A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

A work-related field trip to the South Side of Chicago yesterday yielded a couple images that should teach architects to consider incoming and other water services VERY carefully. These pipes are like zits on a pretty face: they can be overlooked, but are distracting nevertheless. Rafael Vinoly's Business School at University of Chicago Hayes Natatorium by DeStefano + Partners Posts will resume Monday. Have a Happy New Year!

Architecture for Humanity has set up a reconstruction fund , in response to the earthquakes and tsunamis that hit the western coast of Northern Sumatra, leaving 40,000+ dead and 750,000 without homes. In addition to funds, AFH is also appealing to "local architectural and engineering contacts for possible consultation work. As with all our disaster relief operations we are committed to zero overhead costs and directing all funds towards the project."

refabricating Architecture by Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, published by McGraw-Hill Professional, 2003. Paperback, 175 pages. ( Amazon ) Aiming to transform architectural design and construction from an on-site, ground-up, frame method to an off-site, prefabricated system, the authors are convincing in their argument, yet they also raise many unanswered questions. Using automobile, shipbuilding, and aerospace industries as models, the appropriateness of these to architecture and building construction is not directly addressed. As most cars, ships, and airplanes are replicated in great numbers to realize profits, most buildings are one-off endeavors. Any change towards greater prefabrication in building ...

Today's Chicago Tribune features the paper's critics' choices for Chicagoans of the Year . Blair Kamin's votes for Jeanne Gang , who definitely has had quite a year, from the Masonry Variations Exhibit at the National Building Museum and its awards to the recent Chicago Architecture Ten Visions Exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. In between were the winning entries for the Ford Calumet Environmental Center and the Hoboken September 11 Memorial , the opening of the Kam Liu Building in Chinatown. Kamin mentions their consultant work for Lakeshore East. Hired by the developer/architect Jim Loewenberg, designer of many of Chicago's ugliest towers of late, Gang's contribution should help the large development under construction east of the Loop. He concludes, As impressive as Gang's output has been, the most telling sign of her success is the stack of resumes that sit on a desk inside her firm's office. Many are from out-of-town architects, inclu...

One of the Village Voice 's 27 Favorite Books of the Year , Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson is "a lyrical document of a decade or so of recent transformations in the city of Vancouver, B.C. Public fountains, pleasure-grounds, bridges, gardens, office towers, suburbs, shrubs, restaurants, and motion are among its subjects...The book also serves as a practical guide for the navigation and appreciation of contemporary cities." Book cover w/author reading in background. An excerpt : Yet our city is persistently soft. We see it like a raw encampment at the edge of the rocks, a camp for a navy vying to return to a place that has disappeared. So the camp is a permanent transience, the buildings or shelters like tents - of steel, chipboard, stucco, glass, cement, paper, and various claddings— - rising and falling in the glittering rhythm which is null rhythm, which is the flux of modern careers. At the centre of t...

Norman Foster continues his worldwide domination with the news that, "Robert and Arlene Kogod, Washington philanthropists and art collectors, have donated $25 million for the renovation of the historic building in downtown Washington that houses the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery," from the Art Museum Network . Foster won the competition to design a glass enclosure over the Patent Office Building 's 28,000 s.f. courtyard over 16 other competitors in Spring 2004. In many ways resembling his previous design at the British Museum , it will create a "dynamic year-round ceremonial setting that will be a central focus for the museums."

As a helpful guide to readers on this Friday Wednesday, here's a selection of Timothy McSweeney's (Got Some Awesome Meats and Cheeses) Lists : Excerpts From 2004 Summer-Movie Reviews That Also Describe Tom Morello's Guitar Work on the Debut Rage Against the Machine Album Guide to Determine If You Are in a Jerry Bruckheimer Movie Words to Know When Listening to German Industrial Music Cruel Nicknames for Overweight Vampires Sentences Containing Surfing Terms That May Be Uttered After Drinking Coffee on an Empty Stomach What Not to Be in the Middle of When the Earthquake Comes Rejected Names for Smokeless Tobacco Products Things Which Smell Good , but Which Nevertheless Should Not Be Made Into Candle Scents Things I'd Rather Do Than Go See Catwoman Quotes From the Announcers of Wrestlemania XX Which Were, but Should Not Have Been, Meant in All Seriousness Good Names for Vicious Dogs If Charles Bukowski Had Written Children's Books ...

StyleCity New York by Alice Twemlow, published by  Harry N. Abrams , 2003. Paperback, 192 pages. ( Amazon ) Part of a series that also features Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Paris, San Francisco, and Sydney, Style City New York is a profusely illustrated guide to the, you guessed it, most stylish bars, restaurants, cafes, shops, museums, galleries and other places worth visiting. Split into two parts, the first half presents places by neighborhood, while the second half focuses on the best in sleeping, eating, drinking, shopping, and retreating (to distant places like the Catskills and East Hampton). The mix of well- and lesser-known sites is refreshing, though the albeit wonderful images vague relationship to the text ...

Peregrine Winery in Otago, New Zealand by Architecture Workshop, 2004 Architecture Workshop recently received an ar+d Emerging Architecture Award for the Peregrine Winery in their native New Zealand. Located in Central Otago, the Winery sits within rugged mountains and lakes of the the country's South Island, a location suitable for growing Pinot Noir grapes, Peregrine's mainstay. It is fitting that an award-winning winery would have its very own award-winning architecture. The Winery is named after the Peregrine falcon, a bird in the same family as New Zealand's native Falco novaeseelandiae, whose orphaned raptors the Winery helps protect . Needless to say, Peregrine rolls off the tongue easier than Fa...

"...where we can get together" Ah, yes, the "Love Shack". A great B-52's song, and it turns out a real place, a five-room cabin in Athens, GA, where the band wrote some of their songs and Kate Pierson's home in the 1970's. Bad news is that last week a fire gutted the cabin, only its frame and, yes, tin roof remaining. The cause of the fire is unknown, though the building was not wired for utilities, ruling out an electrical or gas fire. Maybe now singles of the song will fetch big bucks at auctions, just like dead artist's work. (via Archinect )

Last night, London's Electrelane played an amazing show in front of a packed house at the Empty Bottle in Chicago. Yours truly was in attendance, right up front where it was nice and loud. The four-piece band (guitar, bass, drums, keyboards/guitar/vocals) mainly played new songs from a forthcoming album. Those songs blend the droned improvisation of Rocket to the Moon with this year's excellent The Power Out , an album with more traditional song structures, but not enough to be a straightforward rock album. The new material was also very "motorik" rhythmically, reminiscent of Neu!, Stereolab and other bands. Their live sound surpassed their strong albums; no easy feat. Image © Philippe Noisette

Lynn Becker's Repeat (as well as this week's print Chicago Reader ) features a critique of the exhibit " Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions ", on display at the Art Institute until April 3, 2005. Included in Becker's online version is an image gallery with photos of the installations and other illustrations by Jeanne Gang, Ralph Johnson (pictured), and Elva Rubio. As well, the Art Institute's official page included a brief bio on each architect, descriptions of their piece, architect's statements, concept images, and blank-faced portraits of each before an equally blank wall. I've yet to see the show, so I can't comment too much on the architect's visions, though from reading Becker's article it sounds like many other exhibitions on Chicago architecture: ambitious yet quickly forgotten. Potentially this owes to a lack of print and internet presentation, as Becker argues. Though maybe it's also due to a reduced lack of in...

Recent archi-news has focused on a couple large structures, one recently (semi-) complete , the other ready to start construction. These are the Millau bridge and the Burj Dubai Tower . They both appear to indicate that practicality, pride and bombast are winning over terrorism and other "you can't build that big" concerns. BBC's informative gallery on the world's tallest bridge indicates it's taller than the Eiffel Tower, built by the same company that built Paris' icon (Eiffage), is 2.6 km (1.6 miles) long, and cost 390 million euros ($517 million) to build, with drivers paying 4.9 euros ($6.50). Views from the roadway are just as dramatic as views from below.  On the other hand, Burj Dubai is about 1/3 the length of Millau's bridge, laid on its side, rising almost a half mile (800 meters) into the sky. SOM and Samsung now look set to take over the world with this gratuitous addition to Dubai's skyline in the United Arab Emirates. At almost...

Chicago is abuzz with the story of Richard Dorsey a 36-year old "homeless" man evicted from a shelter he created on the underside of a drawbridge spanning the Chicago River near Lake Shore Drive. Slipping through a 12x36" opening, Dorsey and a few other followers were able to wiggle down below the road level, hiding their shelter from below with blankets. Amazingly, Dorsey had a television, video game console, and other appliances hooked up to bridge electricity, living a relatively normal life regardless of the location. More amazingly, when the bridge would open to allow boats to pass, Dorsey would brace himself as he was slowly pushed forward into an upright position, something he described as like riding a ferris wheel after he got used to it. In some ways the story points to the resilience of people and their ability to improvise in difficult situations, in order to survive. And that no matter what architects do, somebody else is doing something more...

The 4th Annual Year in Ideas , in today's New York Times Magazine , features a couple ideas of architectural note. Concrete You Can See Through The latest material innovation that's creating quite a stir, concrete laced with fiber-optic cables isn't exactly see through but gives that impression. Light is transmitted via the fiber-optics, so light hitting one side of the concrete appears on the other, in effect like a reproduced image. It's something that has many "that would be cool" applications, though practical uses like post-911 security (bunker-like rooms with light coming through the walls!) may help speed up the material's use. But right now, it's too expensive for widespread application. The Wandering Museum A museum designed by Shigeru Ban to display photographs by Gregory Colbert will travel from one city to another via boat. But if you're reminded of Aldo Rossi's floating theater in Venice, you might be a bit disappointe...

Breaking Ground by Daniel Libeskind with Sarah Crichton, published by  Riverhead, 2004. Hardcover, 304 pages. ( Amazon ) Perusing Amazon.com's reviews (22 at the time of writing) of Daniel Libeskind's Adventures in Life and Architecture , people either love it or hate it. Love it for the weaving of biography and architecture, his sentimentality and his defense of his architectural style; and hate it for pretty much the same reasons. Granted that the writing and structure aren't polished or straightforward, it is an enjoyable read and a quick one at that. Also, it is the most legible writing that has ever come out of Libeskind's brain, perhaps due to his writing partner, Sarah Crichton. ...

Market Hall in Aarau, Switzerland by Miller & Maranta, 2002 Miller & Maranta 's Market Hall in Aarau, Switzerland is notable for its siting and its formal characteristics, particularly the rhythm of its wood construction. Featured in the wonderful little book Swiss Made , the Market Hall is influenced by its surroundings, yet is a unique counterpoint to the adjacent buildings, a light wood building sitting in stark contrast with the heavy limestone prevalent in the city. Sited at an opening of streets in a dense section of Aarau, the building follows the adjacent building fronts, bending gradually on one long side and more noticeably on the other. Its location and inflection accommodate...

Ten finalists and twelve non-finalists are posted on CAF's web site for the " Bridging the Drive " competition, envisioning a series of bridges from 43rd Street up to North Avenue. The bridges are: a) at 35th Street over Lake Shore Drive (LSD), b) at 41st and 43rd Streets over Metra railroad tracks and LSD, c) over the Chicago River at LSD, and d) a replacement of the existing footbridge over LSD near North Avenue. While the entries are international - with firms like Alsop Architects , Wilkinson Eyre and Richard Rogers Partnership - the last is the only non-Chicago office that made it to the final ten, for their design for bridge a: The other nine: Annex 5 (c) Cordogan, Clark & Associates (b) Lohan Caprile Goettsch (d) Murphy/Jahn (c,d) OWP&P (d) Phillips Swager Associates (d) Teng (a) 3d Design Studio (a,b) Wight and Company with Ed Windhorst (a,c) If it were up to me I would probably vote ...

"A Reality Dose on the Prairie: Dan Rockhill's hands-on architecture" Published in TENbyTEN 's "Fake" issue The word “Kansas” typically calls to mind miles and miles of flat farmland, grain elevators, tornadoes, and The Wizard of Oz, not cutting-edge architecture. During the five-and-a-half years I spent in Kansas, these stereotypes were sadly reinforced. That is, until one fateful college architecture field trip to Kansas City, when my expectations about the Sunflower State’s built environment were quickly and thankfully shattered for good. Stopping off in Lawrence, home of the University of Kansas (KU), our undergraduate class turned a corner and headed into yet another unremarkable block of tract houses where we encountered an alien entity; a house with poured-in-place concrete walls below corrugated metal siding, a butterfly roof (the inverse of the typical ranch-style gable roof), and an elaborate sheet metal scupper above and between the two gara...

A bunch of cool new features over at Archinect: Building Books: PA Press Eleven questions for Ken Lippert, publisher at the Princeton Architectural Press, and Building Books: MIT Press Eleven questions for Roger Conover, executive publisher at the MIT Press Exporting Exurbia Like the interviews above, another contribution by editor Mason White, this one a third installment of his "Notes on the State of American Architecture". Here, he looks at the recent opening of Wal-Mart near the ruins of Teotihuacán in Mexico. The Egg Has Landed Schoolblogger bryan at Harvard GSD posts images of a puppet show held in an egg-like structure underneath the Carpenter Center, for the 40th anniversary of Le Corbusier's only stateside building.

The local media jumped at the story when a fire broke out on the 29th story of the LaSalle Bank Headquarters at 135 South LaSalle.   Chicago Tribune Chicago Sun-Times CBS2 NBC5 ABC7   I really don't care that programming was pre-empted for hours to cover the fire, but I think the story was blown waaaay out of proportion by the networks over many, many hours. Sure, the fire kept burning, and slowly grew, but it (supposedly) was never our of control. In some ways, the media was reacting to 2003's fire at the Cook County Administration Building that took six lives, though judging by Google News this is a story that people as far as Malaysia are interested in. Update 12.09: The Chicago Tribune continues its coverage of the Monday night fire, this time commenting on the LaSalle Bank Building's design, including the "wedding cake" tiers and operable windows, both helping limit the fire and aid firefighters.