A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Between Spaces by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson , published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2000. Paperback, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) Featuring photography by Judith Turner and an introduction by John Hedjuk , this book covers six built works of the New York duo (four in their home state, one in Los Angeles, and one in North Carolina) and one unbuilt work. Turner's black-and-white photographs focus on connections: wall and ceiling, structure and facade, etc. Coupled with the architects' drawings and models, one gains an understanding of each project both in totality and in detail. Hedjuk's introduction is a nice balance of personal experience and poetic insight. The words and i...

Primary School in Gando, Burkina Faso by Diébédo Francis Kéré, 2001 A recipient of a 2004 Aga Khan Award for Architecture , the story behind Diébédo Francis Kéré 's design for the Primary School in Gando, Burkina Faso is even more fascinating that the building itself. It is a story of philanthropy, the importance of education, local tradition and skills, and one man's desire to make it all happen. Architect Francis Kéré is the first person from Gando - a small town about 200 km (125 miles) from the country's capital Ouagadougou - to study abroad, choosing to pursue an architectural degree in Berlin. Believing that his hometown needed a good school facility, Kéré set up a fund-raising association (Bricks ...

Today's New York Times Magazine focuses on "The Thoroughly Designed American Childhood". Included in the online version, though not related to this interesting cover topic, is a collection of black and white photographs taken at night in New York institutions. " After Hours " gives us a glimpse of New York that is otherwise inaccessible. The American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space

Chicago continues its love affair obsession with Mies next week with the screening of Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe . The 52-minute documentary was made by Montreal's 4x4 Films and received the Award for Best Canadian Work at the 22nd International Festival of Films on Art . The screening at The Harold Washington Library on November 30 at 6pm is hosted by the Mies van der Rohe Society . Reservations are required with each ticket costing $40. This rather steep price though does get you cocktails beforehand and a panel discussion afterwards, the latter with Stanley Tigerman , former IIT dean Gene Summers, Fred Camper and Edward Lifson from WBEZ. The film includes observations by Tigerman and Summers, as well as Elizabeth Diller , Dirk Lohan , Rem Koolhaas , Phyllis Lambert , Peter Pran , and others.

From the Art Institute of Chicago 's web page: Throughout history, Chicago architects have played an active and far-reaching role in bringing innovation to the city'’s built environment. They are often the pioneers who debate and propose new ideas for tackling pressing needs of the city. Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions celebrates this role by asking ten architects to define an issue important for the future of the city and create a "spatial commentary" on that theme. Stanley Tigerman and Henry Cobb worked with Art Institute curators to pick the ten architects, which includes the usual suspects (Jeanne Gang, Douglas Garofalo, Ralph Johnson, Ronald Krueck, Margaret McCurry, Eva Maddox, Joe Valerio) with some newer and lesser-known names (Katerina Reudi, Elva Rubio, Xavier Vendrell). Each architect was given a roughly 20-foot square space at the museum as a "mini-exhibition" within the larger, Tigerman-designed layout. The exhibition's open-ende...

As you can probably see the layout of this blog has changed (slightly). This is to accomplish a couple things: 1. Create permanent links on separate pages for each post 2. Integrate comments with the individual posts The first appears to work for all new posts, starting with this one, although the second is not perfect...yet. It turns out that integrated comments with Blogger enable one to post either anonymously or as themselves, though the latter requires a Blogger account in order to work. I definitely don't want to require this, nor do I want "non Bloggers" to only post anonymously. So, because of this and the desire to keep my old comments, I'm offering the option of the Blogger comments and the old Haloscan comments which pop up in a new window. Hopefully this is a temporary fix as I try to figure all this out. Otherwise, everything else is pretty much the same. Enjoy, john

Anything , edited by Cynthia C. Davidson, published by  The MIT Press , 2001. Paperback, 288 pages. ( Amazon ) Anything marks the end of ten years of multi-disciplinary conferences and books on architecture and theory sponsored by Anyone Corporation , who recently resurfaced with Log . Spanning three days at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in June 2000, I was fortunate enough to attend day two of the conference and symposium, featuring Jeffrey Kipnis, Steven Holl, Ben van Berkel, Jacques Herzog, Rafael Moneo, Elizabeth Diller, Zaha Hadid, and others. The book afforded me the opportunity to see what I missed the other two days, particularly the discussions that followed each half day's prepared ...

School of Botany in Melbourne, Australia by Lyons Architects, 2004   The University of Melbourne School of Botany 's recent expansion sits on the northern edge of campus, on Tin Alley overlooking Trinity College and facing the School's System Garden to the south. Lyons Architects responded to this context by treating the two long, main facades differently, the northern facade toward Trinity in patterned glazed brick and the southern, garden facade a composition of folded glass. The north elevation attempts to relate to the School through the colors of the glazed brick (yellows and greens) and the naturalistic pattern of its composition. At the west end, metal panels predominate, b...

Architecture for Art : American Art Museums, 1938-2008, edited by Scott Tilden. Surveying 39 U.S. art museums, this photograph-saturated book features well known designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, Santiago Calatrava, Louis Kahn, and so forth, responding to the "exciting new buildings currently under way in New York, Denver, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Boston."

As reported on this page eons ago , the Chicago Architecture Foundation recently created its very own architecture prize, Patron of the Year . Announced last night, the winners in the Commercial, Institutional and Governmental categories, respectively, are: CMK Development Corp. for the Contemporaine by Perkins & Will, Illinois Institute of Technology for the McCormick Tribune Campus Center and State Street Village , and the City of Chicago for Millennium Park . Since it's the first year for the awards, the appearance that they are rewarding buildings more than patrons is excusable. Basically the list contains the most notable designs in the last year (minus Soldier Field). But that is also excusable in Chicago's still rather conservative architectural climate. I think eventually the award should recognize prolonged service by clients towards good design rather than singular buildings, much like RIBA 's Client of the Year award, which it bestowed on Lo...

The five finalists for the 2012 Summer Olympics ( London , Madrid , Moscow , New York , Paris ) submitted their bids this week, each posting for the public their respective 600-page, 3-volume books in PDF form. The books cover everything from a concept for the Games in each locale to economics, legal concerns, customs, environment, venues, Olympic village, medical, transport, security, and on and on. Well, at least the four non-winning countries will have something for their bookshelves. (Links via Archinect )

Kegz.net posts a link to open-loop.org , a Chicago Surveillance Camera Mapping Project. Open-Loop.org is a collective that documents the video surveillance in Chicago’s downtown area, commonly known as the Loop. Our efforts reveal that an enormous percentage of public space in downtown Chicago is continuously monitored by surveillance devices. Whether operated by government or private entities, these devices establish a constant watch on the activities taking place in much of the Loop. This site reminds me of a graphic I clipped from The New York Times many years ago that showed security cameras in a section of midtown Manhattan. What separates the NYT graphic from open-loop's is that the former showed a "cone of surveillance" for each camera. Looking at it, one realized that unwatched ground was less than watched ground, a fact open-loop is corroborating, but with less visual success, as their text-based maps only locate the cameras and indicate what type (p...

Flipping through the December edition of Wallpaper* on the way to work this morning, I came across these quite interesting buildings and structures: UN Studio's La Defense offices in Almere, Netherlands, incorporating specially-designed panels by 3m. Nieto Sobejano Architects ' Auditorium and Conference Center in Merida, Spain, whose facade is a stone relief pattern of the city's old Roman walls. Kuramure , a ryokan (traditional inn) on the island of Hokkaido, designed by Makoto Nakayama. Each suite has its own hot spring bath, living room, bedroom, and private garden or terrace. Very tranquil. Norman Foster 's Millau Viaduct nearing completion in southern France, a 2.6km roadway linking Paris and Barcelona. Klaus Stattmann 's Kinsky House near Vienna, a house addition that sits precariously on two steel columns.

The Van Alen Institute has just announced their latest competition, The Parachute Pavilion , an open design competition for Coney Island. The program involves inserting a restaurant, store, multi-purpose exhibition/event space, and office space, in a site adjacent to the Parachute Jump, out of operation since 1968. Visit the competition web page for detailed information. Sounds like a fun competition. Early registration deadline is December 15. Update 11.18: Although Van Alen's web page indicates an early registration deadline of December 1, the actual deadline has been extended until December 15 . Registration before that date is discounted to $30 for everybody. After that date, students still pay $30 but professionals pay $60.

Fellow Chicagoans, tonight the Chicago Architectural Club hosts A Critical Voice: Implications of Media and Architecture in Chicago at 6:30pm at I-Space Gallery, 230 W. Superior, 2nd floor. See ya there!

Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide by Matthew Strecher, published by  Continuum, 2002. Paperback, 96 pages. ( Amazon ) Part of the Continuum Contemporaries series that gives perspectives on contemporary fiction, Matthew Strecher tackles The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by one of Japan's most popular authors Haruki Murakami . Originally released as three separate volumes in Japan (the third coming after public outrage over the author ending the series after two books), english translations gather the three volumes into one, though no definitive text exists for one of the author's most ambitious and complex works. The novel centers on character's Toru attempt to recover...

Cognito Films in Culver City, California by Randall Stout Architects, 2001 Recently receiving an honor award from Wood Design & Building Magazine , the office for Cognito Films in Culver City (home to many of Eric Owen Moss 's architectural adventures) is definitely unconventional in its use of wood, using structural sizes to demarcate space in an imaginative arrangement. The jury commented that the "arrangement and connections are so simple that one can imagine the stacked timbers re-use at some time in the future." This thinking goes hand-in-hand with the company, a production company for television commercials, who strive for freshness and surprise. Randall Stout Architects ' design r...

Sometimes critic of architecture Transfer continues his posts of architectural hate, this time with 3 Park Avenue , the Norman Thomas High School for Commercial Education. Interestingly, according to Transfer, this is the last building by the architecture firm that authored the Empire State Building, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon. Here's an image from New York Architecture in Images . It appears that the architects wanted the building to stand out, specifically because the building turns its tower mass 45 degrees from Manhattan's grid. This is a maneuver that is anti-contextual in its urbanism and is coupled by the anti-contextualism of solid brick walls on its lower third. ( via Curbed )

Icon Magazine spotlights some of my favorite design blogs in an article on their expediency and value to print media. Not only does the article mention reluct.com , dezain.net , MoCo Loco , Archinect , City of Sound and Design Observer (among others), but many of these site's creators contribute quotes that let us see why these blogs exist and what they hope to accomplish. We see that many people run blogs without any realistic chance of making money off them, most with full-time jobs. So to me these bloggers are doing it because they love the subject they cover (architecture, design, industrial design, a combination of design fields, etc) and are exploring the internet as a tool for strengthening the design community by keeping informed, informing others and creating discussion.

The European Ceramic Work Centre will be starting two new projects in 2005 with the intent of "infusing new life into the relationship between ceramics and architecture." Brick "will focus on 'tangible' results", while Combined Residencies will "demonstrate that cooperation between architects, visual artists and designers at as early a stage as possible, benefits the interactive, creative process." According to .ekwc's site, "Every architect, designer or visual artist with an academic education or an equivalent proven professional experience can send in his/her work plan [for these projects]." Visit .ekwc for application forms and more information on these unique project opportunities. Deadline for application is January 15.

Archinect posts some images comparing a student skyscraper design and SOM's Freedom Tower. From the Associated Press : A former architectural student sued the designers of the World Trade Center site's planned Freedom Tower on Monday, saying designs for the skyscraper mirror those he created at Yale University...Thomas Shine, of Brookline, Mass., is seeking unspecified damages in federal court in Manhattan for what he said was the theft of his designs...The lawsuit alleged that the Freedom Tower was "strikingly similar" to Shine's designs for a Manhattan building for the proposed 2012 Olympic Games in New York...Childs saw the designs when he served in 1999 on a panel of jurists invited by the Yale School of Architecture to evaluate the students' work. See for yourself . Coincidentally I know someone who considered bringing a lawsuit against the same people for the same reason, perhaps an indication that SOM borrows heavily from student work or that high-r...

In John Updike's " Critic At Large " review in The New Yorker on the MOMA expansion by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi (one of two featured in the magazine before the museum's November 20 reopening), comes this second-hand quote by the architect: Raise a lot of money for me, I’ll give you good architecture. Raise even more money, I’ll make the architecture disappear. After experiencing Taniguchi's Gallery of Horyuji Treasures in Tokyo I realize this is not much of an overstatement. While Updike is referring to "floating" wall effect achieved via a dark band at the top of bottom of each interior wall, at Horyuji Treasures he melds the architecture with the display of objects so seamlessly that they are one and the same. The main gallery includes two square columns in flawless concrete that set up a grid of 26 wood and glass display cases, the same square dimension as the columns. The columns ground the encased sculptures, which would otherwise b...

"Panel Discussion with Lee Bey, former Sun-Times architecture critic, deputy mayor and current Director of Media and Government Affairs for SOM ; Annette Ferrara of TENbyTEN , and Lynn Becker , freelance writer for the Chicago Reader. Recent discussions at the Chicago Architectural Club suggest the club operate as a 'think tank', that can assist community groups, city governments and other public entities with difficult civic problems through architectural design competitions and events. In what way can CAC enlist print, web and broadcast media in pursuing this goal?" Thanks to Don G. for the head's up and the cool image above.

Intertwining by Steven Holl, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 1996. Hardcover, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) About halfway through Steven Holl 's second small-format monograph for Princeton Architectural Press sits the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland. Better known as Kiasma , the building's concept lies in the intertwining of nature and culture, determined by site, program and imagination. The project's location in the book is intentional, it serving as an important marker in Holl's career, where he becomes an architect on the international scene, where he abandons strict orthogonality for an architecture that embraces curves, and where the scale of his built work grows beyond primarily house...

Minotaur in Northumberland, England by Nick Coombe and Shona Kitchen, 2003   The Kielder Water and Forest Park is located near the Scottish border on the largest man-made lake in Europe. A variety of attractions suit just about any taste, with cycling, walking trails, visitor centers, a castle, a conference center, and more. What pertains to us here is the contemporary art and architecture at Kielder, a program started in 1995. Three years later, an advisory report concluded that future commissions should focus on contemporary architecture, specifically the idea of shelter, Softroom 's Belvedere the first such construction. September 2000 saw the completion of the next piece, James Turrell's Kielder Skyspace , a cylin...