A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here's some more photos from my recent class trip to Ecuador. This post focuses on a long bus ride from Quito (pictures here ) to the Amazon basin. Out the window of the bus as we descend from Quito (elevation approx. 2,800m) to the Amazon basin (approx. 500m). A building nestled into the eastern Andes. Note the power line to the house's right, an indication of the country's eastern colonial expansion in the late 20th century. Another (less subtle) indication of Ecuador's expansion, linked to the discovery of oil in the Oriente in 1967. This petrol processing station sits within an otherwise untouched section of the eastern Andes. To get the oil to that plant one needs a pipeline, and here it is, suspended over this small river. Everything needed to make the pipeline happen (the guardrail and suspension structure above, for example) are also made from pipeline. Getting closer to the rainforest. Much of the population in the rainforest -- or Oriente region -- is rural. T...

Árbol Climático - Climatic Tree IV by TwOsE The Eco-boulevard in Vallecas, Madrid, Spain by Ecosistema Urbano . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Here's some photos from my recent class trip to Ecuador. This post focuses on Quito. Quito sits in a valley in the Andes Mountains. One of the tourist activities is taking the TeleferiQo cable car up to approximately 4,100m (13,500 ft) above sea level. On this day, views of Quito were not to be had, but it was thrilling regardless. This clearer view is from El Mosaico Cafe, a Greek-Ecuadorian-American restaurant with great food and stunning views. This collage was taken right before Quito's daily dose of rain. Best viewed mas grande . Another general view of Quito, this time from the 12th floor of the Hilton... ...the building to the left of the tall concrete building in the foreground. The Historical, Colonial district of Quito is one of the most beautiful and well-preserved in South America, here in front of Monasterio de San Francisco. And here next door in the courtyard of the Museo Franciscano. One of the many lively and beautiful roads in the Colonial district. Here'...

Crude Chronicles: Indigenous Politics, Multinational Oil, and Neoliberalism in Ecuador by Suzana Sawyer. ( Amazon ) Since the discovery of oil in Ecuador's Oriente region in 1967, the country has seen it's economy become dependent upon export of the crude substance, making up nearly half of the country's GDP. This situation is severely complicated by the fact that the discovery and exploitation of oil-rich land not only lies within the Amazon basin -- one of the most environmentally important areas in the world -- but also in areas long inhabited by various indigenous groups. Suzana Sawyer's account of indigenous organization's conflicting with Ecuador's national oil company and overseas, corporate ...

Musical Studies Centre in Santiago de Compostela, Spain by Ensamble Studio Photographs are by Roland Halbe. Antón Garcia-Abril and Ensamble Studio 's built work is refreshingly different: heavy rather than light, opaque rather than transparent, rough rather than smooth. At a time when much of the built environment aspires to the unachievable lightness, transparency, and smoothness of digital culture, it's just great to see architecture that embraces its antithesis. The Musical Studies Centre at the namesake university in Santiago de Compostela, Spain is a prime example of Ensamble Studio's manipulation of mass, materials and construction details, all an important part of their work. What was originally a municipal slaughterhouse for the Arganzuela area of the city becomes a center for arts and culture. The architects attempted to modify the b...

Spinningfields Development Manchester by fotofacade The Leftbank residential building at Spinningfields development in Manchester by Aedas (now Davis Brody Bond - Aedas). To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

For studio our class is heading to Ecuador, spending a little over a week in Quito, the Oriente and some places in between. Macas - Militares by RoggenKINO Posts will resume upon return.

Back in September I posted about Coroflot's 2006 Design Salary Survey, a survey that is now complete . Almost 250 respondents fell into the architecture category (not nearly as many as the industrial design field but much more than fashion), an amount that gives a good indication of salary relative to firm type but not enough for decent geographical indicators. Click for larger view The graph above compares the salaries in the various fields of the survey in terms of staff level, from entry to director. Architecture is highlighted with the red box; the others are (L-R) graphic design, industrial design, interaction/web design, interior design, and fashion design. Even at the small, illegible size above, a few things are clear. :: At the entry level, salaries across the fields are pretty much the same, except for graphic design. :: At the upper level, architects are very low, a little bit higher than the apparetnly poor graphic designers. :: Salaries for directors (pink bar at top)...

Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space by Jan Gehl, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1987. Paperback, 202 pages. ( Amazon ) This classic book looks at the spaces between buildings, the streets, plazas, and other open spaces of the city and how their design affects people and vice-versa. Given that Gehl is Danish, much of the many illustrations and studies focus on Copenhagen and other cities in Denmark, though this relationship can be inverted, as the quality of public space in the country is so high that a book devoted to improving public space seems almost inevitable. Like Oscar Newman's Defensible Space , Gehl's book is both a reaction to Modernist principles and their failures, and an applicatio...

Holiday House on the Rigi, Scheidegg, Switzerland by Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler The prospect of designing a vacation house in the Swiss Alps must be thrilling and daunting at the same time, much like the experience of being above the clouds in the image at left. The scenery and the terrain, though, make many of the decisions pretty obvious, such as where to site the building and how to deal with orientation. Nevertheless, Andreas Fuhrimann Gabrielle Hächler's restrained design, that takes its cues from its surroundings, holds its own in its stunning context. According to the architects, they chose to site the house "on the periphery of the property so that the distance to the neighboring houses was as large as possible and so that the option of constructing another building could be left open." This relative isolation helps to preserve the important views of the Alps while, along with the site's slope, also creating a covered entry into the lowest level...

Green vs. Stone by rolando g "The office wing of the new Quai Branly Museum for the Primitive Arts in Paris, Architect: Jean Nouvel, vertical garden system by Patrick Blanc." To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Michael Lee-Chin Crystal Facade by richyrich™ Detail of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal addition to the Royal Ontario Museum by Daniel Libeskind. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

On the shelves of a local bookstore today I caught a glimpse of something new: PIN-UP Magazine for Architectural Entertainment . More of a zine than a full-fledged magazine, the first issue of the biannual publication appears to meld the worlds of architecture with fashion, with tongue firmly in cheek, as this page attests. Architects are notorious for taking themselves way too seriously, perhaps this is another antidote to that trait. We'll see, though, if enough architects are willing to drop the money that will keep it going.

Apparently, on top of my other problems , my host turned off my site today due to a billing mix-up related to my recent move. They turned it back on after promptly recognizing their error, but it's going to take about 24 hours before it's up and running again. This affects the daily page marginally in that certain images on that host will not show. Rest assured the weekly page should be up and running shorty, hopefully by the time I awake and check tomorrow morning. Update 11.07: Talked with customer service this morning and it looks like the site will be running in 24-48 hours. Talk about frustrating. Update 11.10: It's back! Calling my host again today I learned that the automatic restart that was supposed to happen on Monday did not happen. After a manual restart of my site while I was on the phone with them, my site is up and running again within a half hour. I feel happy and angry almost simultaneously.

Crain's Chicago Business has an article on quirky behavior in the office. And who should be featured but my old boss! Photo: John R. Boehm "Scott Sarver, principal at DeStefano & Partners Ltd. , has a jar containing a coiled-up snake on his desk. He says it keeps him feeling creative, but it also gives visitors pause: 'Their eyes wander, and they stop talking.'" Also Matt Snoap, who sat behind me for a while at work, is quoted in the article as saying, "Scott can be an intimidating guy at times...it doesn't ease your tensions." I must admit that I don't recall being distracted by the cobra, though I don't think Scott typically had the jar as prominently displayed on his desk as in the above photo...though it might just have to stay there after its appearance in Crain's.

The End of Nature by Bill McKibben. ( Amazon ) For many people Al Gore's 2006 book and film An Inconvenient Truth is a wake-up call for humanity, that it must change its ways in order to halt global warming. For others this wake-up call came 15 years ago with Bill McKibben 's publication of The End of Nature . This gap illustrates not only how slow change is but how hard it is for something to be accepted before it even leads to change. For years global warming was pushed aside "for further investigation," with economic well-being taking precedence over ecological well-being. So now we are slowly coming to realize that (along with social well-being) they are not only linked but necessary to ...

City Museum Extension in Ljubljana, Slovenia by Ofis Arhitekti The City Museum in Ljubljana, Slovenia sits in that town's protected Medieval core, housed in an old palace. Having accrued Renaissance alterations, the institution held a competition to improve its complicated layout, won by local architects Ofis Arhitekti . Their competition-winning design uses a continuous spiral to connect the museum's various exhibition spaces. The spiral also holds the necessary infrastructure for their needs (heating/cooling, fire alarm system, lighting, sound, etc.). While the exterior expression of the spiral is limited to its start jutting into a courtyard and portion of glass wall, its effect on the inside is quite dramatic. Faceted, butt-glazing follows the curve of the spiral in plan, creating interesting reflections and refractions, as well as a certain disorientation, the ...