Book Review: Two AVA Academia Titles by Lorraine Farrelly

Basics Architecture: construction + materiality by Lorraine Farrelly
AVA Academia, 2008
Paperback, 176 pages

The Fundamentals of Architecture by Lorraine Farrelly
AVA Academia, 2007
Paperback, 176 pages



AVA Academia -- "creative publishers for the applied visual arts" -- targets their books to students, with varying levels that range from Foundation and Introductory to Intermediate and Readers. Five titles are currently available for architecture, two falling into the Introductory category and the rest in Intermediate. Three of the architecture books are authored by Lorraine Farrelly, an architect in the UK who "co-ordinates degree courses in architecture and interior design at the University of Portsmouth."

The Fundamentals of Architecture obviously fits into the Introductory category. Across six chapters it gives students an understanding of how architects approach design, from site analysis and conceptual design to representation and realization. Along the way Farrelly briefly discusses architectural history and contemporary trends. Numerous considerations at each level of the design process are proffered, but abstractly enough that no single method prevails. In other words, the book tells the student what needs to be considered, not how to do everything; e.g. the history of a place can inform a design, but that doesn't mean it should or should be done a certain way. The last chapter follows a project from conception to completion, and while the example is specific, the presentation speaks generally about the process. Illustrations of numerous other projects throughout the book help explain the various concerns of architectural thinking and production. Ultimately the book pushes for understanding that fosters varied and personal responses from future architects.

Further along in their educational career, students may pick up Basics Architecture: construction + materiality, which "explores the origins, context and applications of building materials." Here specific materials structure the chapters: brick and stone, concrete, timber, glass and steel, composite materials, and a final chapter on innovation and sustainability pointing to future directions. Each chapter follows a structure of presenting a timeline of historical and contemporary buildings prevalently using the material, a background of the material in building and cultural contexts, discussions of how the material is applied in architecture, a feature on a "Grand Master" exploiting a material's potential (e.g. Tadao Ando in the chapter on concrete), and a couple recent case studies. Like Fundamentals the book features varying ranges of abstraction and specificity, enabling it to structure thinking about materials rather than directing exactly how to use them. It broadens potential applications by future designers by highlighting worthy case studies and by focusing on the various ways materials can be used in appropriate and innovative ways.

Each book is commended for intelligently and carefully presenting broad and complex topics in text and images to potential architects. Extra kudos should be given to the page layouts. Their consistent formats and colors help each book's readability for students, but they become good resources by enabling the information to be easy to find. The books may not replace primary texts on the subjects, but they certainly are worthwhile for structuring those and other pieces in architectural education.

Basics Architecture: construction + materiality:
US: CA: UK:

The Fundamentals of Architecture:
US: CA: UK:

Today's archidose #445

House by William Russel, Bacon Street, London, originally uploaded by *-*-*-*-*-*.

House on Bacon Street in London, England by William Russell (now with Pentagram Architects), 2001.

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AE 21: Gable Houses

A few recent projects incorporate that most typological of architectural elements, the gable house. Of course each does it in a way that departs radically from the reality of the square and triangle diagram that most people at a young age associate with house and home.


[Childhood House | image source]

Herzog & Meuron's addition to the Vitra campus, Vitrahaus is home to the Vitra Home Collection, where visitors can "discover furniture arrangements here in different style genres - inspirational ideas for your home and your own taste in design." Is that why the architects adopt the form of extruded gable houses, haphazardly stacked, to create a context akin to people's homes? Herzog & de Meuron previously played with this traditional form earlier in their career, such as the House in Leymen.


[Vitrahaus by Herzog & de Meuron | image source]

Domus features a project by Sou Fujimoto that likewise throws gable-shaped forms atop each other. Tokyo Apartment is "a micro-city of stacked houses [that] imitates Tokyo. Precise geometries amassed in a dynamic dismantling and reconstruction of the architectural ensemble." This design seems to follow Fujimoto's previous buildings that grouped similar forms together in various orientations. But combined with Vitrahaus, I wonder if Deconstructivism is now combining itself with Postmodernism to create some weird hybrid that most people can still relate to in some way.


[Tokyo Apartment by Sou Fujimoto Architect | image source]

Living Architecture is a new non-profit set up by Alain de Botton that "offers you a chance to rent houses for a holiday designed by some of the most talented architects at work today," including MVRDV in their Balancing Barn in Suffolk. Obviously here the direct precedent is barns instead of houses, but the idea is the same: something familiar is tweaked into something different, striking. Here that is achieved by a dramatic cantilever about half the length of the house. Inside a glass floor is inserted into the space of pixelated color, reminding inhabitants of the apparently precarious nature of the house.


[The Balancing Barn by MVRDV | image source]

Since the completion of Herzog & de Meuron's Vitrahaus, other designs modifying the archetypal gable house seem to trickle in. I'm sure more will make their way into magazines, books, and blogs in the near future. Why is this? One reason might be a reaction to the distance that a lot of contemporary architecture creates between its forms and its predecessors, between the unfamiliar and the understandable. These designs reach back to something not necessarily primal*, but quite distant in association, as if something is hard-wired into our brains with image of a triangle atop a square. Why else do kids all over the world associate that shape with house and home?

*Peter Zumthor's Secular Retreat for Living Architecture is a design that reaches back to the primal.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features The Diana Center at Barnard College in New York City by Weiss/Manfredi:


The featured past dose is Barnard College Nexus by Weiss/Manfredi:


This week's book review is Requiem: For the City at the End of the Millennium by Sanford Kwinter:


american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Lumenhaus by Virginia Tech School of Architecture + Design:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

ArchorNot.com
"Archornot seeks to unite the creator with the critic, while offering an infinitely deep pool of resources to the field of Architecture. Professionals and students seeking feedback are able to present projects and imagery to a worldwide community of jurors." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

New York Daily Photo
"New York City - a place of diversity. Visit a daily photo blog of the timely, the timeless, the classic, the unexpected and the hidden gems by a long time resident who shares his love of New York." (added to sidebar under architectural links::new york city)

opensimsim
"Open source design network." (added to sidebar under architectural links::forums)

Rethinking Architecture
"A blog about architecture and design ... focused on issues that need rethinking instead of only showing pretty pictures." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

RNDRD
"Rendering the 20th century." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

Phaidon and ET Modern

Walking around SoHo, the West Village, and Chelsea the other day, a couple spaces unbeknownst to me caught my eye: the Phaidon Store on Wooster Street and ET Modern, at the corner of 11th Avenue and 20th Street.


[Phaidon Store | photo by archidose]

Phaidon's third store (the other two are in London) -- open since May -- is located in a cast iron building's lofty ground floor one block west of publisher Taschen's own store. Unlike Taschen's Philippe Starck-designed trendiness, Phaidon opts for minamilism, with white cube displays inserted into a painted white space. The books, most large-format, stand out from the colorless context.

As much as I like many of Phaidon's books, this sort of store just isn't as good as an old fashioned bookstore built for browsing. For one, the books are all Phaidon, of course, so the surprise quotient is close to nil; one basically knows what they'll find at the store. And because of this limitation, the store is aimed more at tourists and other shoppers in the area, not bookstore shoppers. I didn't see a sale section, but that would be one thing that would make repeated visits worthwhile, or maybe Phaidon Atlas giveaways or book signings. This store, like Apple's numerous spaces, is a branding coup instead of a truly valuable place to shop, but of course that's about all the SoHo rents allow for these days.

Here is as good a place as any to mention Phaidon's redesigned web page, which now features an agenda and editorial content as well as the requisite information on their books and sales for those who want to pay full price. The site appears to be built from Wordpress, and combined with its black, grey and white palette, it looks like many other sites these days. Some of the better architecture-related content is in the Picture Galleries which feature projects by architects or coverage of events, like the Venice Biennale.



[ET Modern | photo by Edward Tufte]


One block north of Jean Nouvel's 100 11th Avenue is ET Modern, the new museum/gallery devoted to the work of Edward Tufte, who is best known for authoring and publishing four books on analytical design. As the photo above makes clear, this is not a gallery solely of graphic art from Tufte's books (though some is on display and for sale) but also his sculpture and photography, many centered upon his 165 acres in Cheshire and Woodbury, Connecticut. From across the street I saw the distinctive illustrations from his books and ventured over, expecting a gallery showing large-scale pieces from the books. Upon entering I quickly learned the truth from a gallery guide, and then I immediately thought of Richard Meier's sculpture hobby: in both cases from the same hand but formally disconnected from what each is known for. While I imagine Meier's hobby to be a release from his otherwise strictly rational architecture, Tufte's sculptures conceptually have a more direct connection to his books, be it 3-dimensional "escapes from flatland" or different ways of conveying things less tangible than information.

After a loop around the spaces Mr. Tufte happened to be there and introduced himself to me, telling me about the gallery/museum and his artwork. He was very willing to speak about many other things, such as his land in Connecticut (he hopes for it to become a Storm King some day), his dogs (ET Modern is dog friendly), and opinions about Frank Gehry's IAC Building a couple blocks south (it's like a bathroom tile that looks good by itself but not when it's combined with a few hundred more). Tufte gives tours of the space on Saturdays and any other time a handful of people come in the front door. The inaugural show, Multiplicity, is on display until November 27, 2010.

Design for Reuse Primer / MAS Context 7

A book and a journal with free PDFs, both worth downloading and reading.


[Design for Reuse Primer | by Public Architecture]

"'Building green' is often linked with higher levels of energy efficiency or improved air quality. Even when considered, the sustainable materials market tends to focus on sustainably harvested materials or materials with recycled content. Yet, repurposing materials directly from the waste stream is the ultimate form of resource conservation.

The 15 diverse projects in the Design for Reuse Primer demonstrate new models of 'building green.' Material reuse is always integral to a sustainable vision of how to tread lightly on the earth, be economically pragmatic, and nurture a community. From a school for children with learning differences to a center for holistic living, these case studies are intended to provide insights about the material reuse process in a wide variety of context. By discussing the challenges and demonstrating the benefits of reclaimed materials, we hope to demystify and inspire reuse."

[MAS Context 7: Information | published by MAS studio]

"INFORMATION is all around us. We produce it and consume it constantly. We process it, visualize it and immediately discard it. Inevitably, our everyday life revolves around INFORMATION. For these reasons, we talked to those leading the pack with their ideas and work. We wanted to know the opportunities, challenges, trends and mistakes of the so-called Information Age. Digest your new set of INFORMATION.

AS Context is a quarterly journal created by MAS Studio that addresses issues that affect the urban context. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive view of a topic by the active participation of people from different fields and different perspectives. It instigates the debate."

Today's archidose #444

Cone heads, originally uploaded by *-*-*-*-*-*.

UK Pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010 by Heatherwick Studio. Note the Coneheads.

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Book Briefs #1

"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with two- or three-sentence first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than the ones that are reviewed on my daily or weekly pages.



1: Light Perspectives edited by David Kuntzsch | ERCO | 2009 | Amazon
Architectural lighting company ERCO sees themselves as "selling light, not luminaires," and that assertion comes across in this guide to the effects of light, both artificial and natural (though primarily the former). Abundant illustrations aim at giving designers a thorough understanding of the qualities of light, as well as knowledge of different fixtures that allow certain effects to be achieved. Most helpful are renderings that illustrate the sometimes subtle differences between types, placement, and other lighting variables. (Sample chapter PDF)

2: The Austrian Phenomenon by Architekturzentrum Wien | Birkhäuser | 2009 | Amazon
If you're like me, you're a sucker for avant-garde Austrian architecture from the sixties and seventies. Which means if you're like me, you'll want this HUGE book, documenting the important voices in images and words. Coop Himmelb(l)au is here, as is Hans Hollein, HAUS-RUCKER-CO, Raimund Abraham, Walter Pichler, and many, many more (a smattering can be found here). A slim volume collects the texts in English, but the roughly 1,000 pages of drawings, models, and other visual artifacts is the real treat. And as the recent spate of inflatable enclosures shows, everything old really is new again; see where it all began.

3: Interactive Architecture by Michael Fox & Miles Kemp | Princeton Architectural Press | 2009 | Amazon
The authors attempt to present a history of interactive architecture and clarify what exactly it is, especially because it is a phrase easily batted around without recourse to definition. They take the position that true interactivity entails multiple-loop systems "in which one enters into a conversation: a continual and constructive information exchange." Numerous case studies are presented alongside the fairly dense text that delves into some of the technical sides of things, not just the theories behind the projects.



4: Relearning from Las Vegas edited by Aron Vinegar | University of Minnesota Press | 2008 | Amazon
In 2009 I reviewed Aron Vinegar's I AM A MONUMENT, a reconsideration of the highly influential text Learning from Las Vegas. This collection of essays also focuses on that classic 1972 book by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, stemming from a 2003 issue of Visual Language which Vinegar also organized. (His own cottage industry, of sorts?) The essays cover the book's page layout, its relationship to art, and even its relationship to Reyner Banham's book on Los Angeles. Varied but academic throughout.

5: The New Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi Architects | Rizzoli | 2009 | Amazon
The New Acropolis Museum is as controversial for its intent -- creating a place for the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum -- as for its design by Bernard Tschumi Architects, which departs greatly from the Classical architecture of its predecessor. This book argues the appropriateness of the architect's design, documenting the design in drawings, models, and photographs. An architectural timeline from 2000 to the 2009 opening is accompanied by construction photos that illustrate the difficulties in building in Athens.

6: Bunker Archaeology by Paul Virilio | Princeton Architectural Press | 2008 (2nd US ed.) | Amazon
Virilio's now classic book on approximately 1,500 WWII bunkers on the Atlantic Wall was first published in 1975. More than thirty years later his photographs are still powerful, celebrating the form and desolation of the concrete objects, but is is his writings on war that make this book highly recommended. A mix of research, historical interpretation, and philosophizing, the essays are brilliant but highly readable, not esoteric. It makes me want to pick up more by Virilio, an important voice when the militarization of cities is more and more a reality.

Today's archidose #443

Sukkah City | Fractured Bubble, originally uploaded by roccocell.

Fractured Bubble by Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan, at the Sukkah City installed in Union Square Park, New York City, 2010. Fractured Bubble was selected as the People's Choice and is on display in Union Square Park until October 2nd.

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Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Museum Villa Vauban in Luxembourg by Philippe Schmit architects:


The featured past dose is Scheepvaart Workshop in Schoten, Belgium by Loos Architects and HUB:


This week's book review is Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places by Sharon Zukin:


american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Dogfish Head Brewery in Milton, Delaware by DIGSAU:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

architecture framed
"Contemporary architecture in 4x6." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

dvisible magazine
An online magazine "created to deconstruct the design behind the literally limitless venues for design concepts," such as architecture, among many others. (added to sidebar under architectural links::online journals)

The Pop-Up City
"A project in which we will explore new concepts, strategies and methods for a dynamic and flexible interpretation of contemporary urban life." (added to sidebar under blogs::urban)

Things Organized Neatly
My OCD side is very happy browsing this page.

WAN INTERIORS
The latest undertaking from World Architecture News. (added to sidebar under architectural links::design)

Chloe's Toronto

Spurred by a comment in a recent post, I rented Atom Egoyan's film Chloe, in which the below house by Teeple Architects plays a small role, among other buildings, in the story. The basic plot (don't worry, no spoilers in this post) involves a married couple--a doctor and professor played by Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson, respectively--and a prostitute (Amanda Seyfried) hired by the wife when she suspects her husband is cheating on her. The prostitute is supposed to flirt with the husband to see if he would be unfaithful with her, but of course things get complicated in ways the viewer may not anticipate. In the film the Heathdale House is the home of Moore, Neeson and their high-school-age son (Max Thieriot). Or is it?

Heathdale House - Teeple Architects, originally uploaded by Scott Norsworthy.

Actually the house just plays the front, giving a suburban context to the three-person family. But the inside is played by the Ravine House by Drew Mandel Design, a house that appears to be in a more rural area (but in reality is down the street), backing obviously onto a ravine. Ravine House's rear is articulated with projecting bays and inside corners, so one can look from one space to another through exterior glass walls. This is illustrated in the film, but the interior displays the same means of oblique views through glass walls and across openings in section. They are complex spaces that reinforce the visual proximity but physical and mental distance between the three family members, but it and the front of the house are just the tip of the iceberg in Egoyan's use of architecture--specifically Toronto's contemporary architecture--in Chloe.


[Interior of Ravine House by Drew Mandel Design | image source]

A little bit has been written about Toronto finally starring as itself in a film (this is the first foreign-financed film both set and shot in Toronto), instead of pretending to be New York, Chicago, or even a European city. Torontoist does a good job of running down the various sites that are used in the film, including the two houses above, but also the Royal Conservatory of Music by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) by Daniel Libeskind, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) by Frank Gehry (with Will Alsop's OCAD in the background), as well as a hotel and various bars and restaurants. Many of the above buildings and names echo my review last week of A Guide to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto by Margaret Goodfellow and Phil Goodfellow.


View Larger Map
[AGO with OCAD in the background | Google street view]

While watching Chloe and recognizing many of the recent buildings portrayed, a few things entered my mind: Toronto is becoming much more cosmopolitan, with iconic buildings helping the city "play itself" instead of standing in for another one; the film acts as an advertisement for Toronto, like booster propaganda, where the quality of life and places is very high; and the use of landmarks in the city--be it a Frank Gehry building or a well-known cafe--does not actively engage the plot, unlike the Ravine House. The last is like a film set in New York City where we see the Empire State Building, Central Park, the Guggenheim, and other places that scream NEW YORK (I can't think of a particular film at the moment, but I'm sure there are many) but don't use the city as more than a backdrop. How does the AGO/OCAD setting relate to the phone call happening when Chloe is on that corner? Unfortunately I'm at a loss to say. Regardless, I liked the film a lot.

Today's archidose #442

Historical Museum Bern, originally uploaded by asli_aydin.

Extension to the Historical Museum Bern in Bern, Switzerland by KUBUS/TITAN (Eduard von Rodt and Andre Lambert), 2010. Correction: Extension to the Historical Museum Bern (aka KUBUS/TITAN) in Bern, Switzerland by :mlzd, 2009.

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Half Dose #79: CHROMAtex.me

Spurred by a recent today's archidose, I ventured to the Lower East Side (before Jan Gehl's great lecture) to check out SOFTlab's installation CHROMAtex.me at bridgegallery.



The gallery is located next door to the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street. The colorful vortex is a jarring juxtaposition with the old-law tenements and other old buildings on the street.



Like one of Anish Kapoor's inaccessible voids, the red-to-green funnel draws one's gaze into the gallery space. Access inside is via a plain-Jane door next to the storefront window, not through the tunnel of color.



Inside the installation is the inverse of the space it creates. The small pieces of colored paper are clipped together with good old generic binder clips. Names of donors are printed on some of the pieces.



The individual pieces of paper are assembled like a cut-out model: Cut here, fold here, clip here, repeat. The folds are perforated, allowing light from the gallery to enter, highlighting the seams that run vertically and horizontally.



The cavernous, tube-like, amorphous spaces reach from the storefront to the deep reaches of the gallery, branching out towards a side wall and towards the front door. Visitors gaze in to see the views like those collected here, drawing a myriad of associations that may or may not be intentional.



See my flickr set on the insallation for more pics; above is just a sampling. CHROMAtex.me is on display until September 26, and a visit is highly recommended.

Today's archidose #441

Here are a couple photos of Black House in Utrecht, Netherlands by Bakers Architecten, 2010. Photographs are by pedro kok. See Arch Daily for more on the project.





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Jan Gehl Soundbites

Earlier this evening I attended Jan Gehl's talk at the Center for Architecture, coinciding with the launch of his new book Cities for People. Gehl is an excellent public speaker, combining his extensive knowledge and experience on the design of public spaces with a humbleness, good sense of humor, and a willingness to call things as he sees them. These all lead to some great soundbites, a few collected below.


[Jan Gehl before his talk to a packed house at the Center for Architecture.]

"Shit." - Gehl's description of Brasilia at the "people scale,"the third and smallest of the scales urban planners/designers deal with, also including "city scale" and "site plan scale."

"Bird-shit architects." - Creators of plans that are a collection of towers.

"An exhibition of perfume bottles." - Dubai.

"They took out the cars, and next year we were Italians." - In regards to concerns Copenhagen residents had before the city pedestrianized Strøget street in 1962. Gehl further stated that we weren't Italians because Danes didn't have the public spaces.

"We eliminated winter in just forty years." - The ongoing pedestrianization of Copenhagen's city center means the months people spend outdoors has increased from two to ten (twelve with the recent smoking ban) since the 1960s.

"It looks like Kansas City on a bad day." - Describing Melbourne, Austrialia (at the city scale) before Gehl's 1994 study that contributed to a "rebirth of public life in the city." (5.5mb PDF of Gehl's report.)

Today's archidose #440

chromatex_06, originally uploaded by a tanz.

CHROMAtex.me by SOFTlab, on display at the Bridge Gallery (98 Orchard Street in NYC's Lower East Side) until September 26.
 

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Goodbye Bloglines

Accessing my Bloglines feeds earlier today, I was greeted with the message:

As you may have heard, we are sorry to share that Bloglines will officially shut down on October 1, 2010.

As a matter of fact, I hadn't heard, but I'm not surprised. As the Ask.com (owner of Bloglines) blog indicates, "being locked in an RSS reader makes less and less sense to people as Twitter and Facebook dominate real-time information flow."

With the closure of Bloglines, I'm removing the link from the sidebar and will see about migrating the feeds elsewhere. Somehow I doubt I'll reinstate them somewhere similar, instead going with the flow and letting Facebook and Twitter drive people's intake of information.

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Two Projects by Ann Beha Architects:


The featured past dose is Tongxian Gatehouse in Beijing, China by Office dA:


This week's book review is A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto by Margaret Goodfellow and Phil Goodfellow:


american-architects.com Building of the Week:

Curved House in Springfiled, Missouri by Hufft Projects:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Archello
"A new renaissance is taking form, the globalisation of architecture. Archello is embracing this, combining ARCHitecture, MichaelangELO and HELLO. It brings people together to celebrate and share projects. Everyone from the painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, even the poet can contribute, connect and follow their interest in the built world." (added to sidebar under architectural links::forums)

Architecture Addiciton
"The official blog of the Verb School, a hands-on school of domestic architecture." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

The Big City
"21st century cities and the future of our increasingly urban world." (added to sidebar under blogs::urban)

Quiet Babylon
"A website about cyborgs & architects." (added to sidebar under blogs::architecture)

TOBuilt
"A database of buildings in Toronto, Canada." (added to sidebar under architectural links::guides)

Today's archidose #439

8-tallet courtyard, originally uploaded by openyourap.

Tiered landscaping in the courtyard of the 8 House in Southern Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark by Bjarke Ingels Group (2010), featured previously.

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:: Join and add photos to the archidose pool, and/or
:: Tag your photos archidose

September 11, 2010

Tribute in Light, seen from Midtown yesterday, a night with low clouds and fairly low visibility. I'm still amazed how effective a tribute the light installation is, be it near or far.

Book Review: Mark No. 27

Mark No. 27
Mark Magazine, 2010
Paperback, 268 pages



Previously I've featured a couple reviews of issues of Mark Magazine, a Dutch publication that comes out six times a year. The latest, No. 27, follows the same basic format started with No. 17: A Notice Board with images and brief descriptions on new projects is followed by a Cross Section, where completed buildings receive longer copy, but not as much depth as the Long Section, the main beef of the issue with articles on buildings, exhibitions, designers, cities, etc.; Viewpoint focuses on individual architects or firms and the Service Area concludes each issue, with a potpourri of books, products and materials. The more issues of Mark that I see, the more I gravitate to the Long Section and Service Area.

Number 27's Long Section includes coverage of Peter Eisenman's in-progress City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where two buildings are complete; a piece on the house gracing the cover by Michael Maltzan; an interview with playwright and architect Moshe Safdie's son, Oren Safdie; a meta-narrative of sorts on Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti; and a by-the-numbers look at the Shanghai Expo, among other articles. The Service Area has an unguarded interview with Michael Sorkin and a couple technical pieces on slump glass in REX's Vakko Fashion Center and Byoung-soo Cho's concrete curtain. Like other issues, the focus is on experimentation, innovation, and eye-catching images. The inclusion of Eisenman, Sorkin and Soleri alongside much younger practitioners and thinkers gives the issue a good mix, even if women don't seem to be represented, at least overtly, in these pages. But what makes this and other issues of Mark worthwhile is the quality of the writing. With most of the projects found elsewhere, both online and in print, it's the interviews, commentaries, reviews -- and most importantly, the perspectives of each -- that publishers need to rely on for making their product worth buying.

US: CA: UK: