A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Today UN Studio unveiled its design for Five Franklin Place , the latest celebrity-architect-designed Manhattan condo. Potential buyers will need to shell out between $2 million and $16 million for one of the 55 residences, comprised of apartments, duplex lofts, or duplex townhouses. As can be surmised, the 20-story building is located at 5 Franklin Place, between Broadway and Sixth in Tribeca. View Larger Map The design's horizontal emphasis is articulated by Ben van Berkel's signature ribbons, in this case twisting bands that occasionally rise and fall as they wrap the building. The architect uses the following as illustrations of inspiration for this design: The renderings make it appear that the justification is unnecessary; it's just a darn sexy design. The attempt at integrating the interior design with the exterior is apparent, but the inside isn't nearly as successful. This last piece of eye candy shows how the external expression likewise isn't as striking...

Construction Site: Metamorphoses in the City  edited by Marie Antoinette Glaser, published by  Lars Müller Publishers , 2008. Hardcover, 144 pages. ( Amazon ) One of the paradoxes of growth is construction. A city without the din and inconveniences of building could be said to be a dead city. A city filled with the sounds, smells, and impasses created by demolition and construction are likewise the most alive. It's as if the city is working towards some sort of ideal, an unattainable Utopia where one building begets the next, or where the death of one building begets a replacement. But given the undeniable presence of construction sites in thriving cities, surprisingly little literature is given to the subject. Sure, the occasional high-profile commission is documented from start to finish , but its effect on the context and the context of the construction are not discussed much beyond the pretty pictures. This book, the brainchild of ETH 's Marie Antoinette Glaser...

Modern Shoestring: Contemporary Architecture on a Budget by Susanna Sirefman ( Amazon ) Essence of Home: Timeless Elements of Design by Liesl Geiger ( Amazon ) It's difficult to underestimate the importance of single-family houses in contemporary architecture. They provide a launching pad for young architects, pepper the monographs of most well-known architects, and are the focus of most media (print or online) focused on the built environment. These two books published by the  Monacelli Press  approach this area in two different but highly specific ways: looking at houses with small budgets and seeing from the client's perspective.   The title Modern Shoestring clearly indicates author Susann...

Hazelwood School in Glasgow, Scotland by Gordon Murray + Alan Dunlop Architects The Hazelwood School for the Sensory Impaired combines two of Glasgow's special needs schools into one, in a facility catered to "children aged from 4 to 18 with severe visual, mobility and sensory impairment." Gordon Murray + Alan Dunlop Architects approached the design by holding workshops, meetings, and seminars with the two client groups. The result is a building that successfully caters to those special needs, while also stimulating the children through their experience of the spaces. At first glance the project is reminiscent of Stanley Tigerman's Illinois Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (now a bank) in Chicago, where an undulating window and adjacent desk allow th...

114_1493 , originally uploaded by marklarmuseau . Museum of Modern Art (1992) in Bonn, Germany by Schultes Frank Architekten . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

The seemingly impossible vertical gardens -- vegetation growing on soil-less vertical surfaces -- that are finding popularity in the ever-more-green-minded media and public are the almost single-handed product of one person: Patrick Blanc . Contributing to the architecture of many high-profile architects and their commissions, and the author of a forthcoming book on the subject, it's hard to deny the appeal of vegetation appearing to take over an architect's creation, something that might have only seemed possible with Photoshop until very recently.     [Musée du quai Branly | photograph by rolando g ]  The Musée du quai Branly in Paris, France by Jean Nouvel is one of Blanc's most well-known installations, overshadowing the architect's formal bravado on the museum's other faces. It makes the relationship between old and new striking, even though Nouvel picks up on the regular openings of the neighbor. It seems to indicate that now real vegetation is architectu...

IMG_6869.JPG , originally uploaded by iceman882 . Gannett/USA Today Headquarters (2001) in McLean, Virginia by Kohn Pedersen Fox . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

, originally uploaded by kwikzilver . Qubic Student Housing (2005) in Amsterdam, Netherlands by hvdn architecten . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Green Roof - A Case Study: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' Design For the Headquarters of the American Society of Landscape Architects  by Christian Werthmann, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2007. Hardcover, 160 pages. ( Amazon ) The roof of the book's title sits atop the American Society of Landscape Architects' ( ASLA ) headquarters in Washington D.C. It is a relatively small roof of 3,300 sf (305 sm), but one that merits case study treatment from its design, construction, and the intentions behind these two. Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates in collaboration with Conservation Design Forum , the roof is unlike other well-known American examples like the Ford Rouge Plant or Chicago's City Hall , in that it is accessible. It is a social space as much as an ecological one. It is a roof garden as well as a green roof. This decision (and the important distinction between doing a roof garden or a green roof or a hybrid) shaped much of t...

USEK Student Housing in Kaslik, Lebanon by Henri Eid Architect + SE.Arch_Samer Eid Architects The following text and images are courtesy Henri Eid Architect + SE.Arch_Samer Eid Architects for their design of a women's dormitory at the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik . The plot of land is located in the periphery, at the South-East of USEK campus. The project thus sets a new limit to the Southern part of the campus perimeter, that was ill-defined so far. The degraded and exiguous site, surrounded with old residential buildings, represented a real difficulty, as did a relatively reduced and non orthogonal plot of land. Project objectives were welcoming and hosting 200 young female students coming from all over Lebanon, creating a pleasant environment that is suitable for rest and study, solving the issues of intimacy and community which prevail on such a project, giving a degraded urban site ...

DSC01735 , originally uploaded by hellothomas . National Art Center in Tokyo, Japan by Kisho Kurokawa (2007). To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

A panel discussion, "New York Since Guernica", will take place on Friday, April 25, at Cooper Union's Great Hall, with Diane Lewis , Dennis Adams, Beatriz Colomina, Anthony McCall, Dan Sherer, and Anthony Vidler. The event is organized around the release of Lewis's monograph, Inside-Out ( reviewed on my weekly page), and her 25th year as faculty at Cooper Union.

A couple windmills at Bucharest, Romania's Village Museum , photographed by atelier_db . See also . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

New York asked four architects to come up with ideas for the odd-shaped block at Canal and Varick Streets, recently cleared by owner Trinity Real Estate (to be used as a sculpture park until long-term plans are made). The magazine "required only that the result include a residential component and that it more or less meet zoning requirements." [Top: Work AC 's " Locavore Fantasia "; Left: at architects ' " Site-Specific Sculpture "; Right: Karl Fischer Architecture 's " Realistic Proposal "; Bottom: FLAnk 's " Subsidized Solution "]

Two photos of Weltstadthaus flagship store for Peek & Kloppenburg , Koln, Germany by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (2005), photographed by andrewpaulcarr . This building was featured as a project on my weekly page back in 2001. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Density: New collective housing (Condensed edition) by Javier Mozas and Aurora Fernández Per ( Amazon ) Density Projects: 36 new concepts on collective housing by Aurora Fernández Per and Javier Arpa ( Amazon ) "We believe...that collective housing in [the] context of mixed-use, generating a dense built environment, is the only solution to the consumption of resources."   This assertion, by the editors of a+t (also responsible for the eponymous magazine's four Density publications and the DBook ), grounds the issue of density at the forefront of architectural and planning decisions for housing in the 21st century. The notion of mixed-use is equally...

Junghans Residential Buildings in Venice, Italy by Cino Zucchi Architetti Included in a+t's Density series, the urban plan by Cino Zucchi Architetti for the site of the former Junghans industrial plant on Venice's Guidecca island exhibits the obvious focus of those books, while also dealing with a historical context in a sensitive manner, something the other projects in those pages, particularly the urban plans, don't deal with to such an extent. Described by the architect in the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 2001 (for which one building was a finalist) as "a sort of microsurgery within the delicate body of the city," the mix of renovations and new buildings creat...