A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Tonight FOX reran The Simpsons episode with Frank Gehry and I must admit it's still hilarious. I grabbed my camera and took a few screenshots. Mr. Gehry receives the letter from Marge requesting his services. He's especially impressed by the Snoopy stationary. Nice mailbox. At first he crumples up the letter and throws is on the sidewalk, a sign of rejection, but when he sees the paper's form, Eureka! "Frank Gehry, you've done it again!" Erecting the steel frame, the building looks conventional, but then the cranes start swinging wrecking balls to whack the structure into shape. Upon opening, Mr. Gehry must thwack ruffians with his broom so they don't skateboard on his curvy creation. "Hey, Frank Gehry. Design curvilinear forms much?" But the Concert Hall isn't a success, as witnessed by these marquees. This must be about the fifth time the Simpsons has ripped on David Brenner. Mr. Burns buys the Concert Hall and turns it ...

The New York Times reports on Manhattan Guardian , a comic book series set in the fictional city Cinderella City, an amalgam of real and imagined New York City. What sets it apart from other comic incarnations, like Gotham and Metropolis, is the overt inclusion of unbuilt projects for the city, beyond the usual grime and grit found in Superman, Batman, and the like. An issue from earlier this year featured a proposed hotel by Antoni Gaudi and an office building by Hans Hollein with a facade resembling the grill of a Rolls-Royce. This image from the forthcoming September release shows a design that Frank Lloyd Wright proposed for Ellis Island. Created and authored by Grant Morrison, he said "by embellishing on the existing New York he was tapping into his favorite comic book power: the ability to create alternative realities." I can only imagine, as the article indicates, that "after immersing yourself in Mr. Morrison's version of New York, it's a little hard t...

I just discovered the web page Asian Historical Architecture: A Photographic Survey and - WOW! - it's amazing. The pleasantly simple interface lists the various countries (nineteen) and buildings (a lot) on the left, with the images and other information displayed on the right. While the images aren't huge, the coverage is impressive and some helpful maps are used with some buildings to orient the viewer, like Japan's Himeji Castle (below). Most importantly, the images are quite beautiful.

At lunch yesterday I walked over to the MCA and zipped through the Dan Flavin Retrospective currently on view until October 30. The same show was on display at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth when I was down there for a wedding a couple months ago. Housed in a Tadao Ando design, the exhibition was a delight, breaking out of the typical "white box" galleries of many modern art museums to interact with the ground floor reflecting pool and the concrete walls so prevalent in Ando's architecture. So walking on over to the MCA, I couldn't help but anticipate how Flavin's multitude of fluorescent tubes would work in their new location, and not in a good way. It seemed like his pieces gained something in the unique spaces and textures of Fort Worth, but I was wrong. The colored glow of the tubes is not only amplified by the MCA's plethora of white walls but it is used to full effect by the museum in the placement of the pieces and the location of the exhibit...

Following up on the BIG NEWS in these parts, more and more people are weighing in on the plans for Fordham Spire , planned for Chicago's Streeterville neighborhood. WTTW's Chicago Tonight had Adrian Smith of SOM, WBEZ's Edward Lifson, and the Sun-Times then-staff reporter-now architecture critic Kevin Nance on Tuesday discussing the proposal. I caught about the last half where Smith, the designer of the Trump Tower just down the river from the site, actually said the two skyscrapers would complement each other, unlike his client who strongly opposes the Spire. Lifson spoke about Calatrava's charisma being a help in actually getting the building off the ground, while Nance asserted that the building would not be a target for terrorists, since it's residential/hotel and therefore doesn't carry any symbolic meaning. They ended by giving their odds on the project's outcome: Smith giving it a 10% chance, Lifson thinking a Calatrava tower will rise but in a di...

With the taking off of Podcasting, it was just a matter of time before the mix tape found an online home. The Wooster Collective is one such repository, featuring the Vitamin_F Series curated by Vinnie Ray. The latest mix is compiled by Maya Huyak and is 74 minutes (35 mb) of quality "eclectica". My personal favorites are the starters by X-Ray Specs and Julie Ruin (of Le Tigre) and the 1-2-3 punch of Mellow Candle , Nanette Natal , and Olivia Tremor Control . And if you've never heard the Langley Schools Music Project , now's your chance.

As a distraction from " The Calatrava ", I offer the following tidbits: :: Pamphlet Architecture announces its call for entries for issue #28 . This is a great opportunity for "architects, designers, theorists, urbanists, and landscape architects to publish their designs, manifestos, ideas, theories, ruminations, hopes, and insights for the future of the designed and built world." Deadline is October 10. Click link above for more information. :: Lynn Becker has a new blog, ArchitectureChicago Plus , "a place to find out what's going on in Chicago's architectural community, as well as for discussions on its current state and future potential." and :: Following on the heels of the recent archi-boom in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune now has a permanent outpost for architecture articles, titled cityscape . (Thanks to Lil'G for this head's up)

2,000 feet. 115 stories. 920,000 s.f. $500 million The Chicago Tribune reports on the latest supertall tower planned for Chicago, Fordham Tower, designed by everybody's favorite Spanish architect/engineer Santiago Calatrava . According to the article, the tower would be ...utterly different from the boxy forms found elsewhere on the Chicago skyline: A skyscraper with gently curving, concave outer walls attached to a massive reinforced concrete core. Each floor would rotate a little more than 2 degrees from the one below. The floors would turn 270 degrees around the core as they rise, making the building appear to twist. A spire above would soar to roughly 2,000 feet... Calatrava is quoted as saying this super-duper tall height (about 550-feet more than the Sears Tower ) reflects his search for ideal proportions and that the goal "is not the highest, or the widest, but a building that wants to be special, a step beyond." Alderman Burton Natarus humorously sa...

if...then: Architectural Speculations  by The Architectural League of New York, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2005. Paperback, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) The sixth in an annual series of publications that features the winners of the Architectural League of New York 's Young Architects competition has the rather vague-sounding theme "if...then". Referring to the binary programming of computers (if a then b), this does not translate into the six chosen architects being slaves to the computer, cranking out blobs and the like. Instead, each architect is grounded in the computer's importance to architectural practice - especially in design and production - with a variety of foci and results. ...

Chameleon in Melbourne, Australia by Cassandra Complex The following text and images are courtesy Cassandra Complex for their Chameleon project, "an inner-city residential warehouse conversion over three levels for a couple." Photographs are by John Gollings. This project was indelibly influenced by its constrained context (physically, an internal space) conceptually (a private home) – it has restricted potential in a public sense. The site is a turn of the century industrial warehouse in a homogenous strip of six. It is located just north of the Queen Victoria Market, in a mixed use area. There is a Lexus Showroom, “a Junk Shop”, many developer driven menageries, and on market days the carparks are bread for the seagulls. There seems to be a lot of rubbish lying around often. Even the warehouse appears as a kind of “discarded object” and is only salvaged and transformed due to current market trends. It sits hard up against the street metaphorically interp...

In a shocking move (to me), Chevron announced new "advertising [that] targets dialogue about global energy issues" in a press release on July 7. The first incarnation (PDF link) I've seen of these ads is a two-page spread in next month's Wired that basically admits "the era of easy oil is over" on one page while asking people to join them in a dialogue about the future of energy on the other. Their web page devoted to this dialogue touches on various issues (oil demand and supply, global population, geopolitics, and the environment) ever so lightly, though the admittance of a problem is definitely a start. Ultimately, the web page is a public relations campaign for one of the biggest oil companies in the world, though I do like the ticker on the main page: What might be a valuable tool is the discussion area , though in its current incarnation it does not work as well as most message boards. The biggest problem is that each opinion is separated f...

Walking about Lincoln Park during this weekend's Sheffield Garden Walk , I snapped the following pics of some rather interesting contemporary houses in the area. A 1996 number by Schroeder Murchie Laya on Seminary: An unexciting yet decent house on Magnolia (architect unknown): A Peter Eisenman base with a swirl on top, on Webster (architect unknown): A general shot and a close-up of a brand new house on Webster by DeStefano + Partners :

Getting over my negligence and finally sifting through my backlogged inbox, I re-discovered the following articles, projects, sites, etc. that people have suggested over the years months but I've never followed up on for one reason or another. It's a veritable grab bag of delights that I now pass on to you, dear reader. :: The Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge :: "Green-Based" Uban Growth :: Frankfurt Lounge :: Maderadisegno :: Another Los Angeles (from Panos ) :: South Beach Architectural Photographs :: MuNiMuLa :: Manon Cafe New York :: GaiDome3 :: Cinema Treasures :: Krenneke: a blocked blog :: Cyburbia :: "Pioneers of Modern Design: From Britney Spears to Christina Aguilera" :: Urbis :: Time Capsule 21 :: iMage :: Gallery 40000

It lacks the dignity of even a common bowling trophy .

A couple readers contacted me, within the span of a few days, about two Richard Meier projects, one built and one under construction, both Federal projects. I received an e-mail from "Mr. C" about the U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building on Long Island that I featured on my weekly page about five years ago. Kiel e-mailed me about the San Jose City Hall , set to be in operation by August with finishing touches through October. Given the coincidental Meier messages, I thought I would address both in one post, a veritable Meier-palooza of the white-haired architect's white buildings. Starting with the Federal Courthouse, Mr. C contested four points I made in my critique:  Formal - in this case elevation - considerations overriding practical concerns,  An ignorance of context via the prevalent use of white aluminum panels,  The constant use of these white panels in Meier's buildings, and  The easy replication of Meier's signature style by his staff.  Mr. C's expe...

Everybody's favorite Guardian architecture critic Jonathan Glancey shares his wisdom and gripes about flying and the new Airbus A380 in an old KCRW DnA show . Skip ahead to 21:46 to hear my favorite part: I find the idea of sitting on any big aircraft absolute misery. You're crammed in. You're squeezed in. You have the sky nannies coming along and bullying you: (In high voice)"Chicken or fish? Red or white wine? And keep the seat in the upright position." Always being bullied and having a horrible time. And that, of course, truly is the future of flight: Having a horrible time for as short a time as possible.

The always wonderful Things Magazine posted today about billboard advertising, spurred by the clever one below for a suntan lotion. While I'm often dismayed by the fact so much creative effort is expended on something so fleeting as the always-reinventing-itself-to-give-the-consumer-something-new world of advertising, this billboard is reminiscent of a mural along the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago titled Shadow Mural , commissioned by The Catholic Charities of Chicago. The mural is made from hundreds of uniquely-shaped metal strips cantilevered from structural panels to depict Jesus washing the feet of the disciples flanked by the heads of St. Vincent DePaul and Frederick Ozanam, the founder of the St. Vincent DePaul Society. Things goes on to mention Delete! , "which stripped out all extraneous white noise from advertising in a single street in Vienna." A few years before Delete!, Pasi Kolhonen investigated the inverse , removing the context and leaving the adve...

Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York by Luc Sante, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. Paperback, 460 pages. ( Amazon ) Sante's book about lower Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is a beloved account of the seedy side of the city. After setting up the urban landscape of those less fortunate, the author recounts stories of theater, booze, drugs, gambling, prostitution, gangs, crooked cops and politicians, orphans, homeless, those who were born in the gutter and stayed in the gutter. The geographical center of the book is the Bowery , a 1.5-mile stretch that runs from present-day Chinatown to the East Village, still home to the flophouses and saloons that be...

Pedestrian Tunnel in Prague, Czech Republic by AP Atelier The Prague Castle is the Czech Republic city's most popular tourist attraction, supposedly the largest ancient castle in the world with a history stretching back almost 1,200 years. Former Czech President Vaclav Havel envisioned a plan that would allow pedestrians to better use the castle and its surroundings, of particular concern here being the Deer Moat, a dry bed interrupted by a natural stream. While visitors to the castle typically traversed the moat via Powder Bridge, Havel's plan incorporated a pedestrian tunnel that would enable people to use the Deer Moat. The commission for the tunnel was given to Josef Pleskot's AP Atelier . Their simple design funn...

The latest issue of AIA San Francisco's design journal LINE is called THE CRITICAL ISSUE: Why Critical Dialogue Matters . With features, commentary, interviews, reviews, and portfolio, the online journal sets the standard for other AIA chapters, sharing with the world matters that pertain not only to its jurisdiction. This issues focus on a critical dialogue is especially timely as the role and importance of architectural criticism is questioned . The fact an AIA chapter is taking on the topic of criticism is pretty amazing, apparent in Margie O' Driscoll's editorial where she says, "the resounding response from other AIA chapters was that it's not appropriate for a member-serving organization like the AIA to engage in critique, especially a negative critique of a member project," and "Why...should architects use their professional organization to scold their members?" Herein lies part of the problem: the "thumbs up-thumbs down" perception...

Billed as a "product source guide, annual desk reference, and encyclopedic resource directory", Felder's Comprehensive is directed at architects, contractors, engineers, and interior designers. It aims to make finding information easier, falling somewhere between smaller, narrow-focused references and the vast world of the internet. Most importantly, it isn't driven by advertising so its more thorough, though less flashy, than other references and guides. Broken into ten sections (Awards, Competitions, Design Centers, Education, Events, Media, Museums, Organizations, Trade Shows, Manufacturers), the last takes up close to half of the book. Unfortunately it is the 2005 Edition's only glaring weak point, as the list of manufacturers isn't cross referenced by product type, nor is there any indication in the huge listing what each manufacturer does. (Hopefully this will be addressed in future editions.) Otherwise it is a thorough and well-put-together aid for tho...

Having finally have a chance to breeze through the World Monuments Fund 's extensive List of 100 Most Endangered Sites , one in particular stands out to me: Murgia dei Trulli . The non-profit organization's list brings attention to individual buildings, archaeological sites, cities, and even countries, in order to raise money towards their preservation. In this case, it covers six towns in the Puglia region of Southern Italy that are home to numerous trulli . Simply defined, trulli are one-story limestone structures, typically with white-washed walls, that are capped by cone-, dome-, or pyramid-shaped roofs "fashioned from dry laid stone." Many feature distinctive caps atop the roofs, like below. Image by Bill Hocker While WMF's web page doesn't indicate the six towns covered, already the trulli of Alberobello are a UNESCO World Heritage site , since they are "an exceptional example of a form of building construction deriving from prehistoric constructi...