A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here are a couple photos of the installation Bloom by Doris Sung in collaboration with Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter and Matthew Melnyk at the Materials & Applications courtyard in Los Angeles, California. The installation is on display until Spring 2012. Photographs are by Brandon Shigeta . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

A couple weeks ago I attended the Second Wave of Modernism II Conference at the Museum of Modern Art, a follow-up to the 2008 Conference held in Chicago . Presented by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF), and sponsored by Charles Luck Stone Center and Landscape Forms , the all-day event featured three panels geared around the general theme of Landscape Complexity and Transformation: Residential Transformations, Urban Renewal Re-Evaluated, Metropolitan Transformations. Given TCLF's focus on "increasing the public's awareness and understanding of the importance and irreplaceable legacy of its cultural landscapes," landscape architects, academics, and related practitioners comprised the majority of the participants, but, as will be seen, a couple architects were also thrown into the mix. Below are my quick-and-dirty, one-to-two-sentence summaries of the various contributions throughout the day. Opening Remarks: Barry Bergdoll , Chief Curator of Architecture...

My weekly page update : This week's dose features Red Stair Amphitheatre in Melbourne, Australia by Marcus O'Reilly Architects: The featured past dose is Red Light Platform in Rotterdam, Netherlands by Jasper Jägers Architecture: This week's book review is Detail in Contemporary Glass Architecture by Virginia McLeod: american-architects.com Building of the Week : Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado by Allied Works: Unrelated links will return on December 5th.

Detail in Contemporary Glass Architecture by Virginia McLeod, published by  Laurence King Publishing , 2011. Hardcover, 224 pages. ( Amazon ) Virginia McLeod continues her series of Detail in Contemporary... books (previously I reviewed ...Residential Architecture ) with a collection of 50 buildings that use glass in innovative ways. Structured into chapters by building type, the projects include the obvious -- SANAA's Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, Steven Holl's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art addition -- but also the idiosyncratic -- Cecil Balmond's Coimbra Footbridge , Carpenter Lowing Architecture's Chapel for the Salvation Army . Overall the selection is a good one, veering towards the big names but clearly illustrating the varied ways glass can be used today. Each project is presented across four pages: The first page includes descriptive text and photos; the second page features plans and sections; the third and fourth pages are reserved...

Red Stair Amphitheatre in Melbourne, Australia by Marcus O'Reilly Architects Rising from Queensbridge Square, a public space along the Southbank Promenade of the Yarra River in Melbourne, is a red stair that serves as a beacon, an amphitheater, and a place to sun, among many other purposes. Designed by Marcus O'Reilly Architects , the striking mass recalls numerous constructions, both ancient and contemporary: ziggurats with their steps and battered walls come to mind, as does the TKTS booth in Times Square in Manhattan. Whatever the associations, the color and form clearly indicate that the structure is meant to stand out in its location. Strongly oriented to the northern sun (this is Australia, remember), one important purpose of the construction can actually be found on the south. There the caps Southbank Boulevard and frames an entrance to a below-grade parking garage. Therefore the red stair makes itself known to both pedestrians traversing the promenade an...

The Van Alen Institute has posted some photos from last night's book launch at Van Alen Books for my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture . A few are below, but head over to their Facebook page to look at the gallery with more pics . [The steps -- technically an "installation" -- are perfect for a book launch.]   [VAi's Olympia Kazi asked me some questions about the book...I answered by waving my hands.]   [At one point I unrolled my "scroll" of all the buildings I considered for the book.]   [So that's what I look like from above?]

The November 28, 2011 issue of New York Magazine features my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture (published by W. W. Norton) in their " Approval Matrix ." [New York Magazine's The Approval Matrix: Week of November 28, 2011 | click image to view the full matrix | note: circle added by me, not part of original] For those not familiar with their Matrix, which is found on the last page of each issue, it highlights a variety of people, things, and happenings in a grid that veers in the X direction from Despicable to Brilliant, and in the Y direction from Lowbrow to Highbrow. The book landed in the Brilliant/Highbrow quadrant. I'll take that. (Thanks to Gareth for the heads up!)

Exclamation , originally uploaded by Mr sAg . John Rylands Library in Manchester, England by Austin-Smith:Lord , 2007. The neo-Gothic library was transformed by replacing a 1970s storage facility with a five-story extension. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

A total of 82 people submitted scores in my recent quiz to win one of two copies of the Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture . Of those scores, 34 quizzes were a perfect 10 out of 10. So the two winners, chosen at random, are Nindya Karlina and Paul Laroque. They have been notified via email and will each receive a copy of the book. Congratulation to them, and thanks to everyone for taking part in the quiz. Below are the questions and answers, with a little bit of explanation. Also, thanks to Joel B. Sanders for setting up the quiz, and to the photographers credited below -- Aaron Dougherty , Albert Vecerka , Amy Barkow , Jackie Caradonio -- for supplying me with these photos for my book and letting me feature them here. For those in New York City, a book launch is taking place tomorrow evening at Van Alen Books and a presentation will be held on December 5 -- the official release date of the book -- at McNally Jackson Books . 1. What was the original name for 8 Sp...

Centre Louis Pierquin , originally uploaded by Alexandre Prévot . Centre Louis Pierquin in Nancy, France by Agence Brunet Saunier , 2006. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

One last reminder that today is the deadline (11:59 pm, to be exact) for winning a free copy of my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture , which hits bookstores on December 5th. Published by W. W. Norton , the book features over 200 buildings completed since 2000, with a chapter looking ahead to projects on the horizon. The giveaway is structured as a quiz, ten trivia questions that will take no more than 15 minutes to answer. Of the high scores, two winners will be chosen at random and notified. Answers will be posted over the weekend. TAKE THE QUIZ And a launch party for the book will take place November 21st at 7pm at Van Alen Books , 30 W. 22nd St (ground floor btw 5th and 6th ave). Come sit on the yellow steps with a glass of wine and pick up an early copy of the book. I'll talk briefly about the process of putting this guidebook together.

Pardon the last minute notice, but here are a couple events -- a discussion and a conference -- taking place this evening and tomorrow. Urban Design Since 1945 / David Grahame Shane Thursday, November 17, 2011, 7-9pm at The Great Hall at The Cooper Union (7 East 7th Street, New York, NY) D. Grahame Shane, with panelists Carola Hein, Brian McGrath, Georgeen Theodore, and Anthony Vidler, will present and discuss the emergence of postwar urban design as a global phenomenon. The program, which will begin with a historic overview by Shane, will focus on the themes developed in his recently published Urban Design Since 1945 – A Global Perspective. By outlining the four dominant models in urban design over the last sixty years—the metropolis, the megalopolis, the fragmented metropolis, and the megacity—Shane provides a framework for analyzing the development of, and issues behind, contemporary urban form. D. Grahame Shane teaches Graduate Urban Design at Columbia Universi...

Here are some views of 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT in Tokyo, Japan by Tadao Ando , 2007. Photographs are by Nicholas Iyadurai . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper by Kate Ascher, published by Penguin, 2011. Hardcover, 208 pages. ( Amazon ) In 2005's The Works , Kate Ascher presented the "Anatomy of a City" through an abundance of explanatory diagrams, details, and other illustrations alongside her thorough yet readable text. The book described how something as complex as a city actually works by dissecting one in particular: New York City. It is an exceptional book for being both educational and beautiful, a combination that makes the information understandable for a general audience. Her follow-up, The Heights , follows the formula of its predecessor, and it can be seen to pick up where the infrastructure of the city leaves off: at its buildings, specifically skyscrapers. [Supertall building diagram from the Introduction to The Heights by Kate Ascher] While The Works used a specific metropolis to discuss cities in general, The Heights inverts that and presents general information s...

As a slight heads up, for the next few weeks this blog will alternate its (almost) daily postings with plugs for my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture , which hits bookstores on December 5th, three weeks from today. Published by W. W. Norton , the book features over 200 buildings completed since 2000, with a chapter looking ahead to projects on the horizon. First is a reminder that Friday, November 18th is the deadline for winning a free copy of the book. The giveaway is structured as a quiz, ten trivia questions that will take no more than 15 minutes to answer. Of the high scores, two winners will be chosen at random and notified. Answers will be posted over the weekend. TAKE THE QUIZ And as promised, a couple events will take place in New York City in the next few weeks. See below for more information. A launch party will take place November 21st at 7pm at Van Alen Books , 30 W. 22nd St (ground floor btw 5th and 6th ave). Come sit on the yellow steps with a...

The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture by Charles Jencks, published by  Wiley , 2011. Paperback, 272 pages. ( Amazon ) Charles Jencks is attributed with marking the death of Modernism with the precise time of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis in 1972. Yes, Jencks did say as much in his influential book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture , though he admits in his latest book on Post-Modern architecture that the time was a fabrication (to lend it a Modern precision) and that the repeated quotings turned the event into a social fact. Yet Modernism didn't so much die then as be transformed or displaced. Post-Modernism (or Postmodernism, or whatever other spelling; I'll use Jenck's preferred hyphenation here) prevailed, and architecture looked back to history and recompiled architectural elements in new and ironic ways. Or such is the oversimplified version that we learn ...