A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

The Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland by Jean Nouvel  The Hotel , a renovation in Lucerne, Switzerland by the French architect Jean Nouvel , connotes a place of fantasy. A place where dreams come true, just like in the movies. Nouvel's impetus for projecting film stills (including Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris , Federico Fellini's Casanova , and Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book , among others) upon the ceilings of The Hotel's guest rooms may not be its connection to filmic fantasy, but a hotel, or transient lodging in general, definitely has many relationships to the medium of film. One of the most interesting relationships drawn between hotels and film exists in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Trai...

Car Park, Garden and Public Space in Reykjavik, Iceland by Studio Granda, 2000 The following images and text are by Studio Granda for their Car Park, Garden and Public Space, serving the Kringlan Shopping Mall in Reykjavik, Iceland. A project for a car park, garden and a public square undertaken with Kristinn E. Hrafnsson, artist. Cooperation between architect and artist was at every level from inception to construction and the project in totality is a result of that collaboration. The new car park is on two levels on the site of a surface car park at the south east corner of the mall. In order to mediate between the scale of the mall and the surrounding housing the car park was considered more as landscape than building. The decks are pushed into the ground at an angle against the natural fall of the site enabling the r...

Block 37 in Chicago, Illinois by Solomon Cordwell Buenz, 2001 A vacant city block since 1989, after Mayor Richard M. Daley approved its demolition to erect a multi-use skyscraper with retail, hotel, office, and residential spaces, Chicago's Block 37, as it has come to be known, is finally on the verge of healing the wound that the demolition wrought (many developers backed out due to insufficient funding). The most recent scheme, by Chicago firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), cannot bring back the character of the block previous to demolition, which included the landmarked McCarthy Building and, ironically, two theaters in an area now referred to as Chicago's Theater District, though the design admirably attempts to find a balance between the city's r...