A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

In the suburbs of Kinshasa , the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there is a "strange and spectacular electro-traditional" sound being concocted. Drawing largely on Bazombo trance music, the most well-known of the bands creating this sound is Konono No.1 , a band founded over 25 years ago which finally saw its first recording released last year. The music is shaped by likembé, or thumb piano, Konono using three (bass, medium, treble). Rigging these instruments to homemade microphones, and playing in front of a wall of speakers, the sound created is a mix of the traditional trance and experimental electronic music, an inadvertent though impressive combination. The addition of makeshift percussion and sometimes guitar and bass rounds out the line-up and sound. If this description defies comprehension, take a listen to this sample by Konono . On the heels of Congotronics 1 came the second installment this year, a mix of eight musicians creating similar but v...

Way back in 1921, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe envisioned a glass shard of a skyscraper for a prominent site in Berlin along the Friedrichstrasse. Eighty-five years later, Mark Braun Architekten unveils plans for an office building on the same site. While WAN calls it a " landmark project ", I can't help think it doesn't live up to the iconic Mies design and imagery...but how could it? Mies's angular prow is dismissed in favor of a watered-down curve that even features a minimal nod to tripartite hierarchy in the band across the top, something Mies eschewed in the abrupt termination of the glass walls. If it were on another site, Braun's design would be applauded as a highly sustainable and competent office building, but here it's just a fraction of what it could have been.

Photographer Chris Jordan , known for his series " Intolerable Beauty : Portraits of Mass Consumption", features his latest series on his website, " In Katrina's Wake : Portraits of Loss From an Unnatural Disaster." Remains of a business, St. Bernard Parish Most of the photos contain a saturated muddiness to them -- sometimes literally, as below -- occasionally broken up by splashes of color, as in the red door above. Phone book, New Orleans What stands out in the photos isn't only the destruction but also the personal nature of the objects. For example, it's hard not to think about the family who owned and displayed the blue statue below, their lives, for all intents and purposes, cut short in one way or another by Katrina. Statue in front yard, Chalmette neighborhood The image below is reminiscent of Jordan's own Intolerable Beauty series, like the hurricane sped up an unfortunately inevitable process. Dollar Store near Buras, LA Many of the photog...

4187 degrees Chicago Architecture is a 3d virtual tour of Chicago's tall and not-so-tall buildings, done by students at the University of Memphis last fall. While only ten buildings are featured, the graphical interface is pretty sleek and ripe for expansion, even if the detailed building models are a lacking in detail. (Via Gapers Block )

Flipping through Metropolis Magazine's 25th anniversary issue yesterday, I took note of an advertisement for something called design:e2 , billed as A television series that explores the e conomies of being e nvironmentally conscious The series is presented by Autodesk , produced by kontent+real , narrated by Brad Pitt , and is set to hit your " omnidirectional sludge pump " in June. The bare-bones website (full website set to launch on April 1) further explains: Eight different topics -- from sustainable architecture to water culture to alternative energy to organic farming to recycled clothing and more -- are presented in depth in six thirty-minute episodes, challenging us to live smarter, live greener, and live with the future in mind On the surface, this sounds like one of those shows that makes TV worthwhile, but can eight topics in 180 minutes do more than touched on? Is that enough time to really challenge us or inform us? I don't think so. I would hope for at ...

Chicago finds itself runner up again, this time in a list at diserio.com of The Top 15 Skylines in the World . While diserio mentions his urban planning background, the driving factors seem to be simply how tall and how photogenic each city's skyline is. If Chicago could add 25 more buildings over 200 meters (656 feet) to its current crop of 19, maybe it could overtake Hong Kong at the top of the list...that is if Hong Kong would just stop building high-rises. (via necromanc , via Gapers Block )

Ken Smith: Landscape Architects/Urban Projects edited by Jane Amidon, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2005. ( Amazon ) This second installment in Princeton Architectural Press's Source Books in Landscape Architecture series features three hometown projects for the New York City-based Ken Smith. His background includes experience with both well-known landscape architects Peter Walker and Martha Schwartz. In the three projects presented here (his inaccessible MoMA rooftop garden featured on the cover, his as-of-yet-unbuilt East River pier project, and the P.S. 19 grounds), the influence of Schwartz is more pervasive than Walker. Especially in the school project, a pop-art sensibility prevails, but ...

Juan Valdez Flagship in Manhattan, New York by Hariri & Hariri - Architecture Photographs by Paul Warchol. Passers-by on East 57th Street will notice the familiar visage of Juan Valdez, the fictional farmer who's been the symbol of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia since 1981. The image of Valdez and his donkey is sandblasted onto a three-story high screen of woven stainless steel in front of the Juan Valdez Flagship cafe, designed by Hariri & Hariri - Architecture of New York. Below the screen, at pedestrian level, is a butt-glazed storefront system set into a curving wood surface that moves from floor to wall to ceiling and the signature of Juan Valdez above the door. The view inside reveals a mixture of dark teak a...

Over at ArchitectureINK , they've posted their 100th tirade, " This Country Has a Problem "*. The tirades started back in September 2000 with " F--- the NCARB ". Tirade appears to be very much the appropriate word. *And that problem is Republicans

According to BBC News : A strike at the site of the Burj Dubai - expected to be the world's tallest building - has entered its second day...2,500 labourers at the Dubai site have walked out in a row over pay and working conditions, which sparked a night of violence two days ago...The workers are employed by Dubai-based firm Al Naboodah Laing O'Rourke. Ironically, Al Naboodah (one half of the joint venture) "believes caring is the most important tradition," according to their recent rebranding strategy (PDF link). The hollowness of such a statement is apparent in the low wages and general lack of reasonable care given to their employees. Burj Dubai many, many years from now The BBC continues: ...The builders...are demanding better wages, overtime pay, improved medical care and better treatment from their foremen...Pay for the workers ranges from US$7.60 per day for a skilled carpenter, with labourers getting $4 per day...a riot by the disgruntled workers - who smashed...

The first volume in the Urgent Matters series, Trojan Goat: A Self-Sufficient House traces the design and construction of the University of Virginia’s whimsically named, award-winning entry in the 2002 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. John D. Quale, the architectural advisor and coordinator for the project, provides here a firsthand account of the creation of the 750 square-foot solar-powered house .

The winner of this year's Steedman Fellowship is Japanese architect Mitsuru Hamada and his project Porous Drape. Awarded by Washington University School of Architecture in honor of James Harrison Steedman, the $30,000 fellowship allows the winner to travel for research and study in foreign countries for nine months. The fellowship competition is every two years, with a jury chair usually being the visiting professor at the school at the time. This year's chair was Inaki Abalos, principal of Abalos & Herreros Architects in Madrid, who asked competitors to "design...an approximately 1,500-square-meter pavilion-observatory that would integrate architecture, technology and the experience of nature." Hamada's winning design is "a large, ziggurat-like structure on the former site of Edo Castle in what is now central Tokyo." The image above shows how the pavilion is a re-interpretation of the Castle, lost almost 350 years ago. A hundred scattered, angula...

Just thought I would pass along to my dear readers a few articles that were sent to my inbox: :: Hundreds of Holyrod faults found BBC News reports on the almost 900 snags found in a recent inspection, including a roof beam that came loose in the debating chamber. (thanks Dana!) :: Pritzkers' palatial digs Edward Keegan in Crain's reports on the new Pritzker family offices on the 47th floor of the Hyatt Center by Dirk Denison Architects . (thanks Brandon!) :: Winged Victory: The Sydney Opera House Poet Peter Nicholson's take on the well-known Utzon-designed masterpiece. (thanks Peter!)

Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture by Indra Kagis McEwen, published by the MIT Press , 2002. ( Amazon ) In the author's second book (following Socrates' Ancestor ) she takes on the most famous treatise on architecture, Vitruvius's De Architectura , known as the Ten Books on Architecture. While that text has been seen as a guide for creating architecture (moulding details, column profiles, etc.), McEwen's interpretation is quite different: Vitruvius wrote the ten scrolls for the Emperor Augustus Caesar as a tool, if you will, with which to spread the Roman Empire. In other words, it was meant as a way to use architecture -- which included gnomics and machines, in addition to buildings...

Plantation Lane in London, England by Simon Patterson and Arup Associates Plantation Lane is a new street in the City of London, created as part of British Land's Plantation Place Estate, an office development comprised of two buildings designed by Arup Associates . Plantation Place is the larger of the two, a glassy building with stone fins and integral louvers articulating the facades. Plantation Place South is smaller though heavier in appearance with its predominantly stone exterior. Plantation Lane separates these two buildings, as well as some older buildings sitting on the block, while also connecting the buildings and the surrounding context. The most prominent feature in Plantation Lane is a glas...

Here's a couple photos of a small lens (about 1" diameter) attached to a window in the Mattress Factory Art Museum when I was there a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure if it is a piece of "art" or if it's just something somebody slapped on the glass one day, though its location roughly centered on the pane and at eye height makes me think it was put there with intention. Note in both photos the large building on the right being visible both inside and outside the lens.

Crain's Chicago Business reports that "ChicagoÂ’s planning commission Thursday approved the 124-story Fordham Spire, a 2,000-foot residential and hotel tower that will be the tallest structure in the U.S." As Blair Kamin further reports , since the Spire's initial unveiling Calatrava's design has been refined "to combat the threat of terrorism [and] so it could accommodate broadcast antennas." Before people get too excited, Kamin reminds us that SOM's 7 South Dearborn project also received planning approval, only to be shelved after the developer failed to achieve financing. That is the next major hurdle for developer Carley, though he says that "he has a non-binding financing commitment for the entire project from a major European financial institution." Image found here And don't get too seduced by this image, obviously meant to tone down the reality of a 2000' tall tower along Chicago's lakefront. It won't ble...

This is too good not to pass along. Kids ski down the roof of the Technical University of Delft's Library by Mecanoo , one of my favorite buildings I've never seen in person.

The word Golconde usually brings to mind the image of gentlemen in bowler hats falling upright from the sky. Golconde  by Rene Magritte But Golconde is also "a dormitory for the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India...designed by architects George Nakashima and Antonin Raymond," completed in 1945 and named for nearby diamond mines. This building is the subject of an exhibition (by Pankaj Vir Gupta and Christine Mueller) on display at the Graham Foundation until May 25, as well as a gallery talk on March 28 by Andy Tinucci . The building is notable for being "the first reinforced, cast-in-place concrete building in India," though Gupta and Mueller view it as "one of the earliest works of sustainable modern architecture in the world, [espousing] the virtue of radical economy and uncompromising construction standards". Reading the exhibition authors' AIA report ( PDF link ), it appears that Antonin Raymond's Tokyo-based office received the com...

As reported by Google Blog today , Google has purchased @LastSoftware, the maker of SketchUp, "a deceptively simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily." Here's an example of an architectural application, from the product's gallery : I haven't used SketchUp myself, but a lot of friends and colleagues have, and just about all of what I hear of it is good. The praise seems to be geared around its simplicity and its speed, two extremely positive traits for a piece of technology these days. The above image by Sergio Geuna at Scott Carver Pty Ltd for Sydney's East Darling Harbour competition makes it appear that it can also be used for presentation-quality images, something notoriously difficult in drafting applications like AutoCAD. Recently SketchUp provided a free plug-in allowing users to drop their "sketches" into Google Earth, such as this model of Google's Mountain View campus . This feat...

James Turrell: Into the Light edited by Claudia Giannini, published by The Mattress Factory, 2002. ( Amazon ) The Mattress Factory museum of contemporary art in Pittsburgh is home to three permanent installations by James Turrell, the well-known "light" artist known for his skyspaces and his large-scale Roden Crater project in the middle of Arizona. In all these undertakings, Turrell uses light in ways that make attempts to make it more of an object or thing than an everyday phenomenon we take for granted. His ultimate goal is to change the way we perceive reality by changing the way we perceive light and our surroundings. The three MF installations are included in this p...

Children's Museum of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by Koning Eizenberg Architecture Housed in the Old Post Office Building at the time, the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh held an invited competition in 2000 for its expansion into the adjacent Buhl Planetarium, a long vacant structure fronting Alleghany Square. California's Koning Eizenberg Architecture won the competition, with a three-story glass and steel "contemporary structure encased in a shade of fluttering translucent panels that move with the wind ." Both the Post Office and Planetarium are classical structures, heavy stone buildings with ornamented surfaces; each building also features a copper dome. The architects responded to his context by opting for something light and ...