A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture by Setha M. Low, published by University of Texas Press , 2000. ( Amazon ) The construction of public spaces involves politics as much, or even more than, design. This assertion is central to Setha Low's 25-year ethnographic/historical study of two plazas in San José, Costa Rica: Parque Central and Plaza de la Cultura, the former dating back over 200 years and the latter constructed in the 1970s and 80s. The choice of these two plazas highlights their obvious differences in design, demographics, and use, while also allowing the reader to see the similarities in terms of their political construction and renovations over time. The ordering of Low's book is an ...

Tanghe River Park in Qinhuangdao, China, by Turenscape Photographs are by Kongjian Yu and Cao Yang. One of this year's recipients of an ASLA Professional Award is the Tanghe River Park in Qinhuangdao in China's Hebei Province. Designed by Turenscape and the Graduate School of Landscape Architecture at Peking University, the project also goes by the name The Red Ribbon for the half kilometer (0.3 miles) snaking, multi-functional bench that stands out all year long. According to the architects, the 20-hectare (50-acre) park is sited on "a river corridor at the outskirts of the fast developing city of Qinhuangdao, with lush vegetation and diverse species but occupied by deserted irrigation structures and garbage dumps." Their aim of preserving the natural habitats along the river while inserting recreational and educ...

, originally uploaded by dianavieira . Funerary Chapel in Oliveira do Douro, Portugal by José Fernando Gonçalves. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

An anonymous comment on a previous post pointed to a New Yorker article by Paul Goldberger on the Bloch Building in Kansas City by Steven Holl , an addition I've posted about a couple times previously. The article includes a slide show of dusk images by David Allee, images that undeniably present the building as a series of lanterns, or "lenses" as the architect imagines them. These long-exposure images (unlike the more "truthful" point-and-shoot exterior shot at Inhabitat ) not only convey the concept, they make it appear questionable while also raising a couple questions. Should a large museum addition (or any building) expend so much energy for effect? And while Holl excels at bringing natural light inside buildings in complex ways -- making one wonder where the opening to the outside even is -- here his inversion of that seems too simple, just flourescent lights next to a channel glass wall (or apparently so). Regardless, with the commotion that's ...

glance , originally uploaded by stoneroberts . Erik Gunnar Asplund's Woodland Chapel in Woodland Cemetery, Stockholm. Many more images in stoneroberts' Flickr set on the cemetery. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

NARKOMFIN decaying, Moscow , originally uploaded by archidave . The Narkomfin Building in Moscow, designed by Moisei Ginzburg with Ignaty Milinis and finished in 1932. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

"A Horned Moses No More?" published in NYFA Current, April 25, 2007* In an April 23 New York Times article announcing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vision for the city in 2030, the author immediately addresses how the proposed plan is the stuff legacies are created from: “Mr. Bloomberg...set the parameters for what could be a large piece of his legacy as mayor. In an address outlining the plan yesterday... Bloomberg likened it to the first blueprints for Central Park more than 100 years ago and the construction of Rockefeller Center in the Great Depression.” While it would be naïve to assume all facets of the plan will proceed as proposed, Bloomberg’s plan could have the most profound influence on the infrastructure of New York since the city’s mid-century “master builder” Robert Moses. Long derided as a consummate insider politician whose building projects mistreated or ignored poorer New Yorkers, Moses’ legacy is revisited in a three-part exhibition at the Qu...

A big, big, BIG part of urban design is the street. And a big part of designing the street is the street section, the drawing that illustrates widths (right-of-way, driving lanes, sidewalks), heights (buildings, projections, trees), and uses (cars, bikes, pedestrians). The drawings are extremely helpful tools for the designer, and it is especially useful to see sections of existing streets that one has experienced or seen in photos, to quantify the qualities of a street space. The most popular references are Allan B. Jacobs' Great Streets and The Boulevard Book , though I've never seen a decent online reference...until now! StreetSections.com is a great online page that features photos and sections of (as of writing) 169 streets, with a goal of 1,000. Entries are contributed by registered users, though a quick run through the sections indicates nothing's been added in the last year and a half. Who knows, maybe 1,000 sections was a bit far-fetched and after a hundred of th...

As part of their exhibition New New York: Fast Forward (at the Urban Center until May 5), the Architectural League has a video podcast of six architects whining talking about their views on architecture and New York City. Top row, L-R: Lise Anne Couture, David Childs, Hugh Hardy; Bottom row, L-R: Frances Halsband, Michael Sorkin, Gregg Pasquarelli. According to the League's page, the complete set of 30 interviews will be available online in the coming weeks.

A month ago Dan Hill (no relation) at City of Sound posted this 1972 BBC documentary, " Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles ," about one of my favorite authors and one of his favorite cities, though I only got around to watching the 51-minute piece today. Well worth it. And here's a video , a PR piece basically, describing AIA's new undertaking with Google Earth to develop tools for architects and communities alike and to "demonstrate architecture’s impact on the world." Two new layers in Google Earth feature the recent AIA150 listing of America's Favorite Architecture (with 3d models) and Blueprint for America , AIA's new community service initiative where "AIA members [donate] their time and expertise are collaborating with citizens to find and implement ways to enhance their communities."

Schulich School of Business in Toronto, Ontario by Hariri Pontarini Architects Photographs are copyright Ben Rahn/A-Frame Inc. College buildings give architects a rare opportunity to design for a client with a clear direction. Where an office building for Company A might not be much different than one for Company B -- especially given the speculative nature of office buildings -- an architecture school will be much different than, in this case, a business school. The former will most likely strive to be different, celebrating the crit and studio spaces, though the latter will prefer an air of dignity balanced by a contemporary attitude. The Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, Ontario is such a building, with one foot in the post-graduation, dignified world of business, the other in the fresh and now. Designed by Hariri Pontarini Architects with Robbi...

Vals-4654.jpg , originally uploaded by olotini . Peter Zumthor's Thermal Baths in Vals, Switzerland. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

ArchNet-IJAR is a new: interdisciplinary scholarly online publication of architecture, planning, and built environment studies. The journal aims at establishing a bridge between theory and practice in the fields of architectural and design research, and urban planning and built environment studies. It reports on the latest research findings innovative approaches for creating responsive environments, with special focus on developing countries. In this inaugural issue (PDF here ) of IJAR, there are seven highly interesting and diverse papers. Two papers place emphasis on the technical aspects of the built environment including accessibility, fire safety (Sheila Ornstein, Rosaria Ono et al), day-lighting, and energy performance (Uma Maheswaran & Ang Guo zi); one paper introduces a new position on the role of human intelligence in shaping the architecture of the 21st century (Nikos A. Salingaros & Kenneth G. Masden II); three papers offer critical analyses of the built environm...

architecture arquitectura Ljubljana 2006 ofis , originally uploaded by sinor favela . 650 Apartments in Ljubljana, Slovenia by Ofis . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Recalling the photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher are the typological arrays of artist Mark Luthringer . Where the Bechers looked at the industrial landscape of their native Germany, Luthringer looks at Ridgemont Typologies , the American suburban landscape of consumption, status, and identity. From the artist's statement: The typological array’s inherent ability to depict prevalence and repetition make it the perfect technique for examining the excess, redundancy, and meaningless freedom of our current age of consumption... The typological form acheives an uncanny synergy and resonance with this subject matter because it mimics the mental images I suspect many of us form as a way of ordering the chaos of abundance that surrounds us. We can’t help but form in our heads lists, groups and categories based on product, brand, price point, style, market segment, country of origin, etc. To see one of these turned into a group of images lined up together can be unnerving, though, as i...

Here's some information on an upcoming conference at Columbia Unversity. Polis and Politics: Italian Urbanism under Fascism The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University 27-28 April 2007 The event will feature eleven presentations on interwar Italian urbanism, including a talk by Italian Consul General Antonio Bandini and a keynote address by Maristella Casciato of the University of Bologna. The conference is co-sponsored by the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Department of Art History, and is organized by doctoral students Andrew Manson, Lucy Maulsby and David Rifkind. In Fascist Italy the urban environment served as a critical cultural reference from which artists, architects, politicians, and planners sought to fashion a new Italy. This conference asks the question of why the city exerted such a powerful influence over contemporary artistic practice and what were the consequences. While scholars have documented many...

Frøsilos , originally uploaded by Peter Guthrie . Frøsilos in Copenhagen, Denmark by MVRDV . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

One day in the middle of a class the sounds of Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra , the music popularized in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Turner and Hooch , oozed through the oh-so-thin walls. Well, here's what was going on next door:

Function of Ornament edited by Farshid Moussavi and Michael Kubo, published by Actar , 2008. ( Amazon ) Any book that purports to be "a graphic guide to ornaments in the twentieth century" is bound to be looked at not only in terms of what it includes but what it omits. The 42 building facades presented in this thoroughly- and beautifully-illustrated book (produced from a 2006 studio in the Harvard GSD ) do an excellent job in giving a broad overview of the various materials and affects achieved by mostly contemporary buildings, while not being (or pretending to be) completely thorough. Not surprisingly, Herzog & de Meuron top the list of repeaters with eight designs featured ...

Housing at Westport, County Mayo, Ireland by Richard Murphy Architects & Taylor Architects On the edge of an disused railway and within a ten-minute walk of the historic town center of Westport in County Mayo, Ireland sat an undistinguished and disused industrial bakery. After its demolition, Taylor Architects invited Richard Murphy Architects to work with them on the design of housing proposed by their client. Outside of the site's proximity to the historical center, its greatest attribute is its view of the dramatic pilgrimage mountain Croagh Patrick, visible in the image at left. Comprised of 23 residential units -- ranging from 2-bedroom apartments to 3- and 4-bedroom townhouses -- the plan arranges these in two arcs, one gently following the disused railroad tracks and the other ...

A little over a year ago I featured a half dose of J. Mayer H.'s Metropol Parasol , an exciting, urban-scaled canopy in Seville, Spain. Well, Flickr member Torchondo has a set devoted to construction of the project. Below are some images showing progress in the latter half of March. March 23 March 30 March 31 (via Urbanity )