A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Sidebar update: I've added a category to the architectural links, publications on architecture, design, landscape, and urbanism that have web content. Here's the list as of today, though feel free to comment if you know of one I've missed. :: Abitare :: a+t :: Archis :: Architectural Record :: Architectural Review :: Architect Magazine :: Architecture and Culture :: Architecture Australia :: ark :: art 4D :: A10 :: Azure :: Building Design :: DETAIL :: Domus :: Dwell Magazine :: El Croquis :: Frame Magazine :: Harvard Design Magazine :: Icon Magazine :: Japan Architect/A+U :: MARK Magazine :: Metropolis Magazine :: Monu :: The Plan Magazine :: The Next American City :: Quaderns :: RIBA Journal :: 32BNY :: Topos :: Ume Magazine :: Via Arquitectura :: Wallpaper*

Limerick County Council building, Ireland , originally uploaded by massamann . Limerick County Council HQ in Limerick, Ireland by Bucholz McEvoy Architects , 2004. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

While looking around one of my favorite bookstores I came across Virginia McLeod's Detail In Contemporary Residential Architecture , an "analysis of both the technical and the aesthetic importance of details in the development of contemporary domestic architecture from 2000 to 2005." What impresses the most is the quality of the projects and the clear and consistent layout, making the presentation of details that much stronger. Many other detail-oriented books presenting projects side by side tend to have drawings that vary in quality and content, making some projects more helpful to the reader than others, or just more interesting to look at. The extra effort required to create consistent drawings pays off in the form of having a solid reference, rather than just a hurried and inexpensive collection of what's cool now. "Virignia McLeod studied architecture in Australia and has worked for a number of private practices in London. She was the editor of The Phaidon ...

School of Music triptych , originally uploaded by numstead . The Earl V. Moore Building by Eero Saarinen (1964), home of the Music Department, on the campus of The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

For WNYC's Leonard Lopate show, writer Christopher Gray, author of New York Streetscapes and a regular column for the New York Times, asked listeners to submit pictures of what they think are the worst buildings in New York City. Yesterday he discussed what makes a building bad, unveiling his choices for the worst buildings. Here's a slideshow of listener submissions: (via Archinect )

First came Gehry , then plans for a Selldorf (minus Johnson ) and a Nouvel . And now there's Shigeru Ban's Metal Shutter Houses on West 19th Street, a stretch from the Highline to the West Side Highway that's quickly becoming some sort of Starchitect District. Ban's addition, revealed at Curbed , is named for the large operable shutters on the facade that open and close to bring outside inside, or vice-versa. It's an interesting idea that seems more suited to the west-facing site of the IAC HQ, rather than the north-facing lot it occupies. Regardless, these large shutters will give the building its character, particularly the combination of open and closed and in-between from the different tenants. I'm guessing the closed view of the rendering -- and image that makes the building like a solid block with some subtle relief -- will be a rarity. (via Archinect )

"Thinking about daylight and artificial light I have to admit that daylight, the light on things, is so moving to me that I feel it almost as a spiritual quality. When the sun comes up in the morning -- which I always find so marvelous, absolutely fantastic the way it comes back every morning -- and casts its light on things, it doesn't feel as if it quite belongs in this world. I don't understand light. It gives me the feeling there's something beyond me, something beyond all understanding. And I am very glad, very grateful that there is such a thing. And I have that feeling here too; I'll have it later when we go outside. For an architect that light is a thousand times better than artificial light." - Peter Zumthor, from Atmospheres (2006). The book is a transcript of a lecture Zumthor gave at Wendlinghausen Castle in East-Westphalia-Lippe, Germany in 2003.

Royal Netherlands Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia by Dick van Gameren and Bjarne Mastenbroek The following text and images are courtesy the Aga Khan Award for Architecture , for the award-winning design of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ethiopia by Dick van Gameren and Bjarne Mastenbroek. The Royal Netherlands Embassy complex lies amidst the urban sprawl on the southern outskirts of Addis Ababa, enclosed within a dense eucalyptus grove. The architects’ guiding principle was to preserve and respect the topography of the surrounding landscape while addressing the functional requirements of a working embassy. They took care to maintain existing contour lines and leave the vegetation and wildlife undisturbed. The main building, an elongated horizontal volume, cuts across the sloping terrain on an east– west axis. Walls, floors and ceilings are pigmented the same red-ochre as the Ethiopian earth...

Came across this photo on Flickr and couldn't help agree with thegoatisbad's assertion that Zaha Hadid 's Landesgartenschau (aka LFone) in Weil Am Rhein, Germany looks pretty crappy for a building less than ten years old. if this is the building now... , originally uploaded by thegoatisbad . Compare with a couple (unfortunately) lo-res images from when I featured the building on my weekly page back in '99 to see the difference.

exploded wine barrel , originally uploaded by jiathwee . The National Wine Centre of Australia by the Grieve Gillette and Cox Architects. This building was featured on my weekly page in 2002. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Have a good weekend!

High Court_3 , originally uploaded by *chiara! . The high court of Punjab, in Chandigarh , India by Le Corbusier, 1955. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Chris Mottalini is a New York-based photographer who has documented vacant homes designed by Paul Rudolph , photographed just prior to demolition. Westport, CT 1972-2007 Rudolph's building seems to be falling these days at a rate faster than even the busiest architect can throw them up. The house above in Westport received a fair amount of press earlier in the year when a last-minute attempt to save it failed. Westerly, RI, 1956-2007 The Cerritto House in Rhode Island was spared the fate of other Rudolph creations, as its new owners moved it to Catskill, NY. Like other houses, this one depended a great deal on its site for its meaning, though I'm guessing the move is seen as a win over the apparently popular alternative these days. Sarasota, FL, 1941-2007 Rudolph is known for many things, such as popularizing the short-lived brutalist Modernism of his Yale Art and Architecture building. He was also one of the major architects of the Sarasota School of Architecture, "a ...

Kunsthal* , originally uploaded by fdo h . The Kunsthal in Rotterdam, Netherlands by Rem Koolhaas and OMA , 1992. Note the portrait of the architect at the end of the stepped corridor. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

"Digital or not, today's notion of 'sustainability' mostly refers to, and derives from, a strategy of survival: a legitimate ambition for sure, even in posthistorical times. But an ambition without drive, without impetus, and ultimately -- by definition -- without much of a future. Perhaps this is something akin to what the founding fathers of postmodernism had in mind when they foretold the 'fragmentation of master narratives.' No matter how vocal, the maintenance of the status quo cannot contend with the master narratives that preceded it. By itself, reducing energy waste is unlikely to become an exciting architectural agenda. Sustainability is already an indispensable part of any building program, its technical and economic rationale self-evident and proven. The diverse ideologies underpinning it may thrive within the general compass of a postmodern environment, but today's single-minded pursuit of a 'sustainable' development is not a postmodern ...

No, this isn't the cover of a techno album, it's the web site of an art installation at the Old Essex Street Market at 117 Delancey (@ Essex) in New York's Lower East Side. In A Psychic Vacuum , artist Mike Nelson "[takes] audiences on an unexpected journey through reconstructed rooms, passageways, and meticulously assembled environments." It looks awesome. Flickr member f.trainer wonderfully documented the various spaces a couple days after the opening. The images clearly show how the artist used "materials gleaned from local salvage yards and debris from the market's heyday," which would probably have been between the market's opening in 1940 and its eventual decline in the 1970s when supermarkets began to take hold. Photo by f.trainer The line between art and environment is blurred to the extent that the former appears to be non-existent (minus the room with 80 tons of sand ), as if the spaces were found in their current condition, after bei...

Bow-Wow from Post Bubble City by Atelier Bow-Wow , published by Inax, 2006. ( Amazon ) While the prolific duo of Momoyo Kajima and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, may not be household names like many other Japanese architects, their oeuvre deserves as much attention as their more popular contemporaries. As Atelier Bow-Wow, the two have built a tremendous amount of (albeit mainly small) commissions in their minus-20-year existence, as well as seven books, including this monograph that collects almost 70 of their buildings, unbuilt projects, furniture, exhibitions, and publications.   The bilingual book is broken down into twelve chapters, as a means to organize the various projects by overridin...

Hanamidori Cultural Center in Tachikawa City Tokyo, Japan by Atelier Bow-Wow The following text is excerpted from 2006's Bow-Wow from Post Bubble City for Atelier Bow-Wow 's Hanamidori Cultural Center (2005) in Tokyo's Tachikawa City. Images are primarily culled from the Architectural Photography web site. This is a facility that intensively combines various functions of information dissemination and exchange associated with the Green Culture Zone, newly opened within the Showa Memorial Park . The basic concept was for a "growing architecture," in response to the developing activities of green culture and for "parkitecture": architecture integrating with the landscape, in which interior and exterior are connected. Our intention was for a space as comfortable as in the shade of a tree. The building con...

cliff , originally uploaded by andrewpaulcarr . Crampton Street residential development by Tate + Hindle , as part of the Elephant and Castle Regeneration Program in London's Southwark area. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

According to its web site, Kolumba 's new building opened yesterday. Kolumba is the "art museum of the archbishopric of Cologne," Germany, designed by Peter Zumthor. This is the second building to open this year by Zumthor, whose Bruder Klaus Chapel has received much press and visitors to the private chapel in Southern Germany, due to its design as much as for the fact that Zumthor produces very few buildings. According to Kolumba's web site, the "architecture combines the ruins of the late Gothic church St. Kolumba, the chapel 'Madonna in the Ruins' (1950), the unique archaeological excavation (1973-1976), and the new building designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor." This layering of old and new is evident on the outside walls, where the new, minimal walls sit behind the old stone walls and openings of the late Gothic church. The windows of the new building sit in front of its own walls, in a slight gesture to the layering of the...

Hoofddorp Bus Station by NIO , originally uploaded by dod: . Bus station at Spaarne Hospital (aka The Amazing Whale Jaw) in Hoofddorp, Netherlands by NIO Architecten , 2005. See the station in its pre-peachy-paint state at Galinsky . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose