A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Inflatable environments are undergoing something of a renaissance today. Not since the 1960's embrace of bubbles in their numerous connotations (lightness, transparency, embrace, equality, difference) have so many projects used air as a medium for shaping enclosures, although they are still on the outskirts of architectural production. Technological and other advances have aided, if not outright negated the disadvantages of "bubbletecture," namely durability and wastefulness. [historical bubbletecture, top to bottom: 1960's inflatable by Jersey Devil ( source ); L: The Environment Bubble, 1965 by Reyner Banham & Francois Dallegret ( source ) R: Pneumakosm, a pneumatic dwelling unit, 1967 by HAUS-RUCKER-CO ( source ); Clean Air Pod ,1970 by Ant Farm ( source ); page from Ant Farm's Inflatocookbook ( PDF source )]  Of those exploring inflatable architecture in the sixties and seventies, Ant Farm was the most prolific, gearing a number of projects around air a...

'Pod', Hotel & Shops, Nottingham. , originally uploaded by Iqbal Aalam . The Pod, a hotel and retail development ( Bildurn ) in Nottingham, England by Benson & Forsyth Architects , 2007. For more photos see New Nottingham . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Like many episodes of The Simpsons in the last few years, last night's was just okay. As continued evidence that the writers are running out of ideas (in one way this is a good thing, meaning they have mined all the good ideas already), Homer becomes a "helicopter parent," hovering over Bart and Lisa to make the former less of a loser and the latter popular. The first concerns us here. Spoilers follow for those who haven't seen it, but FOX is nice enough to provide the full episode online . For class Bart must create a scale model of a building out of balsa wood. (I recall doing the same thing, albeit in high school, with the Globe Theatre.) His first choice of Washington Monument is nixed by Homer, who realizes that choice is too easy. They undertake Westminster Abbey, with Homer taking over the balsa and blue glue reigns. As expected the model looks like crap. What I really like is the choice of the other models revealed in the contest, including the CCTV Bu...

Tiny Houses by Mimi Zeiger, published by  Rizzoli , 2009. Hardcover, 208 pages. ( Amazon ) The decision to live sustainably comes into play at different scales, from light bulbs to the distance between home, work and shopping. Three broad scales can be noted: consumer products, buildings and the larger natural and urban context. The first encompasses household goods, the foods we eat and processes, like knowingly using canvas bags when going to the store or taking short showers. The last involves where we choose to live and work, a decision that impacts mainly how much driving is necessary, but also our level of exercise and our social well-being. The second, the focus of this book, involves our home, its size, energy usage...

Chen House in Sanjhih, Taiwan by C-Laboratory Photographs are by AdDa. In what surely could have been a contender for inclusion in Tiny Houses , the Chen House by C-Laboratory -- Finland's Marco Casagrande and Taiwan's Frank Chen -- is a small house in a remote setting in the north of Taiwan. Built for a retired couple, the house is notable for its attention to site and its materiality, though both work as a synthesis of traditional methods adapted to contemporary conditions. Sitting in an opening next to the couple's farm and the Da-Tun River, the house is surrounded by hills and trees. The climate is marked by summer heat, occasional flooding, frequent strong winds and even seismic activity. Casagrande describes the house as an adaptive, responsive entity that allows wind to move through the house, raises itself up on...

On the subway yesterday I saw an ad for The Future Beneath Us , an exhibit at the New York Transit Museum and The New York Public Library . The joint exhibition is billed as "an illuminating look at the vast mega-projects that will bring New York City's underground infrastructure into the 21st Century and beyond." For those unable to visit the two venues -- The Science, Industry and Business Library’s Healy Hall, at 188 Madison Avenue, and the New York Transit Museum Gallery Annex and Store at Grand Central Terminal -- the online coverage is exemplary. [8-project map | image source ] The eight projects are: 1) East Side Access 2) Second Avenue Subway 3) Fulton Street Transit Center 4) 7 Line Extension 5) Croton Water Filtration Plant 6) City Water Tunnel #3 7) Trans-Hudson Express Tunnel 8) World Trade Center . Photos and text trace the history and provide a glimpse of the future via renderings of stations, for example. The most well known is surely City Water Tun...

spacebuster "Examined Life"08 , originally uploaded by a tanz . Spacebuster , a "a mobile inflatable structure - a portable, expandable pavilion - that is designed to transform public spaces of all kinds into points for community gathering," by Berlin's Raumlabor . See their Kitchen Monument for similar installations in Europe in 2006. The pavilion is in town (until tomorrow evening) for ten consecutive days of events in New York City curated by Storefront for Art and Architecture. Here it is used in a parking lot on Norfolk Street in the Lower East Side for a screening of Examined Life , a film by Astra Taylor. See a tanz's Flickr set for many more photos of Raumlabor during its brief sojourn in New York. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

With so few job postings for architects nowadays, Craigslist looks like it has become one of the best sources for finding job leads, at least in New York City with its relative multitude of listings. But alongside the few reputable ads are numerous gotta-be-a-headhunter ads (maybe not a bad idea these days), hire-me ads (ditto) and other questionable listings. I'll be posting some of the last, with some commentary, once a week until the economy improves or the idea runs its course, whichever comes first. Title: HIP ARCHITECTURAL FIRM IN SOHO SEEKS A RECEPTIONIST/ OFFICE MANAGER When: 2009-04-24 Who: ??? Description: I am the current office manager for an architectural studio in SoHo. Sadly, I am moving & need to give up my position in this creative environment. We are on the hunt for a reliable, organized, detail oriented Receptionist/Office Manager. Must be professional with great communication skills. You have big shoes to fill!! No, seriously…they’re like a size 10. Are y...

Fuel edited by John Knechtel, published by  The MIT Press , 2008. Hardcover, 320 pages. ( Amazon ) Alphabet City "is a series of annual hardcover anthologies originating from Toronto, Canada. Each volume in the series addresses a one-word topic of global concern and draws on the diverse perspectives of writers and artists from many cultures and disciplines." Previous books focused on Food and Trash, with Water forthcoming. These monickers point towards substances and processes that are threatened by humanity, or problems created by the same. One could argue that Fuel, namely oil in this case, while naturally available, is primarily a problem (in the name of climage change, pollutions, habitat destruction, etc.) created by humanity via its exploitation of the substance in sometimes questionable ways. (Do we really need to drive ourselves two hours back and forth to work every day?) This book, small in stature (just over 4x6") but large in ambition, proposes energy p...

Here's some photos taken by ken mccown of the Antioch Baptist Church in Perry County, Alabamy by Rural Studio , 2002. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Here are some sobering satellite photos of Las Vegas, in five year intervals from 1984 to a few months ago, taken by NASA's Landsat 5. For orientation, the strip runs north-south and with a NNE kink just right of center, with the airport parallel to this at bottom. Interstate 215 can be found in the bottom left corner, taking shape in 1999. Click the animation for larger images. [25 years in six seconds | images from here ] "These images of the western portion of the Las Vegas metropolitan area show the city’s steady spread into the adjacent desert landscape. Undeveloped land appears along the left edges of the top two images. Here, the land on the city’s outskirts appears in shades of beige and tan, with just a hint of the street grid to come. By 1989, however, development filled the upper left corner—a residential area, complete with curving roads and semicircle streets. In subsequent images, development spreads southward, and by 2004, the entire image shows cityscape, i...

Here's a few (hopefully) inspiring videos on this Earth Day 2009. Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the Council on Environmental Quality gives us the Obama administration's first Earth Day message, "Green Jobs for a Green Future", from the White House Blog . This one might bring back memories for some, the Earth Day Special , a celebrity- and Muppet-loaded TV special from 1990. Below is part 1 of 11. Click here to see the rest. And what's more green than moving and reusing a historical structure? Anova Architects in Placerville, California (between Sacramento and Eldorado National Forest) did just that, making it onto the local news.

cc , originally uploaded by !architect4! . HSI Productions in Culver City, California by Nakao::Farrage Architects, 2001. For a view of the sculpture in the foreground, click here . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Expo Architecture 2008: Zaragoza, an urban project by Freddy Massad, Alicia Guerrero-Yeste & Jaime Salazar, published by  Actar , 2008. Paperback, 240 pages w/DVD. ( Amazon ) Not surprisingly, given its site at the confluence of the Ebro, Gallego and Huerva Rivers, the theme of Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain was water. Combined with long-term thinking about the physical and cultural impact of the Expo on the area, the city is attempting to make the rivers into strong cultural attractions, even though the Expo site only engages a small portion of the Ebro west of the city center. The main access to the site within the Ranillas Meander is via a bridge designed by Zaha Hadid . Formally it recalls the waves of moving water, ...

Espacio Goya in Zaragoza, Spain by Herzog & de Meuron When reading about the Expo 2008 in Zaragoza, Spain, the long-term plans of the city stood out. Their attempts at improvements from the architectural to the urban scale -- encompassing buildings, landscapes and infrastructure -- are admirable in many ways, notably via sustainability and a strong sense of place. Hosting the Expo, typically a strain and drain on cities and countries, is seen as an opportunity for improvement to the capital of the Aragón region on many levels. One building that is part of this long-term vision is Espacio Goya of the Fundación Goya en Aragón in the central Plaza de Sitios. The project will be home to Aragón's most famous painter, Francisco Goya. Designed by the Swiss duo Herzog & de Meuron, the museum transforms the Escuela de Artes (Art School) by Félix Navarr...

Here's a few New York things of note: an exhibition, a museum, a proposal, and a look at the city in 250 years. Work AC: 49 Cities An exhibition on display at the Storefront for Art and Architecture until May 30. "49 Cities sets out to crunch the numbers of several centuries of unrealized urbanism, all the way from the Roman city to the great utopian projects of the 20th century. Through plans, sections, diagrams, charts and scale drawings, 49 cities are observed statistically and presented in an unprecedented comparative study, the result of a research project conducted over several years. Despite the fact that they never actually existed, this history of utopian urbanism provides a remarkable insight into our understanding of the contemporary metropolis." [Click the image above for a 20-page PDF sample (9+ mb) of the catalog for Work AC: 49 Cities.] Meier Model Museum Reopens to the Public Metropolis Magazine reports, "In two weeks, Richard Meier will once again ...

Agave Library , originally uploaded by !architect4! . The Agave Library in Phoenix, Arizona by Will Bruder + Partners , 2009 -- set to open this summer. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose