A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here are some photos of the Twelve at Hengshan (2012) in Shanghai, China, by Mario Botta Architetto , photographed by Jian Wu . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

The second biannual IDEAS CITY takes place May 1-4 on and around the Bowery. What is IDEAS CITY? Here's the official description: IDEAS CITY explores the future of cities around the globe with the belief that arts and culture are essential to the vitality of urban centers, making them better places to live, work, and play. Founded by the New Museum in 2011, IDEAS CITY is a major collaborative initiative between hundreds of arts, education, and civic organizations. This year’s theme is "Untapped Capital," with participants focused on resources that are under-recognized or underutilized in our cities. IDEAS CITY is a four-day Festival of conferences, workshops, an innovative StreetFest around the Bowery, and more than one hundred independent projects and public events that are forums for exchanging ideas, proposing solutions, and accelerating creativity. ["MirrorMirror" by Davidson Rafailidis | Image courtesy Storefront for Art and Architecture]...

On Saturday, May 4, the Graduate Program in Design and Urban Ecologies is presenting Social Justice and the City 1973-2013 , commemorating the 40th anniversary of David Harvey's seminal book of the same name. See below for an event poster and bottom for a description of the free one-day symposium. RSVP here for the event. Date: Saturday, May 4, 2013 Time: 10am-6pm Location: Parsons the New School for Design, 66 West 12th Street (A404, A407), NYC In April 1970, an essay titled “Social Processes and Spatial Form: An Analysis of the Conceptual Problems of Urban Planning,” was published in volume 25 of the journal Papers of the Regional Science Association. For this first time, this essay constructed an unexplored critique of urban disciplines vis-á-vis capitalism. The result created a dialectical theoretical framework, and forever changed the way many urban practitioners viewed their disciplinary tools and formal training. Ultimately, this heralded an ongoing formation of...

"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with two- or three-sentence first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than can find their way into reviews on my daily or weekly pages. 1: Architecture as a Design Partnership by Spector Group | Visual Profile Books Inc. | 2013 | Amazon Only one drawing is found in the pages of the Spector Group 's second monograph: a watercolor of the Parthenon done 77 years ago by Charles Spector, the founder of the firm that is now in the hands of two more generations of Spectors (soon to be three, per the foreword by Charles's architecture-school-bound great-grandson). Photographs and renderings are the means of describing the approximately 75 projects organized into four sections: architecture, interiors, master planning, and residential. Descriptions are short and to the ...

Here are some photos of the Kröller-Müller Museum (1977) in Otterlo, Netherlands, by Quist Wintermans Architekten , photographed by Klaas Vermaas . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Last May was the Going Viral panel discussion, which "explore[d] the impact that social media, technology and device culture are having on our design process, and ultimately the way we practice." This year it's Viral Voices , a continuation of last year's discussion, with many of the same "voices" (Morpholio, GSAPP, ArchDaily). Viral Voices: Global Dialogues When: Thursday, May2, 6:30-10pm Where: Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY Cost: Free ( RSVP required ) Viral Voices: Global Discussions will explore the impact that social media, technology and device culture are having on our design process, and ultimately the way we practice. How do we shape a global conversation? How are we changing the relationships between academia and the profession? What is the impact of hyper information sharing and critique? Throughout the evening, the topics of communication, research, collaboration, and data distribution will be addres...

In case you missed it last week, Christopher Gray's Streetscapes column in the New York Times used my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture as a jumping-off point for a discussion of neo-traditional architecture in NYC. " Buildings That Lie About Their Age " questions the absence of neo-trad architecture among the 200+ buildings in my book. [Screenshot from " Buildings That Lie About Their Age "] Here is a snippet from the beginning and end of Gray's article, where my book is mentioned: John Hill’s book “A Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture” is filled with examples of the crazy new forms of the last decade, like Frank Gehry’s white wind-filled “sail” on the West Side Highway in Chelsea. They are startling, creative, amusing, sometimes even hilarious. And yet, the United States is in the middle of a great revival of traditional architecture — Georgian, neo-Classical, Arts and Crafts and so forth — that is almost absent fr...

The most recent monograph—the only one, actually—on Swiss architect Peter Zumthor was released in 1998. It's so desirable that used copies are being sold on Amazon for around $1,500. A forthcoming monograph from Scheidegger and Spiess may temper the desirability of that book, since it will cover Zumthor's work from 1986-2013 (the earlier one covers 1979-1997) and will be more than twice as big (800 pages versus 318). Sure, it comes with a $250 cover price and won't be released until September, but if anybody can find me a more anticipated architecture book I'd like to know about it. Book description via Amazon : Unquestionably one of the most influential and revered contemporary architects, Peter Zumthor has approached his work with a singular clarity of vision and a strong sense of his own philosophy, both of which have earned him the admiration of his peers and the world at large. Choosing to only take on a few projects at a time and keep his studio smal...

Entre: Architecture from the Performing Arts by Carlos M. Teixeira Artifice Books on Architecture , 2012 Paperback, 384 pages The subtitle of this monograph on Brazilian architect Carlos M. Teixeira's studio Vazio S/A is very telling. Instead of "architecture for the performing arts," as might be expected, it is "architecture from the performing arts." The use of this single word indicates that Teixeira's project are inspired and influenced by dance and other performing arts as much as they are used by dancers and others for performances. A small example can be found in the set design for Disturbance , in which the design of the wood cubes occupying the stage came about through the observation of dancers who improvised with cardboard boxes months before the performance date. A key aspect of Teixeira's approach is evident in the name of his studio: Vazio is Portuguese for Empty, or Void. The stagings and sets attempt to activate ...

Dead Garden in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, by Vazio S/A, 2012 The following text and photos are courtesy Carlos Teixeira of Vazio S/A for their Dead Garden installation, part of the White Night festival in September 2012. White Night is the expression originated in Russia and the Nordic countries, and refers to the phenomenon of permanent twilight. Inspired by St Petersburg’s ‘White Nights’, where music and the arts keep the population entertained throughout the long summer evenings when the sun never sets, the term has been used in a series of events in various locations around the world to celebrate a night dedicated to the arts. That’s why thousands of people ran into the Municipal Park on the evening of September 14 for the first White Night Festival in the country. Organizers expected 20,000, but the number recorded was close to 100,000 visitors – a totally unexpected crowd given an event where the keynote was (supposedly) contemporary art. The main theme of the evening was,...

The current World-Architects eMagazine has a feature I assembled on houses that architects have designed for themselves, culled from the many profiles featured on the site. Architects House Themselves highlights nine projects—3 from Europe, 3 from the Americas, and 3 from Asia/Oceania—and their varied responses to unique architect-as-client scenarios. [Tower House, GLUCK+. Photo: Paul Warchol] The introduction for Architects House Themselves : There exists a long tradition of architects designing houses for themselves, many of them becoming historically notable works of architecture because of experimentation, a mix of living and working spaces, and an obviously unique architect-client relationship. Think of Frank Lloyd Wright's Home and Studio in Oak Park and his Taliesin estates in Wisconsin and Arizona; Alvar Aalto's house in Helsinki; Walter Gropius's house ten miles from Harvard; the Charles and Ray Eames House in California; Luis Barragán's House and Stud...

Here are some photos of the Centre for Virtual Engineering (ZVE) at the Fraunhofer Institute, Stuttgart, Germany, by UNStudio (2012), photographed by Frank Dinger ( bcmng ). See many more photos of the project in bcmng's Flickr set on ZVE . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Mark yr calendars: Thursday, May 2 , is the 2012 Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism, to be given by Professor Marshall Berman . The 9th annual lecture is presented by the Graduate Program in Urban Design, Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at City College of New York (CCNY), and will be held in the Great Hall of Shepard Hall at CCNY, Convent Hall at 138th Street. It's free, open to the public, and no reservations are necessary. Previous Lewis Mumford Lectures: 2012 - Janette Sadik-Khan: " It's Not Impossible to Change a City " 2011 - Richard Sennett : " The Edge: Borders and Boundaries in the City " (video archive available ) 2010 - No lecture 2009 - Paul Auster : " City of Words " 2008 - David Harvey : "The Right to the City" (audio podcast available ) 2007 - Amartya Sen : " The Urbanity of Calcutta " (audio podcast available ) 2006 - Enrique Peñalosa : "A New Urban Paradigm: Building a Just an...

Finding myself in Midtown the other day I decided to walk by the former American Folk Art Museum and take some photos, considering MoMA is planning on demolishing the marvelous building designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. As I was snapping some photos from under the sidewalk shed across the street a lady stopped and we started talking about how much we both like the building and couldn't believe it would be torn down. She then thanked me for prompting her to stop and take a look, something she wouldn't have done otherwise. Her words prompted me to take an even closer look at the distinctive Tombasil (alloyed white bronze) panels that comprise the distinctive facade. Below are three levels of details: The base of the building from across the street; a detail of a panel where the name of the museum used to be mounted ; and a close-up of one of the big air bubbles created in the process of making the panel. [Photos by John Hill]

Here are some photos of the new "Printemps" shopping mall (2013) in Strasbourg, France, by Christian Biecher Architectes , photographed by shift.A . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

The unveiling of the restored UN Security Council Chamber, what's called "the most important room in the world," happened earlier this evening. Below are some photos I took and some brief explanation of the original project and the ceremony. The room, situated within the United Nations Conference Building, was presented to the UN as a gift from Norway in 1952. It was designed by architect Arnstein Arneberg, though most of one's attention is drawn to Per Krohg's mural that graces the east wall and serves as a backdrop for the members seated at the circular table. Arneberg designed the room to embody the Norwegian art and culture of the time, though he also wanted a "character so neutral that it could withstand the test of time." While hardly timeless, the combination of modern architecture, a figurative mural, modern furnishings, and richly patterned wallpaper is a successful one that manages to exude calm and respect. One detail pointed out b...