A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Below are some of my photos of the ETH Zurich Pavilion that is part of the IDEAS CITY Festival in New York City. To learn more about the pavilion, which is made from old beverage cartons, head over to World-Architects to see the piece I wrote .

Here are some photos of the Community Church Knarvik (2014) in Hordaland, Norway, by Reiulf Ramstad Arkitekter , photographed by Sindre Ellingsen . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos #archidose

Head on over to World-Architects to see a studio visit I made to Ross Barney Architects in Chicago. The firm opened a stretch of the Chicago Riverwalk over Memorial Day Weekend, one of the projects highlighted in the piece. [Ross Barney Architects occupies the old office of Harry Weese | Photo by John Hill]

No less than three projects featuring nets – at least two for climbing – were featured in today's email from Arch Daily. OB Kindergarten and Nursery by HIBINOSEKKEI + Youji no Shiro: [Photo: Studio Bauhaus, Ryuji Inoue] Garrison Treehouse by Sharon Davis Design: [Photo: Elizabeth Felicella] Saigon House by a21studio: [Photo: Quang Tran] Add to those projects a few more... Brazil Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015 by  Studio Arthur Casas + Atelier Marko Brajovic: [Photo: Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre] Net by Numen: [Photo: Courtesy of Numen] In Orbit by Tomás Saraceno: [Photo: Studio Tomás Saraceno] ...And it looks like we have ourselves a new – or at least trendy –  architectural element , with porous, malleable, playful surfaces bridging the realms of art and architecture.

Architectural Styles: A Visual Guide by Owen Hopkins, published by  Laurence King Publishing , 2014. Paperback, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) In the introduction to his visual guide to architectural styles, Owen Hopkins lets the reader know that architectural "style" is a 19th century creation, something that enabled architectural historians to chart developments in the appearances of buildings over time. But 220 pages later, in the book's postscript, he asks, "In the face of ever-increasing architectural variety...what possibilities are there for 'style'?" In both instances, Hopkins appears to be arguing against the validity of architectural style and the need for a book documenting one. Yet alas, he has written a book on such a topic, and with its focus on the visual, the book is a good introduction for students of architecture and laypeople with an interest in architecture, and a handy reference for architects who have forgotten what they learned in thei...

Friends of the High Line has announced that Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson will be presenting " The collectivity project , an installation of white LEGO bricks that features an imaginary cityscape conceived and designed by the public," from May 29 until September 30 on the High Line at West 30th Street. The collectivity project was previously installed in public squares in Tirana, Albania (2005, photo below), Oslo, Norway (2006), and Copenhagen, Denmark (2008). [Olafur Eliasson, The collectivity project, 2005. Installation view at 3rd Tirana Biennale, Albania, 2005. Photo by Olafur Eliasson. Courtesy the artist; neugerriemschneider, Berlin; and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.] In addition to the public – meaning kids like my six-year-old daughter – being able to play with the LEGOs, "a selection of architectural firms involved in current or ongoing projects in the surrounding neighborhood – BIG–Bjarke Ingles Group, David M. Schwarz Architects, Dille...

Here are some photos of the Northeastern Illinois University El Centro Campus (2014) in Chicago, Illinois, by JGMA , photographed by John Zacherle . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos #archidose

Local Architecture: Building Place, Craft, and Community by Brian-MacKay-Lyons, edited by Robert McCarter, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2015. Hardcover, 224 pages. ( Amazon ) Ghost, a laboratory run by Canadian architect Brian MacKay-Lyons where architecture students would design and build small structures on land owned by the architect in Nova Scotia, started in 1994 with "a resurrection of a house silhouette in a cow field, an apparition, a ghost raised from earlier times." In 2011, twelve Ghosts later, it went on hiatus. To mark what might be seen as the completion of an experiment started by MacKay-Lyons, a principal at MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects , Ghost 13 was a three-day symposium, themed "Ideas in Things," held on the same property in June 2011. This book documents the symposium and its who's-who list of architects respected for, as the title attests, creating architecture that responds to place, craft and community. Althoug...

The quote of this title's post comes from the notebook of Harry Weese, which is featured in a 2010 episode of Chicago Tonight . The 13-minute piece gives a good overview of a late Chicago architect who, like Bertrand Goldberg, has been overshadowed by Mies, SOM, and other architects in the city, even though he produced some of the city's best architecture. It's worth watching if you don't know his story. ( Click here to watch the video if you don't see the embedded video above.)

Fuksas Building Update by Massimiliano & Doriana Fuksas, published by  Actar , 2015. Hardcover, 250 pages. ( Amazon ) First off, I should admit that I don't have nor haven't seen the first Fuksas Building , published by Actar in 2011, which this book updates. So I can't really comment on how well this book extends the content of that monograph, nor if it is worth having in addition to that book. Second, I should admit that I have a love-hate relationship with Fuksas's work, which I have seen little of in person (the Armani Fifth Avenue springs to mind), but which, like other architects these days, has some interesting qualities at a small scale that don't necessarily work when blown up larger. The glass roof funnels of the New Milan Trade Fair , for example, are appealing (if a repeated element for Fuksas), but not at what looks to be a half-mile length of the concourse. The buildings of Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas are increasingly larger (heck, they j...

Unless you're reading this post on a mobile device or in your email browser, you're seeing a new widget with three images tucked between the title atop the blog and this post below it. This widget features three recent posts from the World-Architects Daily News , where I am Editor in Chief. Given that a good deal of my time during the day is spent adding posts to the Daily News, I felt it would be good to highlight some of them and this widget seems like a good way to do it. So click on the images to see the Headlines, Films, Products, Insights, and other features over at the World-Architects Daily News .

Here are some photos of the Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux (2015) in Bordeaux, France, by Herzog & de Meuron , photographed by JP2H . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos #archidose

The Japanese House Reinvented by Philip Jodidio, published by  The Monacelli Press , 2015. Hardcover, 288 pages. ( Amazon ) In the introduction to Philip Jodidio's new book highlighting fifty recent Japanese houses, the author mentions that Japan and the United States share a preference for single-family houses over apartments. While not a surprising statement, the similarities end there, since each country's geography, culture, economics and other factors have created widely divergent contemporary designs. Japan, in particular, is full of houses that scream "Japan," most of them found in the tight confines of Tokyo, like the project gracing the cover (Atelier Tekuoto's "Monoclinic"). But, as Jodidio's selection of houses shows, there is more to single-family residential architecture in Japan that idiosyncratic vertical houses in tight confines, even as some of those are found in these pages. One of the numerous US-Japan differences in single-...

Here are some photos of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (1963) at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill , photographed by Hassan Bagheri . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos #archidose