A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

For the next few days it's moving time. Posts will resume early-mid next week. Image found here

Two buildings have opened their doors, as reported by World Architecture News : Coop Himmelb(l)au 's Munich Academy of Fine Arts . Norman Foster 's Leslie L. Dan Building for the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto.

Don't know where or when this originated, but I couldn't resist passing it along (text version here ). Thanks to Scott P. for sending me this.

Above is a section of a suburban sprawl panorama by Matt Jalbert. More photos at his web page, Exuberance . ( via RUT )

Not to be outdone by Christopher Carley's Fordham Spire , the Chicago Tribune reports that Paul Beitler and LR Development are proposing "a futuristic, tweezer-shaped broadcast tower looming 2,000 feet over the lakefront...At the top would be several floors for restaurants and an observation deck, and at the base would be a 400-car garage." Designed by supertall maestro Cesar Pelli, the design "isn't Buck Rogers architecture. It's Duck Dodgers design, utterly daffy, a cartoonish version of tomorrow," according to Blair Kamin . As I posted about months ago , the Fordham Spire is within spitting distance of my office window. Now if I walk to the other side of the office, the broadcast tower would grace that northerly skyline. These two proposals are less than one city block away from each other. Notably, the broadcast tower (aka the "Tweezer" and officially called "Tall Tower" by the creative powers that be) sits directly west of La...

Just follow Ove Arup's helpful assembly instructions :

The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture by Wendell Berry, published by Sierra Club Books, 1996. Paperback, 234 pages. ( Amazon ) In The Unsettling of America I argue that industrial agriculture and the assumptions on which it rests are wrong, root and branch; I argue that this kind of agriculture grows out of the worst of human history and the worst of human nature. By the time one reaches this sentence in the author's 1996 afterword (to the 1977 book), this argument is very clear and very convincing. Beginning the book with a brief, Zinn-like history of America, Berry tackles many aspects of American and Western culture (money & consumerism, religion, technology, even the publisher) but ...

LVMH in Osaka, Japan by Kengo Kuma Undertaking the design of boutique and office project for Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton ( LVMH ) in Osaka, Japan, Kengo Kuma used the exterior wall as a starting point for exploration. Given what he calls the "dichotomic technique of wall (opaque) versus window (transparent)," he opted to blur these distinctions by wrapping the office floors in a continuous skin of stone that from the exterior appears opaque during the day but much different at night. Using stone in three thicknesses and with three techniques, Kuma was able to achieve his desired effect. Onyx is the stone of choice, most likely for its superior powers of light transmittance, even at thicknesses that others stones fail to...

At the 2005 AIA Chicago Design Excellence Awards Friday night, one name stood out more than Brininstool + Lynch, David Hovey, Krueck + Sexton, Perkins + Will, and John Ronan (all multiple winners that night): photographers Hedrich Blessing . As each winning project was displayed on the projection screen at the end of the ballroom, The 75-year old Chicago institution's name accompanied most of the slides, right below the name of the architect. This says two things: most Chicago architects come to Hedrich Blessing for the documentation of the final product, and architectural photography is an important element in the deciding of architectural prizes. Focusing on the second, photographs are usually required for this sort of prize, given the fact that each jury member could not possibly visit every building submitted. In the case of AIA Chicago, all projects are by local architects but the buildings themselves can be anywhere. While a dream jury might be flown to every submission wher...

Dutch newspaper de Volksrant reports that Dutch publisher PCM's new headquarters in Amsterdam is being designed by OMA. Running the article through the always-reliable Babelfish , we learn what PCM wants: "It must become a bldg. of which says people: look, there sits them, there something is going." But looking at the pile of foam below, I can't help but wonder "where something is going?" Later in the article we learn, "It is a preliminary draft. The actual design must be still developed, in association with the project developer, political and the buurt." Certainly that's true. But what's up with the clunky, tabletop form? Further deciphering of the translation reveals the base is a two-story plinth devoted to public activities; above are the stacked, traditional functions of the PCM; then there's the cantilevered top where "those logos would be appropriate sticking out. You can present see you that you 'breaking news'...

Just discovered this Archinect discussion (via Design Observer ) that had me laughing out loud. It started with: Jean Nouvel and Dr. Evil But then... Daniel Libeskind and that guy from There's Something About Mary and... Frank Gehry and Gonzo the Great and... Sanford Kwinter (right, with Rem) and Sideshow Bob speaking of rem... Rem Koolhaas and Daniel Emilfork (from City of Lost Children ) but lest we forget the Pritzker Prize winners... Thom Mayne and Bill Murray and... Zaha Hadid and Ursula from The Little Mermaid and my favorite... Stanley Tigerman and an Ewok and finally my contribution... Carol Ross-Barney trying really hard to look like Isabella Rossellini Check out the discussion for bigger images and for many more architects separated at birth.

A couple architecture blogs that just came to my attention, both worth checking out and both added to my sidebar links (under blogs::architecture): :: mirage-studio Eclectic blog by an architecture student, with items on Calatrava, anti-smoking ads and even AutoCAD pointers. :: Architecture Sketches Just like the title says, sketches from Botta to Utzon.

The New York Times covers both ends of the spectrum with articles on mega suburban developer Toll Brothers and Shanghai's high-rise building boom . A visual comparison of the two illustrates China's and the US's apparent dichotomy in viewing land and habitat. The Toll Brothers view land (what they call "ground") as an investment to be bought up insatiably. If there's a market for real estate, they'll buy the land and develop it. A desirable Toll Brother situation might be covering the remaining buildable land in New Jersey with variations on the Estates at Princeton Grove, pictured above, which is not too far-fetched. The Times piece focuses on the economics, politics, and personalities at play as the Toll Brothers snatch up more and more land for more and more profit, at the expense of any critical thinking (or apparent mention) about long-term energy ( covered by Kunstler ) or house sizes, among the many questionable concerns with sprawl. In sharp con...

The Architecture of Modern Italy: Volume 2, Visions of Utopia, 1900-present , by Terry Kirk ( Volume 1 here ), published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2005. Hardcover, 280 pages. ( Amazon ) The second volume of Terry Kirk's history of architecture in modern Italy picks up where volume one left off, at the turn of the 20th century, when architecture was seen as an expression of the recently unified country. Politics plays a much greater role in this time frame, especially during Mussolini's reign between the two World Wars. Like many other European country, a dramatic break with history is the popular past of the time, Italy's called Rationalism and embodied by its most popula...

Marrom House in São Paulo, Brazil by Isay Weinfeld While Isay Weinfeld may be one of the most popular architects in his home country of Brazil, particularly for residential commissions, his name has not achieved the international popularity of fellow countryman Oscar Niemeyer. Perhaps this owes to the architect's penchant for creating simple and elegant spaces over sculptural objects, or his quiet modesty, or the fact he keeps his office at about 10-15 people even with numerous commissions with a mix of scales and building types. Whatever the reasons, they fall by the wayside when one is confronted with one of his designs, which make one forget about the trivialities of celebrity. Like many other Weinfeld houses in the wealth...