A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

[Aomori Nebuta House in Japan by molo design (2011) | image source ] A recent building getting a good amount of press lately is the Nebuta House in Aomori, Japan by molo design . The architects describe it as "a unique cultural building inspired by the craftsmanship and spirit of Aomori's Nebuta Festival ... a form of storytelling during which heroes, demons and animals from history and myth come to life as large-scale, paper lanterns (Nebuta) illuminated from within. The building is a house for these mythical creatures, functionally meant to share the tradition, archive the history and nurture the future of this unique cultural art form." The most notable formal aspect of the building is the wrapper of "twisted steel ribbons, each shaped to create variation: openings for light, areas of opacity, views, or opportunities for pedestrian circulation." [Aomori Nebuta House in Japan by molo design | image source ] These ribbons, what I'm c...

Norris House , originally uploaded by ken mccown . A New Norris House in Norris, Tennessee by students from the University of Tennessee , 2011. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Fabricating Architecture: Selected Readings in Digital Design and Manufacturing edited by Robert Corser, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2010. Paperback, 224 pages. ( Amazon ) A recent issue of the New York Observer covered , of all things, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture’s Teachers Seminar 2011 , held last month at the New School in New York City. With the seminar's theme of "Peformative Practice," ASCA argues that, "The shift from tools to systems heralds the emergence of complex performance problems—active glass walls and self-powered buildings—that demand hybrid responses." SHoP Architects ' Gregg Pasquarelli, the star of the Observer article and the keynote speaker at the conference, is quoted in Jonathan Liu's article as saying, "It’s about grabbing those territories back that have systematically been given away by our profession over the past 30 years. For us, that is the core of performa...

Here are a few videos that recently landed in my inbox. A mini-documentary on Seattle Modern architects Build LLC by FRANK : Genre de Vie , an in-progress project -- currently seeking funds -- about "the relationship between man and their living environment, the city, with the bicycle as the discovering function.": Genre de Vie from Photo Booth Works on Vimeo . Bartlett School of Architecture's Year 1 2011 final project (see also 2010 and 2009 ):

The Green Studio Handbook, Second Edition: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design by Alison Kwok and Walter Grondzik, published by Architectural Press, 2011. Paperback, 424 pages. ( Amazon ) The green building trend is undeniable. The decision to undertake a green building at the start of a project is more and more common, as clients embrace the movement towards sustainability, as users demand more responsible buildings, as green ratings systems like LEED are adopted by local governments and required for certain buildings, and as architects are more proficient in guiding highly specialized teams towards the goal of a green building. The last is happening through programs like LEED and the USGBC, through the AIA's efforts, within in schools of architecture, and in media coverage of green buildings. While many efforts fall short of being truly sustainable (broader and more long-term than "green building"), most architects will contend that is t...

Milanofiori in Assago, Milan, Itlay by OBR, 2010 The following text and images are courtesy OBR . The Milanofiori housing complex is part of the master plan by Erick van Egeraat characterized by a series of functions (offices, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, leisure, residences) that together define a cluster whose elements appear to follow the characteristics of the surrounding landscape, creating a public park as the extension of the existing forest. The design seeks the symbiosis between architecture and landscape, so that the synthesis of artificial and natural elements could define the quality of living and the sense of belonging by the inhabitants. The interface between the building and the garden becomes the field where interaction between man and environment takes place. This interface is defined by the "C" form of the complex which encompasses the public park, and by the porosity from interior to exterior that characterizes all 107 apartments. The two facades a...

Below are some photos of Zaha Hadid Une Architecture at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France. The exhibition (on display until October 30, 2011) is inside the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion designed by Hadid, which toured New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, starting in 2008, and is permanently installed in the plaza in front of Jean Nouvel 's 1998 building . Photographs are by Simon Dubreuil . Video from imarabe.org : To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

After compiling the list of the 66 Most Popular Architecture Websites -- since added in updated form to the sidebar near right -- I installed Alexa's status bar in my browser, which shows a website's traffic rank and a graph of its six-month trend. My browsing has been altered slightly through its presence, by being made aware of this ranking for each site I visit. Some web pages that I think are popular don't turn out to be, clocking in somewhere in the millions (remember Google is #1). Others that I find myself on for some reason turn out to be in the top 1,000, yet I never knew they existed before my visit. Of course, this ranking is only one indicator of popularity, and it is constantly changing, but it's still interesting to gauge websites with it. So I started paying attention to the websites of architects' web pages, most of which are also up there in the millions. I wondered if any are in the top one million sites on the internet. Here is the list of the...

Below are some photos I took of the recently opened Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center in New York City by the Rockwell Group . It is part of the redevelopment of the 16-acre Lincoln Center campus and is on West 65th Street below the Illumination Lawn by Diller Scofidio + Renfro . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Thanks to Duccio Malagamba Architectural Photography for sending me the below photos of the City of Culture of Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain by Eisenman Architects . Photograph by Duccio Malagamba Architectural Photography Last week I found a used copy of Eleven Authors in Search of a Building . The building that K. Michael Hays, Henry N. Cobb, Sarah Whiting, Sanford Kwinter, Jeffrey Kipnis and others are "searching for" is the Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati, designed by Peter Eisenman. (Many of the same gathered at the building for a special taping of Charlie Rose on the building's significance and the future of architecture in America.) The building was completed in 1996, the year I graduated from undergraduate architecture school. The design was a big deal in those years; it was featured in the 1991 Venice Biennale, alongside Frank Gehry's design for the Walt Disney Concert Hall; it was an early and inf...

The following text and images are courtesy the City Leaks Team for their Temporary Playground for Urban Dwellers (PlayMobil) in Drewery Alley, CBD Melbourne, Australia. Thanks to Martin for sending me the information and making me aware of the project. PlayMo is an urban intervention by the platform City Leaks. We seek to inspire urban dwellers to explore moments, spaces and places where one can deposit themselves. The challenge is to reconsider how we inhabit and identify ourselves in the cities. City Leaks acts as a hub for like minded people to address, share and realize ideas. PlayMo was born from the intention of inventing a space that turns into a place where people meet, spend time and play. Its name comes from “playmobil”, a Lego styled child’s creative play toy. Using Milk Crates was like playing with big Lego pieces. Milk Crates are a fantastic material for many reasons; they are structural, light, modular and they have an iconic role in Melbourne’s cafe image and lane...

Density Is Home: Housing by a+t Research Group by Aurora Fernández Per, Javier Mozas and Javier Arpa, published by  a+t , 2011. Paperback, 400 pages. ( Amazon ) The latest in a+t's Density Series -- following Density , Density Projects , DBOOK ,  HoCo , and NEXT -- extends the collection of remarkable collective housing, this time focusing on the individual units, the context, and the subjectivity that links the two. The editors want to focus on dwellings that are desirable, like the Ernesto N. Rogers quote in their introduction: "A house is not a house if it does not contain a corner to read poetry...I want a house which resembles me (the best of me): a house which resembles my humanity." Architects should be the best people to create desirable homes in buildings with ten or even a hundred or more other apartments, yet this happens only when they go beyond the developer's requirements, a tricky proposition. An ideal urban home should give the res...

285 Montevideo in Belo Horizonte, Brazil by Vazio S/A Arquitetura e Urbanismo, 2011 Since 2006 the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects has held a biannual juried portfolio competition "to recognize and promote new, innovative and emerging architecture firms within New York City." New Practices New York (NPNY) exhibitions are now accompanied by New Practices São Paulo (NPSP), which recognizes architects in that Brazilian city "that have undertaken unique and commendable strategies – both in the projects they undertake and the practices they have established." One of the seven winning architects is Vazio S/A Arquitetura e Urbanismo , who are actually located in Belo Horizonte. In an upper-middle-class section of the same city they inserted an apartment building into a narrow site (12x40 meters; 40x130 feet) surrounded by other residential buildings. The long elevations face east and west, with living spaces and bedrooms facing the ...