A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

'Tis the season for, among other things, giving. One organization worthy of some year-end loosening of purse-strings is Architecture for Humanity , who are "building a more sustainable future using the power of design." What Do Yo See doesn't just ask for money, it asks people to describe a vision for their own community. Check it out... ...and then DONATE .

Building: Louis I. Kahn at Roosevelt Island by Barney Kulok, published by Aperture, 2012. Hardcover, 80 pages. ( Amazon ) Last month the FDR Four Freedoms Park finally opened, close to 40 years after Louis I. Kahn's death, at which time he had completed most of the design. Alongside the pomp surrounding the opening came a number of reviews (all very positive) and lots of photos along the lines of my two batches . While photos focusing on the completed park and memorial are important, documentation of the design's realization is also valuable. For that we can thank photographer Barney Kulok , who was given access to the construction site about a year ago to document the construction. What I really like about the 49 black-and-white plates collected in this handsome book is the way the construction is not documented through wide-frame images capturing large swaths of the place, but through small-scale details that border on painterly abstractions. This is not a book like...

In 2011 I served on the jury for the eVolo Skyscraper Competition , an experience I recounted about a year ago in a review of the massive eVolo Skyscraper book . One thing in particular that I mentioned then was "the visual darkness of the entries, the apparent gloom that seems to accompany thinking about the future." Upon receiving the eVolo Skyscraper Competition Poster , which features stamp-sized renderings of over 600 entries, I had the same thought. But actually looking at the front and back of the whole poster, below, it seems that maybe lightness is more prevalent than darkness; an optimistic turn in one year? [eVolo 2012 Skyscraper Competition Poster | image source ] While I attributed the darkness in eVolo entries to dystopian visions of the future where skyscrapers remedied the environmental ills we created, a similar darkness is found in some of the winners and finalists for the 2012 Ken Roberts Memorial Delineation Competition , or KRob for short. [Winn...

Back in April I featured sLAB Costa Rica , a design-build project of NYIT that aims to build a communal recycling center in Nosara on the country's Pacific coast. Their initial Kickstarter campaign was successful, allowing students to travel over the summer to help in the project's construction. But, as professor Tobias Holler states on their new Kickstarter page , "the project is far from completed, and much work remains to be done before the building is ready to help with the local waste management problem." Holler and his students are hoping to return between semesters in January 2013 to continue volunteering on the construction site. Check out the above video for more on the project, and please visit the sLAB Costa Rica Part 2 Kickstarter page for even more information and to donate before the December 13 deadline for this worthy project.

Architecture: From Commission to Construction by Jennifer Hudson, published by  Laurence King Publishers , 2012. Paperback, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) Books that collect works of contemporary architecture tend to present them in some fairly typical ways, particularly by building typology (houses, museums, public space, etc.) and as finished projects with highly polished photography. The former trait allows architects to examine precedents when pursuing a particular project, and the latter paints a building in as positive light as possible, for both other architects and potential clients. But what about the process of a project? Isn't that as important as the "final" building? Of course it is, given that the building is the result of successive steps, from concept design to construction documents to the actual construction, and all the steps in between. So it's refreshing to see Jennifer Hudson's survey of 25 buildings, of varying typologies, that trace...

Écomusée du Pays de Rennes in Rennes, France, by Guinée*Potin, 2010 One of the projects included in the book reviewed this week, Architecture: From Commission to Construction , is the Écomusée du Pays de Rennes , designed by Nantes-based architects Guinée*Potin from a 2006 international competition. The book's author Jennifer Hudson describes the broader écomusée as "a new idea for the holistic interpretation of cultural customs and traditions, which allows communities to preserve, interpret and manage their heritage for a sustainable development." At Rennes, the focus is on five centuries of agriculture and rural life in Brittany in northwest France. For a decade or so the museum had experienced steadily increasing attendance, but after the donation of some ancient vernacular furniture in 2000 it became clear that the growth also had to happen physically. Guinée*Potin's competition-winning design reuses a 1990s gable building for offices and other service...

Here are a few photos of Condominio P in Cagliari, Italy, by C+C04 Studio (2009). Photographs are by Simone Utzeri . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Designers & Books has posted my list of notable books for 2012 . I selected ten titles published this year and wrote about similarities between some of them in my introduction. Below is a teaser, but click the image to see the rest of my list. The entire Notable Books 2012 list, with contributions by me and many others, can be found here .

Each of these three books collects a number of architecture projects—from a half dozen to over 50—that fit into particular typologies. One looks at follies, which one can argue are bound together through a certain purposelessness; another examines arts institutions; and the third presents wineries. While these three types don't have an immediate relationship to each other in terms of architectural program or function, they share an emphasis on how buildings fit into landscapes, be they relatively wild, designed, or cultivated. It would be difficult to consider follies that do not have a particular relationship to nature, for example, or near impossible to design a winery that does not have both a functional and aesthetic relationship to the acres of grapes feeding the process. What is also shared in these three books is a dependance on tourism. It is most explicit in  White Cube, Green Maze , given that many of the arts institutions featured in the book are intended to be cultural ...

Endesa Pavilion in Barcelona, Spain, by IaaC, 2011 The following text and images are courtesy Institute for advanced architecture in Catalonia (IaaC). Endesa Pavilion is a self-sufficient solar prototype installed at the Marina Dock, within the framework of the International BCN Smart City Congress. Over a period of one year it will be used as control room for monitoring and testing several projects related to intelligent power management. The pavilion is actually the prototype of a multi-scale construction system—a façade composed by modular components, like solar brick, that respond to photovoltaic gaining, solar protection, insulation, ventilation, lighting...The same parametric logic adapts façade geometries to the specific environmental requirements for each point of the building. It is is a single component that integrates all levels of intelligence that the building needs. From "form follows function" (classic XX century statement) to "form follows en...

Yesterday I received a copy of the Archipendium 2012 Architecture Calendar . Yes, it's a little late in the year to receive a calendar, but I made it a "test drive" to help people decide if they want to get the 2013 edition now available. As can be seen below, it is a daily "tear-off" calendar with one building every day that is about 4.25x5.5 inches (11x14 cm), with a hole near the top for mounting on a wall. [Archipendium 2012 Calendar | All photos by archidose] My first thought after taking a quick glance at the calendar was, "what do I do with the sheets after tearing them off?" Throwing them away—I mean recycling them—is certainly an option, but if saving them is more valuable, both environmentally and in terms of keeping an archive of the daily buildings, then the question is how to save them. I decided to build a base for the calendar, one side for the torn-off sheets and one side for the calendar; I used a screw post with the latter, to h...

Here are a couple photos of Bella Sky Comwell Hotel in Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark by 3XN Architects (2011). Photographs are by trevor.patt . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

On Tuesday evening I attended the lecture for the 2012 World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize , given to the Architectural Consortium for Hizuchi Elementary School for their restoration of Hizuchi Elementary School in Hizuchi, Yawatahama City, Ehime Prefecture, on Shikoku Island, Japan. I had seen the press release last month, as well as a couple photos there and picked up on the Internet, but Tuesday night at MoMA was my first in-depth look at a building that was also a discovery for the jurors. [Veranda of East and Middle Building | © Architectural Institute of Japan Shikoku Chapter/Photographer KITAMURA Toru] The opening remarks of jury chairman Barry Bergdoll positioned the 2012 award in some contrast to the previous two recipients: Bierman Henket's and Wessel de Jonge's restoration of the Zonnestraal Sanatorium in Hilversum, the Netherlands (awarded 2010); and Brenne Gesellschaft von Architekten's restoration of the former ADGB Trade Union School in Bernau...