A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

St. Louis Architecture: Three Centuries of Classic Design by Robert Sharoff and William Zbaren, published by  Images Publishing , 2011. Hardcover, 134 pages. ( Amazon ) American City is a book series created by architectural photographer William Zbaren and journalist Robert Sharoff. They describe the series, which started with Detroit in 2005 , as "about Classical courthouses, Romanesque train stations, Art Deco office buildings, Mid-Century schools, Modern museums and the occasional geodesic dome." This broad range of styles and typologies clearly indicates that the books span long time periods, not just focusing on the old or the new. Detroit Architecture covered significant architecture produced between 1845-2005, and its follow-up on St. Louis starts with the Old Courthouse from 1864 and ends, 50 buildings later, with a 2010 plaza by Maya Lin. Forthcoming are books on Chicago and Savannah, but it's interesting to note that the first two titles foc...

Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center in Ithaca, New York by Baird Sampson Neuert Architects, 2011 Cornell Plantations is, as the name indicates, part of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. It consists of a dozen themed gardens in its 25-acre botanical garden and specialty gardens, collections of trees and shrubs in a 150-acre arboretum, and 4,000 acres of natural areas, consisting of "ecologically important sites on and off campus." At the heart of Cornell Planatations is the Botanical Garden , located east of the school's main quads and south of Fall Creek's Beebe Lake . Recently added to the garden is the Brian C. Nevin Welcome Center designed by Toronto-based Baird Sampson Neuert Architects . Just as Cornell University is adding buildings to its campus (see my recent "half dose" on OMA's Milstein Hall ), Cornell Plantations also underwent building renovation and new construction projects, what they call "Plantation Transformations....

[Photograph copyright Javier Azurmendi | Click images for larger views.] This renovated Concrete Factory in east-northeast Madrid is in a location increasingly surrounded by office buildings. Rather than move the working factory, the owners enlisted Lorenzo Alonso Arquitectos (Lorenzo Alonso, Jose Luis Cerezo, Enrique García) to help integrate the industrial building into its changing context. [Photograph copyright Javier Azurmendi] At its most basic level, the factory shifted from a surface-collection system to a silo-based system; or to put it another way, from horizontal to vertical, from suburban to urban in form and character. By keeping the factory in its current location, truck trips are reduced for construction projects in the city, relative to moving the factory further afield. Truck trips are also reduced from the increased storage capacity of the silos. Another benefit of the silo system, combined with the wrapper designed by the architects, is a reduction in dust emission...

amsterdam mediamatic supermarkt 01 2002 verburg t_hoogendijk r (rapenburg) , originally uploaded by Klaas5 . A Markt in Amsterdam, Netherlands by Verburg Hoogendijk Architects ( VHArch ), 2000. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

When I was putting together my review of Michael Sorkin's latest last week, I browsed publisher Verso's web page. One thing that stood out in their redesigned site, which makes the covers more prominent, is the Radical Thinkers series, especially the covers of the last three sets; a smattering is shown here. I like that they opt for simplicity and lots of white space over designs that might be more, well, radical. As well, each shape, form, or few lines relates to the book, title, or author in some way; they are not arbitrary. When an overload of information prevails on most surfaces, paper or screen, these quiet designs speak to a need to channel the rest out and focus on the ideas within. In this regard, these covers might just be radical after all. On a related note, see my blog post on Bruce Mau's covers for Zone Books.

Raif Dinçkök Yalova Cultural Center (EEA) , originally uploaded by Burçin YILDIRIM . Raif Dinçkök Yalova Cultural Center in Yalova, Turkey by Emre Arolat Architects , 2011. The building is one of eleven projects in Turkey shortlisted for the 2011 WAF Awards . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

DASH - Delft Architectural Studies on Housing edited by Lara Schrijver, Elain Harwood, Dirk van den Heuvel, Pierijn van der Putt, Dick van Gameren, Christopher Woodward, published by  NAi Publishers , in association with Delft University of Technology, 2011. ( Amazon ) The Architect's Newspaper just published my review of DASH in their October 19 East Coast Edition. The review looks at the periodical in general but focuses on the fifth and most recent issue, The Urban Enclave . The beginning of the review is below, but for the rest head over to Archpaper . In the introduction to the inaugural issue of the journal DASH – Delft Architectural Studies on Housing , the editors assert that “the Netherlands has built up a housing tradition that is renowned throughout the world.” I would definitely agree with this statement, having worked on multi-family residential projects spanning from the American Midwest to Asia where modern and contemporary Dutch precedents were mined for ...

A comment by Ken Lee on a " Today's archidose" post with his photos of Toyo Ito's Ken Iwata Mother and Child Museum in Imabari City, Ehime, Japan tipped readers off to a nearby museum by the same architect. The Toyo Ito Museum of Architecture (no joke) consists of a Steel Hut and a Silver Hut; the former is made up of steel panels of geometric shapes perched on a concrete base: Seeing the above, I immediately thought of something I'd seen for the first time and photographed just a week earlier: St. George's Play Yard is adjacent to St. George's Episcopal Church on East 16th Street, only a half block from Stuyvesant Square in the Gramercy Park area. It is also next door to the Jack and Jill School and the Friends Seminary School . The play yard is striking for being the antithesis of contemporary safety-first playgrounds: it is steel instead of plastic, angular instead of soft, muted instead of colorful, and so forth. Formally the play yard ...

On Saturday I'll again be conducting the tour that I did about a week ago as part of OHNY . But this time it will be backwards, meaning it will start at Union Square Park and snake its way up towards Madison Square Park, ending at Van Alen Books . Details from the Van Alen Institute events page are below ($5 suggested donation); be sure to RSVP for the tour if you're interested. The bookstore also has a lot of events happening this week, including a brown bag lunch with John Tauranac ( New York from the Air ), Nicholas de Monchaux ( Spacesuit ), and Thom Mayne ( Combinatory Urbanism ). Saturday, October 29 2:00-4:00 p.m. John Hill Contemporary Architecture Walking Tour The last decade's building boom in New York City gave rise to a host of new and cutting-edge residential, corporate, institutional, academic, and commercial structures designed by big names and up-and-comers alike. This walking tour, starting at the northeast corner of Union Square Park, next t...

All Over the Map: Writing on Building and Cities by Michael Sorkin, published by  Verso Books , 2011. Hardcover, 320 pages. ( Amazon ) In 1991 Verso released Exquisite Corpse , a collection of essays by Michael Sorkin , who was architecture critic at the New York City alternative weekly Village Voice from 1978-1988. That collection consisted mainly of Sorkin's Voice pieces, and it introduced his biting critiques -- from Philip Johnson and Disneyfication to any part of the architectural status quo -- to a larger audience. If anything, the book established Sorkin as a strong voice for the city, democracy, and architectural freedom. The book's name is taken from the Surrealist game that results in a random composition created by numerous hands, what Sorkin likens to city-building. This fact became more apparent to me when I attended the Urban Design program at City College under Sorkin, where our studio created an exquisite corpse of a city in model form, somethi...

Arctic Food Network in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada by Lateral Office / InfraNet Lab, 2011 Recently Lateral Office / InfraNet Lab was announced as recipient of the Gold Award for the 2011 North America Regional Holcim Awards for their Regional Food-Gathering Nodes and Logistics Network in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada. This is the third annual competition for sustainable projects and visions run by the Holcim Foundation , which "aims to build awareness of the importance of sustainable construction among professionals and the public." For the 2011 Awards over 6,000 sustainable construction projects were submitted for all five regions, though the nine-member jury for the North American Awards had to wade through only 229 entries. The Silver Award went to Swift Lee Office for a Zero Net Energy School in Los Angeles, and the Bronze Award was given to Julie Snow Architects for an Energy and Water Efficient Border Control Station in Van Buren, Maine. The project by Lateral O...

In 2001 a superstar jury comprised of James Polshek (chair), Kenneth Frampton, Toshiko Mori, Carmé Piños, Terence Riley, and Heinz Tesar unanimously chose Steven Holl Architects for the design of the Cornell College of Architecture, Art and Planning's ( AAP ) Milstein Hall, which was set to replace Rand Hall on the Ithaca, New York campus. Holl beat finalists Morphosis, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and Peter Zumthor with a seven-story cube-shaped building primarily clad in glass to highlight the views of Fall Creek Gorge. Yet the following year Holl and Cornell parted ways when they could not "[come] to an agreement on the program, budget and design of the project." This situation also stemmed from the fact the independent jury was not familiar with the Cornell campus and in response a group of alumni formed the Cornell Alumni Committee for an Intelligent Solution to a New Architecture School Building, criticizing the scheme for its location and design. I...

Art and About, Sydney, 2011 - Guerilla knitting. By Magda Sayeg/ in Sussex Lane. , originally uploaded by lindadrayton . "Guerrila Knitting" at Sussex Lane in Sydney, Australia by Magda Sayeg , as part of Art & About Syndey , 2011. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Architects' Sketchbooks by Will Jones, published by Metropolis Books , 2011. Hardcover, 352 pages. ( Amazon ) This fall I finally took the plunge and started teaching. In my first semester two classes are on my plate: a second-year design studio and a first-year "visualization" lab, aka drawing. In regards to the second, I'm glad to know of and be part of the continuing emphasis on hand-drawing (hard-line and free-hand) as a way of documenting and understanding architecture. Computer renderings may be the focus of both student and professional presentations, be they competitions or commissions, but one does not leap directly into computer modeling and rendering without learning through the process of drawing. There is still something to be said for the link between the brain and the hand with the pen or pencil as a tool. Yes, the computer is a tool, but in hardly the same way; its abstraction divorces certain levels of understanding that come when putting drawing...

Here are some photos of the TWA Flight Center (aka TWA Terminal ) at JFK Airport by Eero Saarinen, 1962. Photographs are by Bryan Kelley and were taken during an OHNY tour of the building led by restoration architects Beyer Blinder Belle . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose