A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

In one week I'll be resuming the walking tours with the Van Alen Institute that we had organized together last fall . Three different tours will be taking place between April 7 and May 26, all starting at Van Alen Books : One heads north to Bryant Park, one heads west to the High Line, and one heads south to Union Square; all are about two miles and take 2-3 hours. The initial 2012 tour next weekend meanders up Broadway, Madison, and Park Avenue to 42nd Street and Bryant Park. Head to Van Alen's event page or Facebook for more information. Tours are $15 General / $10 for Van Alen members. Send an email to rsvp@vanalen.org to reserve spot.

A little over a year ago I blogged about a scene in CBS's The Good Wife in which a clip from Groundhog Day was inserted amongst original footage for the show. That Good Wife scene takes place somewhere within or near Chicago, but the Groundhog Day scene is set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Yet in reality the rest of the former's scene was actually shot in New York City (it looks like Queens, but I'm not sure), and the latter was actually filmed in Woodstock, Illinois, closer to the fiction of Good Wife than where the TV show is actually made. In both cases the filmed reality is being passed off as somewhere else. This isn't surprising to anybody who knows how TV and film or made, or to people who pay even a little bit of attention to moving images, but it still interests me. [ The Good Wife still | image source , @ 35m08s] Some more of The Good Wife passing off one place for another came in Sunday's show, " Blue Ribbon Panel ." Kalinda (left ...

Yesterday Designers & Books posted an Author Q&A with me about my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture . Previously D&B featured my book as part of their Notable Books of 2011 , selected by New York Magazine 's Justin Davidson. In addition to some insight on making the book, upcoming projects, and other things, check out the Q&A to see some pages from the book.

42nd Street , originally uploaded by Wojtek Gurak . Headquarters for 42nd Street -- a youth mental health charity -- in Manchester, England by Maurice Shapero , 2012. Read and see more about the project at Manchester Confidential . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Today Google celebrates Mies van der Rohe on what would be his 126th birthday with a doodle melding the Google name and Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Not surprisingly, the curves of each letter are made orthogonal, squeezed into the gridded framework of the building. I could see other Mies projects working just as well -- the Farnsworth House , the Seagram Building , even the recently restored Tugendhat Villa -- but I think Google did a good job with Crown Hall. I especially like the way the letters respond to the transparency of the top half and the frosted area below it.

Inspiration and Process in Architecture - Bolles+Wilson , published by  Moleskine , 2011. Hardcover, 144 pages. ( Amazon ) Like many architects, I have a lot of Moleskine sketchbooks. I can't remember when I purchased the first one, but since then I've received a number of them as gifts, and purchased planners, ruled notebooks, city notebooks, and other variations on their basic theme of quality paper, sturdy binding, and simple cover. Recently the Italian company added a number of other products, including books , to their now expansive catalog. A number of the books focus on how architects draw. Four of them fall under the "Inspiration and Process in Architecture" rubric: Giancarlo De Carlo, Zaha Hadid, Alberto Kalach, and this one on Bolles+Wilson. While the title refers to the name of the German office, just about all of the sketches and other drawings that fill the pages of the book are by Peter Wilson. In an interview that starts the book Wi...

Coverage of Archaeological Ruins of the Abbey of St. Maurice in St. Maurice, Switzerland by Savioz Fabrizze Architectes, 2010 In architecture an interstitial space can be simply defined as the space between two objects, be they buildings, walls, or a floor and a roof. Of course this doesn't get at what makes an interstitial space different than any other space, or what makes them special. I'd offer that an interstitial space is one that is bound by something new opposite something old, and often fairly narrow or stretched in shape. Most that come to mind are formed by walls, such as gaps between a new construction and an old neighbor, but interstitial spaces that result from horizontal planes old and new are quite special, as this new Coverage of Archaeological Ruins of the Abbey of St. Maurice by Savioz Fabrizze Architectes attests. One that immediately springs to mind is Bernard Tschumi's Le Fresnoy Art Center in Tourcoing, France. In that mid-1990s proj...

IMG_6219-Edit.jpg , originally uploaded by Brandon Shigeta . Claremont University Consortium in Claremont, California by LTL Architects , 2011. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Last night I attended the third lecture (of four) in the Architectural League's 2012 Emerging Voices , with presentations by Dwayne Oyler and Jenny Wu of Oyler Wu Collaborative (Los Angeles), and Jinhee Park and John Hong of SsD (New York, Boston, Seoul). The event was held in the Frederick P. Rose Auditorium in the basement of The Cooper Union's 41 Cooper Square, designed by Morphosis with local architect Gruzen Samton. Oyler and Wu's talk was rather refreshing, namely in explaining their decision not to do something new with each project and their reliance on hand drawing and modeling in association with computer methods. Focusing on the former, four "iterative" projects allowed the duo to explore the design and fabrication (they have built all of their designs to date) of aluminum tube structures. Investigations via an installation , a storefront exhibition space , and a temporary stair culminated in last year's reALIze piece carried out with ar...

Anybody recognize this cartoon capture? Of course it's from 2004's The Legend of Frosty the Snowman , "told and sung by Burt Reynolds." The above character, pictured at the end of the cartoon, is Sara Simple, one of the kids of Evergreen, where "magic, silliness, and nonsense of all kinds are strictly against the rules." Earlier she asserts to her mom, "I don’t want to be a princess—I want to be an urban planner!" Obscure, indeed.

Here are a couple projects in wood. First, Schreinerei Feuerstein in Oberstaufen, Germany by Architekten.3P , 2007. Photographs are by Frank Stahl . And second, the Seaford Life Saving Club in Seaford, Victoria, Australia by Robert Simeoni Architects, 2008. Photographs are by Christopher Brown . For more information on the building visit Australian Design Review . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Here is one of my occasional posts catching up on some of the information that trickles -- and sometimes rushes -- into my inbox. OTTO : Like a cool Corbis, OTTO is "an architectural and design photography agency dedicated to licensing the work of preeminent architects and designers from around the world as captured by master contemporary photographers. Founded by Thea Vaughan and Bill Hannigan [formerly of Corbis], OTTO is committed to delivering images of iconic architecture and design." Some of the select photographers include Michael Moran, Peter Aaron, Richard Barnes, Scott Frances, Ty Cole, and Floto Warner. The archive is young but ever growing. Registration is free and exploring the site is easy. A simple and fast interface allows for browsing by photographer, keyword searches, or viewing individual projects. I've often received requests from stock photo sites to feature their images, but given that my blog, like most of the architectural press, highlights ind...

Michelangelo is oft quoted as saying, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." A contemporary version of this statement, applied to artist Eddy Sykes, would revise the first part to say, "Every bowling ball has an architecture book inside it..." [ S,M,L,XL | image courtesy the artist] Eddy Skyes' Trophy Series: book as object is described as: "An ongoing series of sculptures exploring the notions of trophy and information, Trophy appropriates the Brunswick 'Black Beauty' bowling ball. Each ball is meticulously hand carved into the seminal architectural 'Big game' trophy, i.e., the 'super books' of Mau, Koolhaus, Corbu etc."

Here are a few photos of the Endesa Pavilion at the Olympic Port of Barcelona, designed by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (Iaac) with the support of Endesa. The project is part of the Smart City BCN Congress , 2011. Photographs are by aitor estévez . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Five North American Architects: An Anthology by Kenneth Frampton , published by  Columbia University GSAPP / Lars Müller Publishers , 2012. Paperback, 136 pages. ( Amazon ) The architectural historian Kenneth Frampton started his tenure at Columbia University GSAPP in 1972, meaning that he has been a presence at the school for almost half of his life. To celebrate his 80th birthday, in November 2010 Frampton curated a conference at the GSAPP, Five Architects: A North American Anthology , which, like most GSAPP events, has been made into a publication. This compact book is a fine presentation of the two Canadian and three US architects that assembled two years ago -- Stanley Saitowitz , Shim-Sutcliffe , Rick Joy , Patkau Architects , Steven Holl -- but it begs the question: Do we really need a publication highlighting the work of these five esteemed architects? The 2010 celebration reads like most educational events that stretch over a day: coffee, welcome by t...

La Lira in Ripoll, Spain by RCR Arquitectes / Joan Puigcorbé, 2011 I'm not overly familiar with the work of Spain's RCR Arquitectes -- the firm of Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta -- but if this pedestrian bridge and public space in Ripoll is any indication, I have a new favorite architect. La Lira Theater Public Space, as the project is called in a 2008 El Croquis devoted to their work, inserts itself boldly into a gap in the Catalonian town's urban fabric, bridging the Ter River and linking to a small public space/parking lot on the east. At first glance what is striking about the intervention is the way it fills a gap with a void instead of a solid. Openings on the east and west respectively frame the town (building facades) and the river (trees and buildings on the other side). The architects basically line the space between existing buildings along the river, covering the floor, walls, and roof with Cor-ten steel, solid underfoot but spaced o...