A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York by Suleiman Osman, published by  Oxford University Press , 2011. Hardcover, 360 pages. ( Amazon ) The first Historic District created by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was not Greenwich Village or another section of Manhattan, it was Brooklyn Heights, designated in 1965. Districts in nearby Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Park Slope followed in the ensuing years, helping to cement a low-scale urban fabric marked by residential brownstones. But the history of these places, now common names but hardly well-defined neighborhoods in the middle of the 20th century, is more complicated than these designations may attest. Moreover this history unfolds in the interactions between gentrification, grass-roots politics, urban renewal, and "a new romantic urban ideal" shared by middle-class people moving to the area. This book by Ge...

Rajel Mikveh in Mexico City, Mexico by Pascal Arquitectos, 2010. The following text and images are courtesy Pascal Arquitectos . The Mikveh is the ritual bath of purification in the Jewish religion. It is possible diving in fresh spring water, or in a place specially dedicated to it, fed by rainwater that must be collected, stored and communicated to the vessel that is called a Mikve. All this must be made under a very strict set of rules related to the degree of water purity. These rules also include the use of materials, architectural measures and water treatment. The Mikveh is mostly used by women once a month, and for the brides to be, for conversions and certain holidays. It is known to represent the womb, so when a person enters the pool it's like to return to it, emberging as if reborn. In this way, you get a totally new and purified condition. This project has a special meaning for us. Twenty years ago we designed the Rajel Mikveh. It was the first "designed...

Museu da Geira , originally uploaded by TheManWhoPlantedTrees . Museum of Geira in Portugal's Peneda-Gerês National Park by Carvalho Araújo , 2006. See more on the project at Europaconcorsi . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Graphic design is very important for the layout of architecture books, probably more than any other subject. The combination of text, photos, drawings, and other illustrations requires solid understanding and creativity to convey the various types of information to the reader. Architecture books are not easily translated to ebook formats, since the appearance of information on a page is extremely important: images, different fonts, white space, the flow of information, and various other considerations point to static page layouts that are not yet translatable to electronic formats (outside straight PDFs) incorporating user-defined fonts, sizes, and so forth. Needless to say, the graphic designer's role is crucial. Yet all too often they are unacknowledged beyond the copyright page and the author's thank you in their acknowledgments. To help remedy this deficiency, stemming from my own appreciation of good design in architecture books, I've collected a list of graphic desi...

The relationships between automobiles and architecture are myriad: I've explored how architecture is used in car advertisements and how architects take an active role in the same ; cars have long been an influence on architects (think Le Corbusier); and companies like BMW have hired architects (Zaha Hadid and Coop Himmelb(l)au) to design important buildings for them. But recently car makers have joined with museums and other institutions to take on more advisorial roles in the realms of art, architecture, and urbanism. This may not be a recent phenomenom, but I'm struck by the number of initiatives being funded by automobile manufacturers. These include: » BMW Guggenheim Lab » It "will address issues confronting urban life through free programs and public participation." » Audi Urban Future Initiative » It "aims to establish a dialog on the synergy of mobility, architecture and urban development by means of a view into the future." » VW-MoMA-MoMA PS1 ...

Iglesia de Santa Mónica in Madrid, Spain by Vicens + Ramos , photographed by Wotjek Gurak . Outside: And inside: To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space edited by Mark Shepard, published by  The MIT Press , 2011. Paperback, 232 pages. ( Amazon ) In 2009 the Architectural League of New York held the exhibition Towards the Sentient City , which asserted that "a vast and mostly invisible layer of technology is being embedded into the world around us...[so] buildings and cities are being transformed, imbued with the capacity to sense, record, process, transmit, and respond to information and activity taking place within and around them." The exhibition consisted of five commissions selected and developed for the exhibition, and they make up the majority of this book. In the gallery the projects were most effective when their physicality exuded the technology and ideas behind them. So the Too Smart Trashcan and Bench made more of an impression than the Breakout! office, but in book form each project is able to convey the pr...

La Cabanya Nursery School in Torelló, Spain by SAU Taller d'arquitectura, 2010 On the eastern edge of Torelló, Spain sits the La Cabanya Nursery School, which shares its name with an adjacent park of the same name. Designed by SAU Taller d'arquitectura , the school is a triangular building -- more accurately, one could say it is three buildings in a triangular arrangement, all joined by a skylit space in the center. This triangular space links the program pieces that are laid out in rectangular bars, but it also serves as an extension of the dining area and a performance hall. The three edges of the larger triangle contain the classrooms (overlooking the park to the south), management and services (also the entry on the north edge), and vertical circulation (on the main road to the east). The last contains a series of ramps that serve the upper floor of the second, while also providing a second access from the street. Therefore this primarily solid section of the bui...

Today's CBS Sunday Morning was the annual "Design Issue," which spotlighted "innovative and iconic design in architecture, fashion, decorative arts and more." Here are some highlights and commentary. Charles Osgood hosted the episode from Columbus, Indiana , a town known for its density of 20th-century modern architecture by well known architects: Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Harry Weese, I.M. Pei, Kevin Roche, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Richard Meier, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, Gwathmey Siegel. Recently Eero Saarinen's Miller House opened to the public , so Osgood spent most of the time inside it and on the Dan Kiley-designed grounds. When I lived in Chicago I made a day trip to Columbus, and while I was impressed by some of the buildings I yearned for something bigger than the sum of their parts. The buildings basically acted as standalone objects, failing to interact with each other in an attempt at a great urban assemblage. In this sense the landscape became v...

Magazine on Urbanism #14: Editing Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , April 2011 Paperback, 128 pages Currently on display at the New Museum in New York City is Cronocaos , an exhibition by OMA/Rem Koolhaas that premiered at the Venice Biennale last year. The enigmatically titled show is focused on preservation, which Koolhaas and gang assert "architects...have been oblivious or hostile to." From their particular point of view this is the case, but for many architects preservation is not so foreign a consideration. Nevertheless OMA/Koolhaas aim to articulate a theory to "negotiate the coexistence of radical change and radical stasis that is our future," a commendable effort that may have the effect of making preservation cool. This latest issue of MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) apperars to be born from the idea of the exhibition. It not only features an interview/visual essay on Cronocaos, but its theme, "Editing Urbanism," asks contributors to address...

The Royal Observatory , originally uploaded by fairminer . The Peter Harrison Planetarium at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, England by Allies and Morrison Architects , 2007. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Brian Linder's The Value of Architecture lists a a house in Venice, California designed by Austrian architects Coop Himmelb(l)au . The asking price for the 2,271-sf house, what Linder calls "the first project built by the Austrian team in the United States," is just under $2.6 million. I'm a fan of the Viennese duo, but this house isn't one I'm familiar. Most likely this stems from the fact it was never widely published; it's not in either of the monographs I have on their architecture, and it's not found on their web page. According to a fairly recent Architectural Review article by Michael Webb (text but no pictures here ), the 1995 project was a spec house completed after their widely published Open House failed to materialize. The Webb article further indicates that the single-family house, originally a duplex and subsequently owned by interior designer Virginia Moede, was "enhanced" by architect Michael Hricak and contractor Rola...

Metropol Parasol, Sevilha, Espanha , originally uploaded by pedro kok . The Metropol Parasol in Seville, Spain by J. Mayer H. , 2011. Be sure to check out the special feature on the urban space project in Domus 947 (May 2011), with an article and video both including visual contributions by Pedro Kok . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Architecture in Times of Need: Make It Right - Rebuilding New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward edited by Kristin Fieriess with contributions by Brad Pitt, published by  Prestel , 2009. Paperback, 488 pages. ( Amazon ) As a souvenir of my recent visit to New Orleans for the AIA National Convention I picked up a copy of this book on Make It Right 's (MIR) rebuilding in the Lower Ninth Ward. MIR is known far and wide because it was started and promoted by Brad Pitt, A-list actor, one half of Brangelina , and architecture aficionado. But Pitt's efforts with MIR is hardly a celebrity throwing money and pink houses at a place in order to realize some cutting edge architecture, and those inclined to think so might want to take a look at the thorough documentation of the project as found in this book. Sure, the Brad Pitt adoration found throughout the book can be a put-off at times, but for the most part the text, images, and the project itself focuses on the families of ...