A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Recently I got a tour of the new 34 Street-Hudson Yards subway station from Beth Greenberg and Emily Kotsaftis of Dattner Architects , the firm that serves as urban designer and design architect for the much-anticipated 7 Line Extension . The station opened on Sunday, September 13, but it is not 100% complete, since one of its two points of access from the new Hudson Yard Park, designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh with Toshiko Mori, is still under construction. The glassy turtleback canopy (designed by Mori) on the south side of 34th Street will be matched by another on the north side when that entrance is complete next year. [All photos by John Hill] Under the glass canopy is where I met a couple other journalists for the tour – check out  Alexandra Lange's piece at Curbed  for her piece – but it turned out to be about a half hour after our scheduled time, since the 7 Train wasn't running due to a broken rail. While this fact was lousy timing almost down to the minut...

Here are some photos of the  Ramos Carrion Theater  (2005) in Zamora, Spain, by  Morales Giles Mariscal Arquitectos , photographed by José Carlos Melo Dias . 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

This weekend, September 26 and 27, the Trust for Governors Island and Governors Island Alliance  are giving public access to the most anticipated part of the new park: The Hills. The other day I got a sneak peek and include my photos and impressions here. The park design is by West 8 (with Rogers Partners, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects), which won a 2007 design competition for the park and the island's master plan with a proposal called the "Un-Central Park." One of the most striking images from the win was of the Statue of Liberty peeking out from behind some planted hills: [Rendering by West 8 | image source ] While the rendering's basis in reality is debatable (Is the statue that high above the water? Will the hills be that high?), the effect is present (more so in Archpaper's photo ), even a year before this second phase of the park will be open to the public: But more than glimpses of Lady Liberty, an in-progress ...

Here are some photos of the Campus WU D1 & Teaching Center  (2013) in Vienna, Austria, by BUSarchitektur , photographed by Wojtek Gurak . 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

If you like science — and who doesn't? — you've probably seen this video making its rounds on the Internet (if you haven't then you should watch it now): Of course, Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet are not the first folks to try to express the scale of the planets relative to each other. What comes to my mind is Bill Nye the Science Guy's demonstration of the distance between planets, made back when Pluto was considered a planet: Coincidentally, though not surprisingly, each demonstration is located in the open spaces of the American West, where the scale of space can be more easily expressed.

At first I figured it was a typo, being copied on NCARB's tweet of "13 must follow Twitter accounts for aspiring architects." But there is my mug in the top-right corner (an emergency passport photo from last year taken after being up for nearly two days, if you must know why I look so bad), alongside nine other folks and logos who probably use Twitter to much better advantage than I do with my fairly infrequent tweets. Nevertheless, I'm glad to be in such good company. Head over to NCARB's website to see the other 12 must follow Twitter accounts for aspiring architects .

Here are some photos of the Silesian Museum (2014) in Katowice, Poland, by Riegler Riewe , photographed by Ziemowit Cabanek . 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

Here is a slideshow of the Invisible Barn in Tahoe National Forest, California, by STPMJ, photographed by Ken McCown . 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

Frei Otto: A Life of Research, Construction and Inspiration by Irene Meissner and Everhard Möller, published by Edition Detail, 2015. Hardcover, 128 pages. ( Amazon ) This book was planned as a celebration of the lightweight structures designed by Frei Otto on the occasion of his 90th birthday, but with his death just two months shy of his birthday this year it has turned into a celebration of the architect-engineer's life. Normally this sort of bad timing might go by without much of a word, but given the premature announcement of this year's Pritzker Architecture Prize due to Otto's passing, his accolades have been celebrated this year just as obituaries were pulled from the drawer. For those unfamiliar with Otto's many accomplishments, Meissner and Möller's book is an excellent place to start, covering the numerous projects he worked on in an accessible manner while also portraying his influence on other architects and engineers. The slim volume, presented ...

Mies van der Rohe spoke the words in the title of this post. They are found at the end of this five-minute film by Alexandre Favre that juxtaposes rare sound-bites by the architect (he was a man of few words, recorded or not) and images of his masterpieces shot with a Bolex 16mm camera.

As I gradually make my way from summer vacation mode to fall work mode, I'm posting some of the photos I took during my recent ten-day holiday in the American Midwest. This fifth and last batch shows Steven Holl's Bloch Building at the Nelson-Atkins Are Museum in Kansas City.