A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt by SNØHETTA, 2001 One of the most anticipated buildings since Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt by Norway's SNØHETTA opened its doors on the first of October, commencing a year-long inauguration. A year is a relatively short time, as the story of the New Alexandrian Library extends back to ancient Egypt, through to the conquests of Julius Ceasar, up to the present day and into the future. In its built form the library expresses this passage of time and our relationship to it as human beings. The Ancient Library of Alexandria marks a dramatic change in human history, particularly man's relationship to his surroundings. Two millennia ago at the library Euclid discovered the elements of geometry, a view unchanged until E...

Wall House 2 in Groningen, Netherlands by John Hejduk, 2001 As part of John Hejduk's Wall House Studies of the early 1970's, Wall House 2 , (aka the Bye House after the client's name) became part of the architect/educator's large theoretical, though unbuilt, oeuvre. Originally sited in the client's home-state of Connecticut, the house was completed last month, a year after Hejduk's passing, not in the United States but in Groningen, Netherlands, after the city undertook building the influential design on the outskirts of the city. Though not identical to the original site and without a client, the house's completion gives us a chance to assess the viability of Hejduk's drawings as built architecture. The Wall House Studies examined the wall as an architectural element both as barrier and connector, a ...