A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Paradigms in Computing: Making, Machines, and Models for Design Agency in Architecture edited by Dr. David Jason Gerber and Mariana Ibañez, published by  eVolo Press , 2014. Hardcover, 400 pages. ( Amazon ) One key to the direction computation in architecture is taking can found in this book in an unlikely place, tucked underneath the long bio of architect and theorist Neil Leach: "He is currently working on a research project sponsored by NASA to develop a robotic fabrication technology to print structures on the Moon and Mars." Considered with a news item like Norman Foster's involvement in a European consortium to "explore the possibilities of 3D printing to construct lunar habitations," and to a lesser degree Turkish architect Gulay Yedekci's design of "an entire extraterrestrial community which could one day be home to human beings on Mars," there are signs of a trend toward using the new forms of architecture generated and built throug...

If any architect deserves a monumental survey of their work it is the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger . Heck, the 82-year-old architect deserves the Pritzker Architecture Prize, too. Although nothing can be done about the latter, at least for another year, April sees the release of Robert McCarter's Herman Hertzberger from nai010 publishers, a 524-page monograph with 600 full-color illustrations. For those in The Netherlands, a book launch is taking place in Amsterdam on Saturday, April 11; details are below. [Cover and spreads courtesy of nai010 publishers] Description from the publisher : Herman Hertzberger (b.1932) is one of the most important and critically influential figures in international architecture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A constant champion of fundamentally humanist modern architecture, Hertzberger is rightly regarded as the world’s foremost designer of schools, a building type he has almost single-handedly redefined. Hertz...

Here is a heads up on four architecture-related events taking place in New York City this April. I posted about a couple of the events previously, and am including them here as reminders, while the other two events are featured here for the first time. Details on each are below the list. April 2: 2015 Mumford Lecture: Rebecca Solnit April 6: Oculus Book Talk: "Radical Cities: Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture" April 9: Architecture's Appeal Launch and Panel April 16-17: Facades+ New York Conference Thursday, April 2: The 2015 Lewis Mumford Lecture on Urbanism will be given by writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit . The 11th 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 n...

This afternoon I stopped by Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in Chelsea to take a look at Tomás Saraceno 's exhibition Hybrid solitary... semi-social quintet... on cosmic webs... The lettering on the wall hints that the show is in two parts. On the first are clear cubes suspended in a dark room and illuminated by spotlights. Inside are the work of spiders but more complex that typical webs, owing to the artist turning the cubes like an hourglass to increase the complexity, and beauty, of the silky creations. Upstairs are the artist's suspended sculptures of wire, balloons and foil, constructions that approach the complexity of the spiders' creations, though in the structure of interconnected bubbles rather than webs. These pieces are like architectural models that are part of the artist's "continued engagement with the concept of 'cloud city' that explores the possibility of a future airborne existence within and beyond the 'spaceship' Earth....

Today is Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's 129th birthday, so below are a selection of photos of his buildings from the archidose Flickr pool , presented in chronological order (links are provided to project pages on the Mies van der Rohe Society's website ; click/mouseover the photos to see information on the photographers). Weissenhofsiedlung, Stuttgart, Germany, 1927 : Barcelona Pavilion, Barcelona, Spain, 1929 : Tugendhat House, Brno, Czech Republic, 1930 : Lange House, Krefeld, Germany, 1930 : Lemke House, Berlin, Germany, 1932 : 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, Chicago, IL, USA, 1951 : Farnsworth House, Plano, IL, USA, 1951 : S.R. Crown Hall, Chicago, IL, USA, 1956 : Seagram Building, New York, NY, USA, 1958 : Federal Center, Chicago, IL, USA, 1964 : Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany, 1968 : Toronto-Dominion Center, Toronto, Canada, 1969 : To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Joi...