A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Commented on briefly in an earlier post , Nikos Salingaros's eight-part essay on Bernard Tschumi wrapped up a couple days ago at 2Blowhards. The author concludes by asserting that architectural theory is necessary, but not the kind practiced by Tschumi or his contemporaries. Instead Salingaros contends that architectural theory should follow the model of other disciplines where, "recent knowledge about a topic builds upon existing knowledge, older knowledge is replaced only by a better explanation of the same phenomenon, never because a fashion has changed, [and] a theory in one discipline must transition sensibly to other disciplines." This literal definition applies to science, engineering and other "objective" disciplines, but ignores many aspects of architecture that make it open to theory as practiced by Tschumi and others. Theory and Program In part two , Salingaros focuses on Tschumi's early work, particularly The Manhattan Transcripts, an influ...

Early in my college career I wrote a paper on Charles Moore's Piazza d'Italia , constructed in 1978 for the World's Fair in New Orleans. An article in the May issue of Landscape Architecture , titled " That 70's Show " documents the recent $1 million rehab and the piazza's sorry history. Moore created five hemispherical colonnades, each representing the five orders and growing in size and complexity as they radiate from an Italy-shaped pool in the center. A sixth order, dubbed the Delicatessen Order, bounds the piazza with adjacent buildings, featuring dual visages of the architect in an archway entrance. These last features give the whole design some kitsch and lightness, as the Deli Orders are capped with steel and neon lights. All this was welcomed openly at the time by the architectural community and critics across the country. Unfortunately the project could not live up to its praise, since nearby development which would have surrounded the ...

It's been twelve years, but finally the AIA Guide to Chicago has been updated, its second edition released on April 12. From the book description: More than a thousand individual buildings are featured in 574 pages, along with over 400 photos -- many taken expressly for this volume. Building descriptions focus on the illuminating but easily overlooked details that give the behind-the-scenes, often unexpected story of why a building took the shape it did. And in the best Chicago tradition, the book does not shy away from an opinion where an opinion is called for.

Age of the Masters: A Personal View of Modern Architecture by Reyner Banham, published by  Architectural Press, 1975. Paperback, 170 pages. ( Amazon ) One of the most unique architectural critics of the last half of the 20th century, Banham contributed not just one, but many significant texts during his career: Theory and Design in the First Marchine Age , The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment , and Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies in particular. Masters , written initially in 1962 and revised for a 1975 printing, finds the critic assessing the impact of the Modern Movement through its architects and buildings. Although the title refers to architects like Frank Lloyd Wright , Mies van der ...

With a recent piece at the Slatin Report, and a two-page spread in yesterday's pseudo-newspaper Red Eye , I'm becoming convinced that Donald Trump's motives behind his television show "The Apprentice" are to push his real estate rather than mine new profit areas, as I first surmised. Choosing a Chicago native and giving him the choice to stay in Chicago and manage his Trump Tower seems a bit more than a coincidence. Or as noted by Peter Slatin: But the clincher came at the clinch, when Apprentice Bill was asked to choose from among two plum jobs...Live-broadcast images of Donald holding up a gleaming model of the Chicago development...will push up sales and prices [at Trump Tower]. If anyone was still wondering why Donald Trump wanted to do this television show, here was the answer. Now, I'll admit that I never watched "The Apprentice" and don't have any desire to further promote Trump and his buildings, but it sounds like he's manage...

Worship Center in Kingston, Ontario, Canada by Mill & Ross Architects An experiment in gypsum construction, The MHS PCCC Worship Center in Kingston, Ontario, Canada by Mill & Ross Architects (now HDR Architecture ) is a series of small, yet powerful, spaces that carves slots in its curvilinear construction for effect. Inserted into an existing space, the program consists of the main chapel, sacristy and reservation chapel. The main entry hints at the spaces within through the framing of the doors, the combination of gypsum board with wood, and the location and type of lighting. Once inside the curved walls seem to peel away from each other to provide access to the individual spaces, wood accenting the otherwise monochromatic palette of the gypsum walls and ...

Architects Shape the New Minneapolis , an ongoing program organized by the Weisman Art Museum with the Walker Art Center , Minneapolis Institute of the Arts , Children's Theatre Company , Guthrie Theater , American Institute of Architects-MN , and the Minneapolis Public Library , makes evident the changing face of the Midwestern city. Projects and architects include: Walker Art Center expansion by Herzog & de Meuron, new Guthrie Theater by Jean Nouvel, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts and Children's Theatre Company expansions by Michael Graves, Minneapolis Central Library by Cesar Pelli, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum by Frank Gehry. The Minneapolis Public Library has a series of web pages with valuable links, books and resources, beginning with " The Artistic Dividend: The Hidden Contributions of Architecture and the Arts to the Regional Economy " and continuing to the individual architects. As much as the word NEW, as in the New Minneapolis, seems like ...

Architectural Body by Madeline Gins and Arakawa, published by  University of Alabama Press, 2002. Paperback, 120 pages. ( Amazon ) "Isolating persons from their architectural surrounds leads to a dualism no less pernicious than that of mind and body." This quote helps to see Arakawa and Gins 's thinking behind the "architectural body", a concept that extends from the duos artworks, be they written, seen or inhabited. Summing up this short, poetic book is difficult, as it begs to be illustrated to further explain the lofty ideas of the artists. A good companion would be Architecture: Sites of Reversible Destiny (published by Academy Editions), where computer renderings visualize their...

Jeanne Gang and Mark Schendel of Studio Gang Architects were named yesterday - Earth Day, appropriately enough - as the winner of a design competition for the Ford Calumet Environmental Center in south Chicago. From their proposal, titled "Best Nest": Nest making is a metaphor for our approach to designing this sustainable building. Like a nest, the building re-uses discarded material for its structure, and like a nest, the building protects the birds that people are coming to see; the facade offers a woven defense against bird collisions with glass. The Center is scheduled to open in 2006. I'll try to post some more images as they become available. 04.25 Update: A lively discussion of the Ford Calumet Environmental Center Competition and winning design can be found at ARCHINECT. Scroll down for latest posts.

From Christo and Jeanne-Claude's web page: On January 3, 2005, our professional workers will enter Central Park...they will place 15,000 steel weights bases at their specific positions on the edges of the walkways...On Monday, February 7, 2005, approximately 700 non-skilled workers...will elevate The Gates assemblies...The fabric panels will not initially be seen because they will be restrained in cocoons which will remain closed until Saturday, February 12, when all the cocoons will be opened, in one day...The Gates will remain in Central park for 16 days, then the removal will start. In the meantime, photographs, drawings, maps and technical diagrams are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of what promises to be another controversial project by the duo who wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin and whose Umbrellas in California killed a viewer during a storm.

Over at ARCHINECT , I came across a link to Architecture Radio , a "non-profit educational project created to promote learning and discussion about the pressing issues of design and the built environment." Links are provided to lectures, radio broadcasts and other snippets of audio available on the internet, such as the BBC Four interviews with great architects Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and others, many I've never heard before with my own ears. It's a great idea whose time has come.

With 824 large-scale (approx. 12x18") pages, with 5,000+ color illustrations and 2,000+ line drawings covering 1,000+ projects by 650+ architects on six continents (minus Antartica), and with a sticker price of $160.00, The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture earns its name. The wide range of buildings and types was chosen by an international panel of 150 leading individuals in the field of architecture, including critics, curators, journalists, academics and practicioners. Its moment will arrive in June.

Over at 2 Blowhards , a lengthy essay by Nikos Salingaros concerning the architecture of Bernard Tschumi is unfolding over eight parts, with part four posted today. Salingaros appears to be perplexed by Tschumi's writings and the appeal of his buildings and books to the greater architectural community as well as clients. A Tschumi "Advertisement" Like many people in architectural schools in the 1990's, I was influenced by Tschumi's words, even writing a piece on his design of Parc de la Villette for a contemporary architectural history and theory class. With five buildings constructed since this breakthrough commission, and six projects in the works according to his web page, it's no bother to see why he left his position as Dean at Columbia University to focus on his practice. But with this recent work, am I still influenced by Tschumi? Well, not really. Le Fresnoy Art Center still strikes me as a strong design, mainly due to his decision to ...

According to a Friends of the High Line press release , seven teams have been selected from 52 Request for Qualifications submitted for the reuse design of the elevated railway, as follows: • Field Operations (James Corner); Diller + Scofidio + Renfro • Zaha Hadid Architects ; Thomas Balsley Associates • Steven Holl Architects • Latz + Partner ; The Saratoga Associates • Rogers Marvel Architects ; Gustafson Guthrie Nichol • OpenMeshWork.ORG : OpenOffice (Lyn Rice); Mesh Architectures (Eric Liftin); Work Architecture Company (Amale Andraos, Dan Wood) • TerraGRAM: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates ; D.I.R.T. Studio (Julie Bargmann); Beyer Blinder Belle (Neil Kittredge) Two stages of proposals will follow, with the winner chosen sometime in the fall.

Blair Kamin's piece in the Sunday Chicago Tribune , " Chicago's Bold Rebirth " (registration req'd), talks positively about the current state of architecture in Chicago, while bringing up a few good points: Chicago still lacks a first-rate design journal that can disseminate the city's ideas to architects nationwide. It needs to work out better archetypal solutions for the building blocks of today's city -- the high-rise condo and the three-flat condo. And for all of Daley's efforts to push environmentally friendly "green architecture," the city's developers have yet to build any major examples of it. Furthermore, he says, From the late 1880s, when the first skyscrapers popped up in the Loop, to 1969, when Mies died, Chicago was the design equivalent of the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs. It worked out the prototypes for new kinds of structures and urban spaces, built them in the Loop, merchandised them with ringing aphorisms...

The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer edited by William Irwin, Mark Conrad and Aeon Skoble, published by  Open Court Publishing Company, 2001. Paperback, 320 pages. ( Amazon ) As a big fan of The Simpsons , I'll admit the sitcom is much easier to swallow than philosophy, which I try to like but have a hard time deciphering on my own. So finding this book, it appeared somebody found a way to express philosophical thinking to the masses, using the depth and appeal of our favorite animated family. Eighteen essays fit into four categories that focus on the characters, recurring themes in the show, ethics, and specific philosophers. Some essays rely heavily on quotes and episodes from the show to express philosophical id...

Symphony Space in New York, NY by Polshek Partnership, 2002 Symphony Space , a community-based arts institution in New York City, was founded in 1978 in an abandoned movie theater. Now called Peter Norton Symphony Space, its new facility, situated around the corner from its newly renovated Leonard Nimoy Thalia at 95th and Broadway, is the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, both by the Polshek Partnership of New York. The extensive project includes "a new cafe, new entrances, lobbies and box offices, a broadcast room, dressing rooms, offices, an elevator and stairway to connect all three levels of the complex, and new building infrastructure, including plumbing, electrical, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning...

Safety Neal's post from Friday about the 10th Annual TV-Turnoff Week seemed to coincide wonderfully with a mention in the Chicago Reader this week about buses in suburban Chicago being outfitted with televisions. In a test program , two Pace buses have been equipped with three 15" monitors each, airing "informational programming to make transit riding more enjoyable." Of course advertising will be have a large amount of "airtime" in order to pay for the costs of buying, installing and maintaining the monitors. If successful the televisions will be installed in an additional 387 buses. This move is reminiscent of other recent installations, primarily in elevators and cabs throughout Chicago, indicating that television is infiltrating every part of our lives, outside of work and sleep, though even those can co-exist with television's presence. Also, it seems to indicate that people are so busy that they need to catch the news, weather and sports whil...

As I'm writing this a press conference is being held, whereby the Chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Nancy Cantor, is making public an agreement against the school's mascot Chief Illiniwek after 40+ protestors took over Swanlund Administration Building on campus yesterday. Among those was Zwichenzug , who gave lessons for the practical activist the day of the sit-in. Spurred by the elimination of an April 15 board meeting that would have dealt with the addition of an anti-Chief resolution to the agenda, the protestors - including students, professors, alumni and Native Americans - successfully blocked the entrances to the administrative building at 7:30 in the morning yesterday. Afterwards the school locked the protestors in the building for safety reasons, Cantor meeting with protestors at about noon today. Civil disobedience at its best Statements from the press conference will be available at The Bellman when available.

On Tuesday, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts unveiled its plans to reconfigure the "Street of the Arts", spanning 65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenues. Called Bravo Lincoln Center , the conceptual design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro , in collaboration with fellow New Yorkers Fox and Fowle, uses transparency and layering as a means to improve upon the public face of Lincoln Center and the relationship between the artists and the public. Present Lincoln Center Site Plan above, Design Views below According to the press release the project includes, "Dramatic Renovation and Expansion of The Juilliard School, Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center Theater and The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Bold New Campus Green, Signature Restaurant and Store." No doubt, Lincoln Center deserves a better public face and I'm pleased that Diller + Scofidio, with new partner Charles Renfro, were unanimously chosen to work on the northern portion of the campus. Per...

Via kegz.net , I found an article by Sports Illustrated columnist John Donovan on the death of "cookie-cutter" stadiums, in other words sky-high, circular multi-purpose stadiums with artificial turf. The article definitely jibes with the rise in popularity of retro stadiums like Camden Yards in Baltimore, the first and possibly best of these. Donovan slams the cookie-cutter stadiums, taking a down-with-Modernist-architecture stance with help from Joe Spear of HOK Sport + Venue + Event , the hand behind many of the recent retro stadium designs. Many reasons exist for the demolition of these cookie-cutter parks in the last few years, including the desire of fans to be closer to the field (difficult with stadiums designed to accommodate both baseball and football), a dislike for the insensitive Modernist aesthetics and a preference for parks that hark back to the old days of baseball. As much as I don't like many of the retro designs favored today (Camden Yards is definit...

Last night, in a lecture sponsored by the Chicago Women in Architecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Lindy Roy of Roy Design presented about twelve projects spanning about five years. These projects included a proposal for fashion designer Issay Miyake 's flagship store in Tribeca (eventually built to a Frank Gehry design ), a bar for a space in Manhattan's Meat Packing District, a project for a safari company in Botswana, the P.S.1 Young Architects competition she won in 2001, unbuilt houses in Houston, a house on Long Island soon to start construction, Cancer Alley (a project with photographer Richard Misrach), Mobile Graceland , book cradles for a photography exhibit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the new Vitra store in the Meat Packing District, a hypothetical residential project for the West Side Highway in downtown Manhattan, and an extreme heli-ski hotel in Alaska. Wind River Lodge in Alaska While the P.S.1 courtyard, the CCA exhibition, ...

A recent article at CNN.com about the Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH) in Miami, Florida enlightened me to the fact that a magnet high school devoted to architecture and design exists. Vocational high schools, geared towards automotive, building and "hands-on" trades, are common, as are math, science and language academies or magnet schools. But this is the first instance, that I know of, where a school allows, "future fashion designers and architects to start focusing on [their] prospective careers while still in their teens." Here are some facts: - Programs include Architecture, Entertainment Technology, Fashion Design, Industrial Design and Visual Communications, as well as Fine Arts and the Apple Web Design Academy. - 462 students are enrolled; last year 110 of 538 applicants were accepted. - Approximately one teacher for every twelve students. - Students have eight classes per day, as opposed to the typical six, and graduate wi...

The holiday weekend found me spending my time with my family in Northbrook. Saturday I drove around town taking photos of what I might call "easter eggs": well-designed buildings in the otherwise conservative surroundings of the suburban context. Click on the strips below for the full, color views.    . . . . . . .   . . . . . . .    Crate and Barrell Headquarters by Perkins & Will . . . . . . Divine Word Missionary Chapel by David Woodhouse Architects . . . . . . Lipson Alport Glass & Associates Headquarters by Valerio Dewalt Train

Content edited Rem Koolhaas, published by  Taschen , 2004. Paperback, 544 pages. ( Amazon ) The sequel to Rem Koolhaas and OMA's 1997 tome S,M,L,XL is almost anything but its predecessor. At 544 pages, Content is 800 pages less, taking the form of a small format magazine - a "boogazine" - with occasional advertisements lowering its price below $20, compared to the XL price of $75 for its precursor. Instead of using scale as an organizational means, Content 's only apparent consistency across its assortment of pages is a geographical movement from Los Angeles easterly to Japan, reiterated by the words "GO EAST" present on most pages. This movement sums up the present situation for OMA (and its offshoot AMO) as it eyes the enormous ...

Sports Hall in Ingolstadt, Germany by Fink + Jocher, 2002 Munich architect Fink + Jocher created a luminous box from a typically solid and banal building type, the gymnasium. Their Sport Hall in Ingolstadt, Germany, used by both a neighboring high school and a local sports club, uses insulated glass with openings gives the rectangular building an eye-catching presence. The simple plan places the open-space gymnasium to the north and the secondary facilities to the south, the former a long-span timber structure and the latter reinforced concrete construction. In the gymnasium space, slats near the ground protect the double-layered glass while allowing light to filter through both from the outside-in and...

On this, the 45th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's passing, I read Lynn Becker's article "Lofty Goals" in this week's Chicago Reader on the train ride into work. Concerning itself with tall buildings and their measure, the article ( here in slightly different form ) reiterates a few facts that put Chicago back into focus for architects, harking back to the days of Wright. First, Chicago is the new home for the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU), a non-profit organization devoted to the implementation of the principles of New Urbanism, an urban reform movement. Coming from San Francisco last year, so far CNU's presence in Chicago is almost non-existent, but that's sure to change when their 12th Congress will be held in Chicago June 24-27. " Blocks, Streets, and Buildings Today: The New City Beautiful " will focus on the smallest part of New Urbanist principles: buildings, attempting to reconcile what's seen as the weakest part of New Urban...

My bank's "Neighborhood News and Events" flyer that I got in the mail yesterday contains a brief mention of the design for Trump Tower in Chicago, to be located on the site of the current Sun Times building. While old news, the mention is a sign of things moving ahead for Mr. Trump and his inevitable presence in the Chicago skyline. Certainly, the Sun Times building is no architectural beauty, but the seven-story building's presence on the north side of the river is a relief in the otherwise towering surroundings. A small park just north of the building is a pleasant place to have lunch, unobstructed sunlight pouring in over the small building. Trump Tower would definitely have an impact on the space, perhaps making it more dark and claustrophobic. The impact of the 90-story tower must be a concern of the architect, SOM, or maybe this criticism was levied against them, since Trump Tower's web page only features pedestrian views in the Building Perspectives of th...

Perusing the internet today I came across artdaily.com, billing itself as The First Art Newspaper on the Net . While its architecture section merely links to other pages on the web, that's even a little more than could be expected of a site devoted to art. But what I found interesting on the page, aside from the daily news and extensive listings of galleries, museums and artists, is their library . Photo by Erasto Carranza With more than 10,000 volumes at ArtDaily since its 1996 inception, it was obvious a library would be required to house them all and any future acquisitions. Not knowing exactly how to catalog or arrange them in what type of space, they started from an image in art: Escher's stairs to nowhere. Stating that the stairs, "take one to the limit of the possibility to take you to the impossible," they turned to young architect Betty Ayala, working with stair designer Ignacio Villarreal, to design what you see here. While the stairs enliven the space, I...

Pierre Koenig, architect of the subject of what's arguably the most famous photograph of Modernist architecture, died of leukemia at his home in Brentwood, California on Sunday, April 4 at the age of 78 . Survived by his wife, two sons and two stepsons, the architect moved with his family to Southern California in 1939 at the age of fourteen, Pierre returning after the war to attend architecture school at USC. After graduation he fit well into the area's tradition of modernist single-family houses suited to the climate and aesthetic of Southern California. Julius Shulman's photo of Case Study House 22 In the late 1950's, Koenig was approached to design two Case Study Houses, numbers 21 and 22, the latter perched on the Hollywood Hills and immortalized in Julius Shulman's photograph. The architect taught at his alma mater until a few months before his death.

Growing up in Northbrook , a town of about 30,000 people 25 miles north of downtown Chicago, I spent a lot of time at the town's Park District facilities, be it their athletic fields, ice rinks or swimming pools. But the most distinctive, and memorable, amenity was the velodrome in Meadowhill Park, right next to my junior high school. I remember sneaking in with my friends and our bikes to ride the sharp turns, pretending we were in a race. The Ed Rudolph Northbrook Velodrome also hosted soccer and football games and the annual Fourth of July celebration with marching bands and fireworks. Needless to say, it was a unique part of growing up in the suburb. So when I read in the Chicago Tribune today that the Velodrome will most likely be saved from destruction, I was relieved but also a bit confused. How could something like the Velodrome ever be in danger? Land values have risen dramatically over three decades, but Meadowhill has expanded as outdoor recreation and sports have inc...

Lisbon Harbor Control Tower in Lisbon, Portugal by Gonçalo Sousa Byrne, 2001 Portuguese architect Gonçalo Sousa Byrne won a competition for the Lisbon Harbor Control Tower in Lisbon, Portugal, completed in 2001. Clad in red, copper sheets, the nine-story tower leans slightly over the water on its man-made cape. The combination of form and material conspire to create a unique object, its silhouette a striking outline against the city behind it and the copper's patina varying due to the inclination of the surfaces. Considered an "active" lighthouse," the building functions beyond a navigational tool; it also contains offices for monitoring and controlling shipping traffic, as well as simulators and seminar rooms to train ...

Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life by Jane Jacobs, published by  Random House, 1985. Hardcover, 272 pages. ( Amazon ) Although published in 1984, the ideas that Jacobs describes in this iconoclastic work still apply to our economies twenty years later. From the title, it is apparent that she attacks Adam Smith's 18th century economic treatise (among other accepted theories) while also alluding to the importance of cities in regard to national wealth, something missing from Smith's book and subsequent works. Known more in architectural circles for another masterpiece, The Death and Life of Great American Cities , both books embrace cities as great places that foster diversity ...

Yesterday the Skyscraper Museum opened the doors of its new home at 39 Battery Place in New York City. According to the private, non-profit, educational corporation's web page, the Skyscraper Museum, "The museum celebrates the city's rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines. Through exhibitions, programs and publications, the museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence." Exhibitions have included the Viewing Wall at Ground Zero , WTC: Monument , Big Buildings , and Building the Empire State , among others. The first two seem to indicate the importance of its permanent home in the Ritz-Carlton Downtown by the Polshek Partnership , situated at the tip of Battery Park City a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Designed by SOM, the Skyscraper Museum contains two main ga...