A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney's Brave New Town  by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, published by Holt, 1999. Hardcover, 368 pages. ( Amazon ) Published in 1999, this book chronicles the two-year stay of the husband-and-wife authors and their two children in Walt Disney Company's Town of Celebration outside Orlando, Florida. A history of the company in Florida and the town's creation give the family's experiences a context beyond the love it or hate it attitude that people have adopted in response to the idea of Disney extending its market and influence to town planning. The first-hand accounts from the authors, and their interviews with residents, ground the book in reality, a reality that collided with the hopes and dreams of pe...

Growtecture S in Osaka, Japan by Shuhei Endo, 2002 Japanese architect Shuhei Endo 's work falls into two broad, self-described categories, Springtecture and Rooftecture. Projects in the former utilize corrugated metal that is bent into ribbon shapes, much like unrolled cardboard tubes. Suitable for parks and other environments where inside and outside can be loosely defined, Endo envisions his Springtecture for museums and even cities. His Rooftecture focuses, naturally, on a building's roof, often extending it to become wall. In each type, the projects are given categorical names like Springtecture H and Rooftecture A, making them seem more like personal experiments than designs for a specific client and place. If both the Springtecture and Roofte...

Bedenberger Passage in Vienna, Austria by Soehne & Partner Architects   The following text and images are courtesy Vienna's Soehne & Partner Architects . What once was a pedestrian underpass at one of Vienna's pivotal points is now about to become the city's hippest hotspot for distinguished nightlife. Since the early 60's the Babenberger Passage with its four exits provided the subterranean connection for all corners of one rather special crossover in the center of Vienna. The always busy and bustling shopping-boulevard Mariahilfer Straße at this point meets Vienna's most famous avenue, the broad and gorgeous Ring . Downstairs below the avenue, people will hit the dance-floor with international dj's rocking the place, will have a drink at one of the classy bars, will chill-out or simply just watch ...

INDEX Architecture: A Columbia Architecture Book edited by Bernard Tschumi and Matthew Berman, published by  The MIT Press , 2003. Paperback, 200 pages. ( Amazon ) Acting as a synopsis of the Columbia University's architecture program under the reign of Bernard Tschumi, the book is also a document of the enormous changes that occurred in architecture studios during the 90's, as computers replaced drafting boards. The book is organized like a dictionary (organized alphabetically by cross-referenced key words) and features both student and critic work to emphasize the cross-fertilization of ideas present at the school. The graphic-heavy book includes quotes from such critics as Kenneth Frampton, Hani Rashid, Steven Holl and Gre...

House @ -1° Latitude, 81° Longitude in Manta, Ecuador by Shai Yeshayahu-Sharabi and Maria Del Vera The following text and images are courtesy architects Shai Yeshayahu-Sharabi and Maria Del Vera. Click on images - by Lider Garcia and Shai Y-Sharabi - for larger views. The occasion to build on the Pacific Coast at -1º lat. 81º long. and present the city and our client with a constructive solution that safeguards the coast's finite resources was an inaugural moment for the region and our work. It ignited a rigorous analysis of the site's specificities, indistinctive of country, yet very distinctive of it's local geodetic address, revealing that prolonged droughts, extended rain periods, excessive heat waves, strong oceanic winds and constant tectonic movements are the most impacting elements that deform local terrain...

Red Light Platform in Rotterdam, Netherlands by Jasper Jägers Architecture The following text and images are courtesy jasper jägers architecture for their competition-winning RedLightPlatform . Redlightplatform is a three dimensional red light district designed as an urban building and situated in the center of the city of Rotterdam. Window, club and street prostitution are intertwined in such a way that these different kinds of prostitution, along with their different urban typologies, complement each other. This results in an indoor urban eros plaza for street prostitution, a more confined internal promenade along the window prostitutes, a sky platform accessible by car with privacy but nonetheless a view of the city and a cluster of clu...