A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

BMW Welt in Munich, Germany by Coop Himmelb(l)au Following an example set by German counterpart Volkswagen, BMW held a competition in 2001 for the BMW Welt , which will give customers the opportunity to "collect their dream BMW themselves." The competition for the site adjacent to the car company's Munich Plant and Museum, as well as Frei Otto's Olympic Park, drew entries from all over the world with 27 finalists including Asymptote, Wiel Arets, Morphosis and MVRDV. BMW chose Coop Himmelb(l)au 's design for the Event and Distribution Center, to be completed in 2005. Coop Himmelb(l)au's design features four elements - Landscape, Cloud, Double Cone and Spiral Ramp - that act to unite the four general parts of the program: Reception, Forum (art, science, and cultural auditorium), Brand World (the "vision and fascinatio...

Mobile Graceland in Anywhere, USA by Roy Architects, 2002 "I'm going to Graceland...Graceland...Graceland, Tennessee..." Sung by Paul Simon, the above lyric epitomized America's infatuation with the life and death of Elvis Aaron Presley, especially his estate in Graceland. Since "The King's" death in 1977, over 12 million fans have flocked to Graceland to pay tribute to the singer and his lifestyle physically entombed just outside Memphis. Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of Presley's death, Mobile Graceland brings his life to the rest of the country in a very American way: on the road. The 53-foot-long 18-wheeler contains authentic memorabilia of the King - jewelry, clothes, musical instruments and other artifacts - in an exhibition space designed by New York City's Roy Architects . An undulating w...

Simmons Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Steven Holl Architects, 2002 The newly-opened Simmons Hall, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is part of M.I.T.'s ambition to impart unique contemporary architecture on their expanding campus. Including buildings by Frank Gehry, Kevin Roche and Fumihiko Maki, Steven Holl 's undergraduate residence hall (with Perry Dean Rogers Partners Architects ) stands out with its conceptual clarity and brazen imagery. Envisioned with the idea of "porosity", the building is seen as part of the city and campus form, slices of each stacked ten stories tall and almost 400 feet long. Both in plan and section, the building is composed of two types of openings: five large-scale openings that correspond to entries, views and outdoor spaces, and ov...

Europan Complex in Amsterdam, Netherlands by Arons en Gelauff Architecten, 2002 The following text and images are contributed by Arons en Gelauff Architecten for their Europan Complex in Amsterdam Osdorp, The Netherlands. Click on images (copyright Vercruysse Dujardin of Belgium) for larger views. To meet with the ever-present demand for housing, Amsterdam again is looking west. Over the coming twenty years, the post-war extension of Garden city West will be refurbished. In 1996, an international competition was held for a plot bordering the centre of the district with the aim to find new ways of dealing with densification of the existing urban scheme. This project was the winning entry. The claim to the relative small piece of land (3000 m2) was to build 112 apartments with...