A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Apparently, the combination of the two yields problems. Specifically -- JS Online is reporting -- at Martinifest, a semi- formal event organized by Clear Channel Radio on February 11, "people threw up, passed out, were injured, got into altercations and climbed onto sculptures" in the Santiago Calatrava-designed addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum . According to the article, two sculptures have been removed for review due to events such as "[a group of four young men] were standing on it [a bronze sculpture by Gaston Lachaise], grabbing the boobs, and somebody was just taking pictures with a cell phone." It also indicates that the bartenders ran out of mix early in the evening, thereafter pouring straight shots of vodka to revellers. David Gordon, the museum's director said in the article, "it was not an appropriate event to be held in the museum, and we have reviewed our procedures for bookings." Even without the knowledge of straight vodka bein...

The Nature of Order, Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life by Christopher Alexander, published by Center for Environmental Structure, 2002. ( Amazon ) The Phenomenon of Life is the first of a four part magnum opus by Christopher Alexander, known as the co-author and primary voice behind A Pattern Language , a "handbook designed for the layman which aims to present a language which people can use to express themselves in their own communities or homes, and to better communicate with each other." If that is a handbook, this four-parter is his Theory of Everything, a combination of science and architecture proposing that wholeness and life are all pervasive in varying degrees.   Book 1 outlines this idea, u...

Centennial HP Science and Technology Centre in Toronto, Ontario by KPMB Architects The following text and images are courtesy Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects . Photographs copyright Tom Arban . The HP Science and Technology Centre was catalyzed by a government initiative to forge stronger connections between universities and community colleges in order to meet demands for trained individuals in the labor market. The design creates a model that actualizes the ‘communal’ aspect of the community college and is based on the idea of a self-sufficient academic village. SITE The HP Centre is located on the UTSC Scarborough campus lands leased to Centennial by the University of Toronto. It is situated at the south-east corner o...

This weekend I wandered the University of Chicago campus, including the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel . I've posted a set exploring the many passageways of the chapel on flickr. Check it out .

Then Now Learn what's going on at Cabrini-Green in Chicago officially and unofficially .

Check out Edward Lifson's Hello Beautiful! Oath for City Planners, Developers, and Architects , full of common sense, social responsibility, and historical awareness, things missing in Chicago and other places these days. Not that it's perfect, as Lynn Becker points out , but it's something to get a good conversation started. Perhaps Edward and Lynn will continue at 10am on Sunday the 26th as part of a roundtable discussion on " arty blogging bloggers ". *My first inclination was to call this post Jamming with Edward , but that didn't make as much sense as referencing it to my last post . Update 02.28: Edward posts about the show and the archive is available here .

Published in NYFA Current Staying current with the rebuilding efforts for the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan is a frustrating task, at best. Since September 12, 2001, “rebuilding” has been the key word, but what to rebuild has neither been clear nor something widely agreed upon. As the site slowly takes shape, the financial and political interests that influence its direction are all too obvious, from Larry Silverstein’s insistence on defining the events of 9/11 as two separate incidents in order to gain insurance money to his never-ending tug of war with Governor Pataki—and now Mayor Bloomberg—over control of the site. These interests aside, perhaps there are other ways of thinking about the events unfolding at Ground Zero that would help glean some understanding from the seemingly chaotic proceedings. A brief recap: In November of 2001, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) was created to oversee rebuilding efforts. Nine months after its formation, the ...

In Tyler Green's fine two-part coverage of Hiroshi Sugimoto at the Hirschhorn , there's a mention of "a Shinto shrine he built in Japan." Intrigued, I searched the internet for anything on this structure, a place for worship in the native Japanese religion . The shrine by Sugimoto is called the Go'o Shrine . It was completed in 2002 and is located in Gotanji, Naoshima, Kagawa, otherwise known as Naoshima Island, an important " Site of Artistic Incidents ". The artist's design encompasses the sanctuary ( honden ) and worship hall ( haiden ), with a glass stair connecting the two parts. This last element is the most contemporary in the otherwise traditional execution of the project. The honden sits atop a large stone plinth and the open-air haiden is over an irregular-shaped stone slab. All sits within a rectangular rock garden in an open space surrounded by trees. Image by Sugimoto (click for larger version) While the design recalls traditional S...

Purging some files at home on this pleasant day off , I came across this clipping below. I don't recall from where or when I clipped it. Searching the internet yields PYRA Development LLC , meaning YES! the pyramid's alive! Forever is a REAL long time. PYRA proposes a sense of permanence not previously made available to the public by the death care industry. We want to provide the next generation, and perhaps even the next hundred generations, with a monument that salutes and preserves the history of our being. According to the web site, the artist's rendition shows a pyramid approximately 200' x 200' at the base. The monument will be "made of a high impact polymer material and sited in a geologically stable location, [with] the potential to remain in an intact and non-retrievable state for over a million years." Each remain is placed in a patented plastic box that is then stacked and locked into the monument where it will "actually become the monume...

With last week's Land+Living Soapbox and this week's Architecture Exchange as part of my Monday, Monday posts, I realized this page didn't have a forums sidebar category. Well, that's been remedied, with the links below added to the sidebar (under, naturally, forums). Please comment if you know of more that should be added. :: Archinect Discussions :: Architecture Exchange :: Design Community :: Land+Living Soapbox :: PushPullBar :: SkyscraperCity Forums :: talkinaboutarchitecture :: Wired New York Forum

Transmaterial: A catalog of materials that redefine our physical environment , edited by Blaine Brownell, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2005. Paperback, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) In the last few years, material research and exploration has become a popular cottage industry, spurred by firms like OMA that have developed new materials for their projects. One of the most popular proponents and catalogers of this trend is Blaine Brownell, architect with NBBJ in Seattle. Admitting that "the architect is one step removed from the physical substance that makes architecture" and "that conventional thinking about materials in architectural practice is severely limited," he started sharing his research on materials with ...

Bathhouse in Como, Italy by Marco Castelletti Located on the edge of idyllic Lake Segrino near Como, Italy, this bathhouse by Marco Castelletti is a sensitive addition to the surrounding nature reserve. Even before reaching the building via a bike track that rings the lake, it's presence is felt via a metal fence with slats of various sizes in a random arrangement. Through the gaps one sees the green and blue of the grass and water beyond. The L-shaped pavilion is oriented with its long side to the road. At the elbow is the entrance and ticket office with offices above, making for a tall element within the otherwise low composition. Along the long side is a shaded colonnade leading to a common room and bar where bathers can rel...

Here's part two of my two-parter on Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, Spain. See part one for the corridors. Jean Nouvel's penthouse should be familiar for those that have seen his Hotel in Lucerne, Switzerland, where the ceilings were covered with stills from movies. Here, the imagery covering the dark surfaces appears aquatic, ironic for the top floor of hotel rooms. On the 11th floor, Mariscal and Salas continue their whimsy. Each surface seems to be a different pattern or canvas for exploration, though its cohesion into a whole is not very successful. Arata Isozaki's rooms recall traditional Japanese architecture without copying it. The screen at left is the most important device for this effect, while also removing the room from the hotel itself by creating its own shell separate from the container. Richard Gluckman's rooms use glasses of varying transparencies and artificial lighting to create soft effects in the different rooms. Kathryn Findlay...

GA Houses 90 by Global Architecture. ( Amazon ) In my days in undergraduate architecture school, GA Houses and other Global Architecture publications kept me in the architecture library for hours. The large-format journals with page after page of glossy photos, plans, elevations, and bilingual text (giving a worldly feel to the undertaking) contributed to an enjoyable escape from studio while also creating inspiration via the myriad of ideas presented in project and built form. This sure-fire recipe for inspiration and salivation continues strong to this day, as GA churns out issue after issue filled with the best -- or most eye-catching -- contemporary and Modern architecture. This issue that I found heavily...

Last May I posted about plans to resurrect the Dixie Square Mall - most famous for a scene early in The Blues Brothers - in Harvey, south of Chicago, making way for chain big box retailers. As of last month the city was getting ready to hand over the land the developer, with a target date of store openings of May 2007. Now in its 40th year of life and with its days numbered, the Mall is the subject of some oil paintings at Kavi Gupta Gallery at 835 West Washington in Chicago. Angelina Gualdoni painted a few views of the mall, spending "several days of pouring and staining...taping to establish crisp architectural lines...[using] thicker, more viscous oil paint to build up figures, whether it's weeds, dirt, or trash," according to this post at BLDG|BLOG where I discovered the works. The exhibition runs until March 11.

I've finally gotten around to taking a cursory glance at the various designs for the Hotel Puerta America in Madrid, Spain, and I present some findings below. For those not familiar with the project, it's a boutique hotel with the gimmick of each floor designed by a different architect, including the lobby and the roof deck. The exterior is by Jean Nouvel, who also designed the top floor of rooms, the 12th. Below is a "cross section" of the hotel floor corridors, from Nouvel on the 12th down to Zaha Hadid on the 1st. The basic plan is two wings that radiate from a central, circular core that features exterior elevators, a la John Portman. The character of each floor is apparent as soon as one steps off the elevator, continuing down the corridors to the individual rooms. A future post will look at the rooms, but if you can't wait you can find hi-res photos of everything here . Jean Nouvel's penthouse floor is by far the darkest, with black surfaces abou...