the World Trade Center Transportation Hub , the startling new design features twelve stacked cubes, each 45-feet high. The concept is based on sculptures that the architect/engineer/artist started over twenty years ago. 80 South Street, Santiago Calatrava. Image from the New York Times . The 835-foot tall tower is being developed by Frank J. Sciame who estimates the completion of the project in 2006 or 2007. In today's New York Times (registration req'd), the paper's architecture critic Herbert Muschamp is quoted as saying, "Chicka-boom!" I'll agree with Michael Sorkin that we need a Herbert Muschamp, the most popular architecture critic in the country, but are lines like that his eccentricity o...