A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Helios House* , originally uploaded by fdo h . Helios House, a "green" gas station in Los Angeles (corner of Robertson and Olympic Boulevards) by Office dA , in collaboration with Johnston Marklee and Ogilvy & Mather 's Big. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

To get out of the heat yesterday I caught a matinee at the Film Forum of Manufactured Landscapes , a feature documentary by Jennifer Baichwal on photographer Edward Burtynsky . With so many pages on the internet about him and his photographs, I'll just give some impressions I had of the movie, hopefully without giving too much away. The film opens with an extremely long pan across the floor of an assembly-line production facility in China, ending in the Burtynsky diptych below. Manufacturing #10A/#10B , Cankun Factory, Xiamen City, 2005 In this first scene, the photographer gives his basic philosophy, namely the inseparability of man and nature and a change in the last 100 years from natural landscapes to industrial or manufactured landscapes, a change that requires a new way of thinking about our surroundings, our actions, and how the two resolve each other. Oil Fields No. 1 , Belridge, California 2002 What almost single-handedly makes Burtynsky's photographs ...

A bit of news, a new web page, and some shameless self-promotion. 1. Margaret Helfand, Noted Female Architect, Dies at 59 Architectural Record reports the sad news that New York-based architect Helfand died on June 20 from colon cancer. I've always been impressed with her work , what Record describes as a "clean, Modernist vocabulary and skillful use of natural materials, combined with a quiet and subtle inventiveness." (via ArchNewsNow ) 2. MIMOA is a new, user-generated web page on exploring architecture in Europe that recently launched. While it's still in demo/beta mode, it looks quite impressive, if a bit sluggish and ad-heavy. 3. My page is included as one of the top 25 property blogs (in the Architecture & building category) in the UK's Times Online. They say of this page, "a daily helping of architecture from The Big Apple. There are lot of pictures of wacky new buildings from around the planet. Be inspired." What I like about this sort of ...

Looking for a book at the web page of San Francisco-based William Stout Architectural Books I saw the following announcement: "We have recently purchased the architectural library of writer/architect G.E. Kidder Smith. Kidder Smith was born in 1913 in Birmingham, Alabama and received his education at Princeton, getting his MFA in 1935. Kidder Smith wrote and photographed the books; Brazil Builds, Switzerland Builds, Sweden Builds, Italy Builds, The New Churches of Europe, A Pictorial History of Architecture in America, The Beacon Guide to New England Houses of Worship, Source Book of American Architecture and other books. Kidder Smith practiced and lived in New York, but spent much of his time traveling all over the world researching for his books." While Kidder Smith is not a household name, I remember the Builds series from the library at undergraduate architecture school, especially the ones on Italy and Switzerland. From what I remember of those books, he presente...

Looking at Lynn Becker's blog I was taken aback to see my cartoon face (along with Edward Lifson and somebody who turns out to be Kevin Nance) with a big X across it, though looking at his article on the withering architectural coverage in my old beat, Chicago, I realized he wasn't out to whack me. Check out the piece for some bad news (besides Becker, Kamin's the only name in town, once again) and the good news ( AIA Chicago is overhauling its magazine -- something I ranted about a year ago, before I left for New York -- and Lee Bey's web page is now in blog form, meaning more frequent postings and a feed).

slice , originally uploaded by twoeightnine . East Building of the National Gallery of Art by I. M. Pei . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

About a month ago Curbed posted images of One Jackson Square , an undulating, glass-wall mid-rise designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox ( KPF ) for the corner of Greenwich and 8th Avenues. Being a sucker for the sexy sight-specific gesture (a la their famous 333 Wacker Drive in Chicago), I bookmarked the page for some investigation, but have just now gotten around to it. As mentioned, the site is located at Greenwich and 8th Avenue (currently an open lot used for surface parking), across from the triangular Jackson Square. The neighborhood is the convergence of Greenwich Village, the Meatpacking District, and Chelsea. Even with these credentials (three immensely popular neighborhoods and a patch of green), the immediate site is less than friendly, with lots of traffic on both Greenwich and 8th Avenues to contend with. Crossing 8th, especially, is quite an adventure. This image below shows the appeal of the design, its walls curling around the corner to, in effect, connect the different neigh...

Grant Jones/Jones – Jones: ILARIS: The Puget Sound Plan edited by Jane Amidon, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2007. ( Amazon ) The latest installment in the Source Books in Landscape Architecture Series, edited by Knowlton School of Architecture's Jane Amidon, is a project on a much larger scale than the Nasher Sculpture Center Garden or the urban projects of Ken Smith , previously reviewed here. The Puget Sound Plan is a regional plan for the aesthetic and natural resources of a large portion of Washington State and therefore a much different sort of landscape project than the three previous books. This helps give the series a broad range that encompasses the realm of landscape architectur...

Sidwell Friends Middle School in Washington, District of Columbia by Kieran Timberlake Associates Photographs are copyright Barry Halkin. According to architects Kieran Timberlake Associates , their design of the Sidwell Friends Middle School addition and renovation -- part of a larger master plan the firm completed in 2001 -- "transforms an awkwardly-sited, undersized, fifty-year-old facility into an exterior and interior teaching landscape [...where] the landscape and building will co-exist within, and demonstrate, a broader network of [human and natural] systems." It is commendable approach that is an extension of the school's Quaker values and is strengthened by the quality of the architecture executed. The roughly 40,000 sf (3,700 sm) addition doubles ...

Here's something I'll definitely have to keep an eye out for: The Science Barge is a sustainable urban farm designed by New York Sun Works , an environmental nonprofit organization. The Science Barge tours New York City’s public waterfront parks, offering sustainability education programs to wide audiences. (via Coudal )

Yesterday I made it to MoMA to see the Richard Serra Retrospective , on display in the courtyard and two interior galleries until September 10. Two large-scale pieces are located in the courtyard, one of them being Intersection II , from 1992/3. Four identical conical sections are placed in a roughly mirrored, symmetrical composition, creating a central space and two curving paths on either side. It's a great piece to walk through, as well as to watch how people move through and react to the massive cor-ten steel sections. The steel, although weatherproof, has a flakiness along much of the lengths that rewards close inspection. Intersection II 's siting in the courtyard appears to relate itself to the other exterior Serra, 1998's Torqued Ellipse IV , as its "axis" points to the latter. Torqued Ellipse IV is a continuous tilting plane with a small gap for access to the interior space. Even though Serra points the first of his pieces towards this second one, the vi...

Here's a great excuse to travel to Australia. International Urban Design Conference Gold Coast, Australia 6,7 & 8 September, 2007. The Conference theme “Waves of Change – Cities at Crossroads” will challenge us all to examine our towns and cities. Population growth and economic prosperity have consequences on the environment and on the longer term social well-being of our communities. The wave of environmental challenges will affect communities through global warming and likely sea level rises. The ability of urban centres world-wide to cope with the impacts of high level fuel costs will also be examined. The physical separation of home from work and recreation may need to be re-addressed in city design. >> Day one celebrates the official conference launch followed by challenging keynote addresses about the issues confronting our cities and what we might do about it. >> Day two is a whirlpool of presentations taking the macro view down to micro insights int...

sverre_fehn_biennale_nordic_pav2 , originally uploaded by jiathwee . Nordic Pavilion in Venice, Italy by Sverre Fehn (1962). To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Last night I attended a presentation and panel discussion on New Waterfront Housing in Brooklyn and Queens. Three of the four* recent and ongoing projects presented are located on the East River, on former industrial sites. :: Queens West by Arquitectonica :: River East by Studio V :: Northside Piers by FXFowle And not presented last night, but discussed here is :: Silvercup West by Richard Rogers (*The fourth project presented was Averne by the Sea by EEK Architects .) Moderator Bonnie Harken raised some important issues, ones not adequately addressed in the presentations or the later discussion. These include the allotment and design of public spaces in private developments, access to the waterfront, affordable housing, and issues of sustainability. I'll try to address these issues relative to each, though I'm more interested in the overall effect of these developments, on the city, the waterfront, and the environment. Location plan As can be seen in the aerial above, thr...

Porto, Metro S.Bento. Álvaro Siza , originally uploaded by z.z . The Sao Bento station of Porto Metro in Porto, Portugal by Álvaro Siza. Many more images of the station and other Porto architecture can be found in z.z's architectura, Porto set . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment by I. G. Simmons, published by Routledge , 1993. ( Amazon ) Although written close to fifteen years ago, this exploration of the interaction of people and the biophysical systems of the planet -- beyond that merely arising from the natural sciences -- is even more relevant today, as concerns of climate change are at the fore. Geographer Simmons looks at this interaction by the sciences, but also the humanities and the social sciences, seeing the myriad ways the human imagination has constructed ways of thinking about the environment and therefore dealing with it. The book can be seen as more important today, because if the way we think about our su...

Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, Italy by King Roselli Architetti This project was spotted at architechnophilia . This project for New Reading Rooms at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, Italy by King Roselli Architetti was intended to "bring the activity of reading and the consultation of books as the central occupation of the university." The importance of books in study at the university can be found in the numbers: 600,000 volumes total, including 25,000 antique books and 750 publications, primarily dealing with philosophy, theology, and canonic law. Most of the volumes, and all of the antique books, are now located in climate-controlled spaces underground, separate from the new reading rooms. The reading rooms were previously scattered about the university, though now they're contained in the new ad...