A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here are some photos of the Two Houses Colegiales (2012) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Hitzig Militello Arquitectos , photographed by Federico Kulekdjian . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Those attending or reading about last night's MoMA Conversation should understand why I'm posting these photos from last year's An Olfactory Archive exhibition at California College of the Arts last year. [All photos via CCA Snapshots Flickr set ]

I'm at the New York Society for Ethical Culture for the ArchLeague/MAS/AIANY event on MoMA's controversial expansion plan by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). I'll update with photos (pardon the low-res, cameraphone shots) as the evening progresses, adding some commentary tomorrow. For background on the controversy, which involves the destruction of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects' 2001 American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), which MoMA purchased in 2011, see my previous post on DS+R's plan unveiled three weeks ago. A crowd packs the New York Society for Ethical Culture on the Upper West Side: MoMA's Glenn Lowry (director) and Ann Temkin (curator) begin the proceedings by outlining their main objectives with the expansion, namely that they have a responsibility as an important cultural institution, and therefore they need more space to show more art. Temkin uses the Frank Lloyd Wright archives that MoMA jointly acquired in 2012 as an example of something...

OASE #91: Building Atmosphere edited by Klaske Havik, Hans Teerds and Gus Tielens, pubished by  nai010 Publishers , 2013. Paperback, 128 pages. ( Amazon ) Quality in architecture...is to me when a building manages to move me. What on earth is it that moves me? How can I get it into my own work?...How do people design things with such a beautiful, natural presence, things that move me every single time. One word for it is Atmosphere. This quote from Swiss architect Peter Zumthor's 2006 book Atmospheres: Architectural Environments - Surrounding Objects comes at the beginning of the editorial introduction to OASE #91 . It is hardly the first utterance of the word "atmosphere" relative to architecture (the editors mention a Mark Wigley essay from a 1998 issue of Diadolos, but it probably goes back farther than that), but it is one that has shaped how architects and critics have started to use the word in the years since. More common or not, it is a term that has not be...

American-Architects Building of the Week : Vol Walker Hall & the Steven L Anderson Design Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas, by Marlon Blackwell Architect:

Here are some photos of the REHAB, Centre for Spinal Cord and Brain Injuries (2002) in Basel, Switzerland, by Herzog & de Meuron , photographed by Fernando Herrera . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Here are some of my photos and commentary on SOM's New School University Center from yesterday's inauguration. The building is located on the southeast corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue. The sizable building (what SOM's Roger Duffy called a "vertical campus" during the inauguration) includes 200,000 square feet of academic space on the first seven floors and 150,000 square feet for a 600-bed dormitory on the levels above. The setback marks the transition between the two major components, where the two-story library can also be found. This view is looking south down Fifth Avenue: Regular bands of glass and Muntz metal ("a sort of brass containing about 60 percent copper and 40 percent zinc" per The Architect's Newspaper ) are broken by larger glazed sections that follow the stairs snaking down the building. This view is the Fifth Avenue facade near 14th Street (the worker just visible in the bottom-left corner, by the way, is part of th...