A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Blades Residence in Santa Barbara, California by Morphosis, 1997 In the 1980's, and a couple years in the following decade, Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi created a consistent, influential body of work under the name Morphosis . Parting ways in 1991 Rotondi created the firm ROTO that explores architecture through tectonics and an alternative design process related to construction. Carrying on under the name Morphosis Thom Mayne continues to explore design on the fringe, maintaining contact with clients that enable him this freedom. The Blades Residence in Santa Barbara, California is one such design. Similar to the Crawford Residence, done when Rotondi was still with Morphosis, the Blades Residence uses a curved wall to set up the design. While the former used a circular arc to orient views toward the ocean and cradle the house the latter uses an elliptical arc that violates any ...

Park Road House in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by Donald McKay and Company, 1992 Situated in a suburban area of Toronto, Ontario, the Park Road House by Donald McKay and Company is an exercise in technology and contextuality. Standing out from its neighbors primarily in shape the house uses common materials, brick and wood, with uncommon ones (in residential applications), steel framing and metals, to create a tension within its context. The house, though, is suburban in its program: introverted with outdoor spaces oriented to the backyard. The street elevation calls attention to the entrance with a steel canopy projecting parallel to the main, three-story mass of the house. The two-story entrance volume incorporates low ribbon-windows and wood siding to help decrease the scale of the house towards the street. The rear of the house incorporates awnings, similar to the entry canopy, with large expanses of glass, steel m...

The following is an excerpt from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn , which looks at the evolution of buildings by their users; from storefront renovations by retailers and house additions by families to the transformation of an architectural masterpiece: Britain's Salisbury Cathedral. 1754 - Salisbury's nave is 80 feet high. The original choir screen (or pulpitum) in the center foreground was at first brightly painted and had sculptures of kings in its niches with angels above them, but political events of the mid-16th-century (the Dissolution and the Reformation) removed them. The organ dates from 1661. ca. 1865 - In 1787 the famous architect James Wyatt (later infamous for overzealous remodeling) was hired by a wealthy bishop to redo Salisbury. The original screen and old organ were replaced with a new screen by Wyatt and a new organ by Samuel Green. Bright medieval painted stone walls and ...

Ricola Marketing Office Building in Basel, Switzerland by Herzog & de Meuron, 1998 The Ricola marketing office building at Laufen, Basel and accompanying text are by Herzog and DeMeuron. The new building sits in the midst of a small-scale and rustic building development of no architectural quality worthy of the name. By way of compensation, the surrounding gardens with their hedges and trees provided a wonderful environment for a transparent architecture linking interior and exterior space. We dispense with an imposing multi-storey volume and decide instead on a low-level polygonal complex which fits like a pavilion into the Ricola garden. We wanted an architecture whose external form and geometry did not reveal themselves at first sigh, but, thanks to folds in the facades, breaks up into individual components which each embrace or reflect a particular place in the garden, or manage to project it far into the building...