A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

In 1996, Las Vegas businessman David Jin dreamed up the idea of "walking out over the Grand Canyon and staring 4,000 feet down into the Colorado River -- while standing on four inches of glass." On January 1, believe it or not, it will become a reality. Image from MRJ Architects The horseshoe-shaped walkway that juts 70-feet out into the canyon is "part of the Hualapai Tribe's $40 million effort to turn 1,000 acres of reservation land into a tourist destination that will also feature an Indian village and Western-themed town." Image from MRJ Architects Regardless of the questionable nature of the walkway and the theme park (ideas actually opposed by about half the tribe's elders initially), it is quite a feat of engineering. It is designed, with the help of Lochsa Engineering , to support 72 million pounds, to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake centered 50 miles away, and to withstand winds in excess of 100 mph. But will people spend $25 to feel their st...

Looks like Ralph Johnson of Perkins + Will is looking to join the ranks of celebrity architects, alongside Daniel Libeskind and Richard Meier with Signature Place in St. Petersburg, Florida. Or is he already there? Like David Childs , Johnson's role as a lead designer at a large corporate firm actually precludes him from being seen like Frank Gehry, Santiago Calatrava, and other "singular voices" of celebrity in contemporary architecture. Though unlike David Childs, Johnson is a very capable designer who produces excellent buildings of different types and scales. Thanks to Jeff S. for the head's up.

Of course, the big news is Hurricane Katrina's havoc on Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana, in particular New Orleans, where 80% of the city is under water. Reuters photo Some related links: :: Architecture for Humanity is taking donations for rebuilding efforts. I've also added a link to the sidebar for this great organization. :: Fellow blogger and N.O. resident Jimmy is safe and exiled in Texas . :: Coverage at Metroblogging New Orleans . and :: Some news coverage at Archinect.

I'm hitting the road for about a week, so this blog will be on hiatus until next Wednesday. Here's some things to entertain/educate y'all in the meantime: :: Made in the USA . Karim Rashid dons his purple specs as a judge in the soon-to-be-smash hit "reality competition" series on USA Network. I'd say he's sold out, but I think he's already done that. ( via Improvised Schema ) :: Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music . Don't know the difference between Ambient House and Ambient Trance? Or don't know what the hell Buttrock Goa or Musique Concrete are? This Flash-based site will teach you everything you need to know. With lots and lots of samples. :: The State of Affairs: " Perimeter security is ugly and may not keep us safe ," " Lockheed Martin Is Hired to Bolster Transit Security in N.Y. ," and " Do fast-food chains cluster around schools? "

An early and probably unintentional member of Long Island City's popular art scene , the Noguchi Museum opened in 1985 in a factory building converted by the artist. It reopened last year after a 2.5-year renovation by Sage and Coombe Architects that added an education center, cafe & bookstore, made the galleries and garden accessible, and improved the HVAC system in order to keep the museum open year-round. Area 1 " Area 1 " is the first space encountered after admission and is architecturally one of the most striking spaces at the museum. The corner light well above is one of the three tips of the triangle that the museum and garden occupy, perhaps accentuating this fact for the visitor inside the space. Not being fully enclosed, Area 1 exhibits a pleasing ambiguity -- between outside/inside, art/architecture -- that is definitely appropriate for Noguchi. Area 9 Above Area 1 are the upper floor galleries called Area 9 & 10, now accessible via a new ramp by the ...

Busy weekend for architecture news in the Windy City. :: Martha Thorne , currently associate curator of architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, has been named executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. Story at the Sun-Times and Tribune . :: Frank Gehry buys the "Building formerly known as Inland Steel ." :: Crown Hall " dazzles " before its official reopening this Saturday . and :: It might be old news now, but Hello Beautiful's one-hour show devoted to Calatrava's Fordham Spire is now online .

Isokon Flats in London, England by Avanti Architects Many people know of the Isokon Flats for its most famous occupant, Agatha Christie , who lived at what was then called the Lawn Road Flats from 1940-46. While people might also know of the project's other war-era tenants (Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Lazslo Moholy-Nagy), the building itself is unfortunately, to most, nothing more than a "giant liner without any funnels" or as a pretty picture snapped in its heyday. The reinforced-concrete housing project is the work of Jack and Molly Pritchard and their architect Wells Coates. Together they envisioned a block of serviced flats (combined living/bedroom with kitchenette, bathroom and dressing room) to be fitted out with the Pritchards ...

Lynn Becker has the lowdown on AIA Chicago's Young Architect's Forum's competition for a recycling receptacle in Chicago. I strolled over to Daley Plaza after work to check out the 25 finalists. My favorite: Sure, it's goofy and looks like something out of a Pixar film, but it also integrates itself with the existing trash cans (some around the Loop and other parts of the city are different - nicer - but this scheme could be modified to fit onto those, too) and proposes reusing newspapers, over just recycling, their bundled masses poking from the green orb for easy grabbing. These are a couple good ideas that set it apart from the other schemes, ones that tended to be from the ground up and lacking in a sense of humor.

Brian at Gapers Block is more than correct when he points out that Chicago's subways stations are in need of some beautification, especially as a means to increase ridership. Of course we're also talking about the CTA, an organization riddled with money problems as they strive to first, upgrade one of its lines to handle unprecedented ridership and second, replace all of its front- and back-facing cars with ones that have bench seats perpendicular to the line of travel to allow for more standing room, a la New York City. Anyways, let's take a look at a couple of Metro Arts and Architecture's beauties and Chicago. Moscow: Munich: Chicago: No, the GG doesn't stand for Good God! For frame of reference, the Chicago station shown is one of the recent overhauls (click here for its previous state ). Well, at least we have the "L" .

Yesterday the final design for downtown Kansas City's Sprint Center Arena was unveiled, "a glistening jewel in the revitalization of downtown...[that represents] Kansas City's honesty, clarity, vision and the Midwestern values we all cherish." The "we" refers either to Kansas Citians in general or the Downtown Arena Design Team, made up of HOK Sport+Venue+Event , Ellerbe Becket and 360 Architecture . The design is envisioned as an "arena in the park with fountains and outdoor gathering space," with these elements visible across the street from the arena. A connected piece in the arena's foreground is the National Association of Basketball Coaches'’ College Basketball Experience. Together these three elements (arena, covered open space, NABC) attempt to define the entry for the Sprint Arena. It's difficult to ascertain, but it appears the outdoor space across the street actually sits atop a structure, perhaps a parking garage. Ideally ...

Remember this project? Yep, the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Spain by Peter Eisenman . Well, it looks like it's under construction. After the lukewarm reception of his Holocaust Memorial in Berlin , this huge landform just may be the architect's legacy. Or it may end up like the Wexner Center (undergoing a $15 million renovation only 15 years after completion) or the Columbus Convention Center (ugly). My bet's riding on the legacy. Images found at arqa.com , via Archinect .

Even though I consult Galinsky just about every time I take a trip and have included it in my sidebar since the beginning of this blog, I've never noticed the Travel Packs . Galinsky travel packs are condensed versions of the galinsky building pages for a particular area, collected together in an easily printable pdf format with accompanying map, for use when traveling. Currently we offer travel packs for Paris, New York, London, Japan and Switzerland. The PDF files enable the traveler to print out the sheets (usually about twenty per city/country) and carry them along. Handy maps, directions and images make finding the buildings a breeze. Not to criticize them, but from my standpoint, most of the buildings are a bit obvious and a number of them can be found pretty easily with other means. For travelers who have less familiarity with Modern architecture but a strong curiosity and willingness to visit canonical buildings, they're perfect. But they make me think a guide to the m...

In its news on The Chicago Athaneum's 2005 American Architecture Awards, Artdaily.com is both overly generous - "The American Architecture Awards has quickly become the nation's most prestigious awards program for new commercial, institutional and residential design" - and slightly mistaken - "[the awards] draw significant international attention to new buildings and planning projects being built and designed in the U.S." Though not as prestigious as the AIA Awards (that's my opinion, but how does one rate which or what is the most prestigious award?) - the "Triple A" is nevertheless an important award that draws attention to buildings and projects with a now rather tenuous relationship to American architecture overall. 33 projects received awards , exhibiting the following traits (with some overlap): ::7 are located overseas ::4 are by foreign architects ::5 are on the West coast ::9 are on the East coast ::11 are in-between So even though t...

"As public broadcasting goes, so does Esquire -- to the far Right. Please cancel my subscription." This disgruntled reader was referring to this month's issue of the men's magazine that featured Donald Rumsfeld as one of ten " inspiring profiles of extraordinary lives ." If not for the fact that my subscription is a gift that will be expiring shortly, I'd be apt to join him (her?) after reading the September issue's article on the rebuilding efforts at ground zero by Scott Raab. This piece is the "first in a years-long series of articles by Raab on the Freedom Tower's construction" (my italics) and is titled " The Foundation ."* (Can you just guess what the next article will be called?) This above quote from the contributor page pretty much signals (for me) the direction that Raab is heading, as he focuses on the construction of Freedom Tower: 1. He will not be critical of the tower's design, and 2. He will focus on the ...

Some links I've added to the sidebar: :: World Architecture News (under news) :: AIA Journal (under online journals) :: BLDGBLOG (under blogs::architecture)

Architect Simon Thornton...made the first sketches after waking in the middle of the night with a strong urge to draw a large bird's head appearing above the roof of the existing house...the house owners insisted that it was a gryphon, and required the addition of a lion's hind quarters. "I have always been excited by the possibility that the world of dreams, and the workings of the subconscious mind, can be a starting point for architecture." Found here .

The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie ( Amazon ) Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is one of the most famous fiction detectives of the 20th century, so famous he was given an obituary in The New York Times upon his fictional death. Poirot was featured in more than thirty books and numerous more short stories over fifty years. The neat, dandy, and brilliant Belgian who used his "little grey cells" to solve numerous cases, has been played by numerous actors over the years, but none more memorable than David Suchet. So with a story like The A.B.C. Murders , there is the novel and there is the movie . A brief background (from Amazon ): "Apparently, a homicidal maniac is terrorizing England as he...

New Cantina Antinori in Florence, Italy by Studio Archea For the Marchesi Antinori Winery's new cellars, Studio Archea cut two swaths across the Chianti hillside in Bargino, just outside Florence. This dramatic gesture buries most of the spaces underground, makes the roof a usable space, and also frames views of the landscape beyond. This decision seemed necessary for the architects, who view wine "as a product that is born and develops from the earth...linked to the agrarian landscape and the natural environment." The project features the production and administrative areas necessary for the winery, as well as hospitality areas, visitor walkways, an auditorium, a library, a day-care center, and a restaurant. In es...

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Back in fall 2004 when Thomas Shine sued SOM for copyright violations involving SOM's Freedom Tower design and Shine's 1999 student project at Yale, I said the case didn't have a chance . Well, looks like I was wrong, as The New York Times reports that, A federal judge ruled yesterday that there were enough similarities between David M. Childs's 2003 design for the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site and a 1999 student architectural project that a lawsuit against Mr. Childs for copyright violation could proceed. Given that the lawsuit doesn't deal with the current version of Freedom Tower (it was extensively redesigned after the NYPD and NYFD gave their two cents), it may not receive as much press when it goes to trial as if it did pertain to what will potentially be built at the WTC site. Regardless, the trial will be very important in what it says about the application of intellectual copyright to architectural designs. Architectural works have been pro...

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Last month I posted on a Japanese roof garden by Hoichi Kurisu on top of the Contemporaine in Chicago. A couple of days ago I noticed, as I looked from the Brown Line, that the extent of the garden is much bigger than the published images indicate.  The images in the link above show the northeast corner of the rooftop, a tiny section compared to the southern stretch visible in these two images.  The impressive scene is heightened by the transparency of the glass-infill guardrails.

Philippe Starck has designed bathroom fixtures for German manufacturer Duravit and now he's designed a building for them with a 23' high toilet. Yes, a 23' high toilet. See for yourself. (via Design Observer )