A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Sad, shocking news . Hard to think about anything else today. ZAHA HADID 1950-2016 pic.twitter.com/Ox1sTlGTlO — Zaha Hadid (@ZHA_News) March 31, 2016

Here are some photos of the Clarion Hotel Air (2015) in Sola, Norway, by KAP (Kontor for Arkitektur og Plan) . (Photographs: 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

Here are some photos of the Cuatrecasas Lawyers Headquarters (2013) in Madrid, Spain, by Ruiz Barbarín + GCA Arquitectos . (Photographs: Ximo Michavila ) 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

Recently I saw a car commercial that struck me for the way it ended in the plaza of Louis I. Kahn's Salk Institute: Here is a GIF of the car screeching to a halt on the travertine plaza: If you're like me, you're wondering, "Where is the fountain?" Compare the above with a photo of the plaza: On watching the commercial the first time, I figured the car was superimposed onto a photo of the Salk's famous plaza, but the omission of the fountain doesn't make sense in this regard. The makers of the commercial must have covered the fountain – as well as the pieces of travertine flanking it, as they appear different than the rest of the plaza – with something else that would not be damaged by the car coming to a stop. Whatever the case, this commercial is just another example of how architecture is used to sell cars; see also my earlier posts on the subject. Actually, this Mercedez-Benz spot is not the first time the Salk has been used as a set for a...

Just a heads up on the three competitions that just announced the winning entries. eVolo 2016 Skyscraper Competition : Yitan Sun and Jianshi Wu from the United States have won eVolo Magazine's 2016 Skyscraper Competition with "New York Horizon," which "proposes a continuous horizontal skyscraper around the full perimeter of a sunken Central Park. The project would create 7 square miles (80 times greater than the Empire State Building) of housing with unobstructed views and connection to the park." Fairy Tales 2016 Competition : Alan Maskin, Jerome Tyron, Kevin Scott, Gabriela Frank, and Katie Miller of Olson Kundig have won Blank Space's third annual Fairy Tales Competition with "Welcome to the 5th Facade." Maskin stated of the winning story: "Our Fairy Tales 2016 submittal became a tangential detour from Olson Kundig’s ongoing investigation into urban rooftops, the largely neglected uppermost layer of cities. The idea of applying a...

Normally I wouldn't post a demolition photo for a "today's archidose," but given my recent review of two books on Brutalist architecture –  Concrete Concept and Heroic – it seemed appropriate to feature this photo of architect John Madin's Birmingham Central Library (1974) coming down. In my review  I considered that the popularity of Brutalism today – evidenced by the two books but also through toys and websites – would result in the preservation of more concrete edifices from the 1950s to 1970s. But Birmingham Central Library, whose fate was sealed with the opening of the Mecanoo-designed replacement library in 2013, is obviously an exception – and an unfortunate one. According to the BBC , "Once fully demolished, [the library] will be replaced with office space as part of the £500m Paradise regeneration scheme." Failed Architecture has a post on "Birmingham's Central Library and the Battle over Brutalism" worth reading, and at bot...

Memorials to Shattered Myths: Vietnam to 9/11 by Harriet F. Senie, published by  Oxford University Press , 2016. Paperback, 262 pages. ( Amazon ) Before a review copy of Harriet F. Senie's new book arrived in the mail recently, the only book I'd read by the City College art history professor was The Tilted Arc Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? from 2002. That book was a must for a paper I wrote in graduate school on Javits Plaza, which was home to Richard Serra's Tilted Arc  before it was graced by curlicue benches designed by Martha Schwartz ( its latest incarnation was designed a few years ago by Michael Van Valkenburgh). That exhaustively researched book tackles the creation and reception of public art, so it makes sense that just over a decade later she focuses her attention on memorials, what are really another form of public art. The two projects that bracket the book are mentioned in its subtitle: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial  (VVM) in Washington, ...

Head on over to World-Architects to read my review of MoMA's A Japanese Constellation: Toyo Ito, SANAA, and Beyond .

Here are some photos of the Helig Kreuz Kirche (1969) in Chur, Switzerland, by Walter Förderer. (Photographs: Trevor Patt , who has many more photos of the church in the Helig Kreuz Kirche album .) 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

Concrete Concept: Brutalist Buildings Around the World by Christopher Beanland, published by Frances Lincoln, 2016. Hardcover, 192 pages. ( Amazon ) Heroic: Concrete Architecture and the New Boston by Mark Pasnik, Michael Kubo and Chris Grimley, published by  The Monacelli Press , 2015. Hardcover, 336 pages ( Amazon ) Late last year when I was at the New York Public Library's main building I stopped into the gift shop, which was decked out for holiday shopping. On a shelf alongside other toys was Blockitecture, its first series devoted to Brutalism (photo below). My first thought was that Brutalism – the "style" of concrete architecture from the late 1950s to early 1970s – was finally, officially hip. This was good, since it implied that the hatred of Brutalist buildings was waning, subject to reappraisal by younger generations that grew fond of the rough concrete and aggressive forms, much like others now embrace Postmodernism, a style I still have a hard ti...

Here are some photos of the Corning Museum of Glass Contemporary Art + Design Wing (2015) in Corning, New York, by Thomas Phifer and Partners . (Photographs: Carly Dean ) 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

Tom Kundig: Works by Tom Kundig, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2015. Hardcover, 300 pages. ( Amazon ) With each book that Seattle architect Tom Kundig puts out with Princeton Architectural Press there is a jump in scale. Tom Kundig: Houses from 2006 is a fairly modest monograph that presents only five projects across its 176 pages. Tom Kundig: Houses 2 , the follow up from 2011, features 17 houses on its 240 larger-format pages. With the same page size as the second book, Tom Kundig: Works  notches it up to 19 projects on 300 pages to include commercial and institutional buildings as well as the houses he is known for. Thankfully the increased size isn't just an excuse to show more and larger photographs (though there is plenty of that here). It allows for more insight into Kundig's working process through conversations with the architect's key collaborators: Phil Turner, Olson Kundig's "Gizmologist"; Jim Dow from contracting firm Schuc...

Last night Bjarke Ingels – "young, Danish and the current star of the world's architectural scene" – received the 60 Minutes treatment. Watch it below or on cbsnews.com . View More: 60 Minutes News | Live News | More News Videos

As much as I appreciate the design of architecture books, I've never paid too close attention to who's responsible for the actual design of them. But recently I noticed that a number of the books in my library were designed by Massimo Vignelli, who died in 2014 at the age of 83. With his wife Lella and their New York firm Vignelli Associates , he was one of the most popular and versatile graphic designers, responsible for the design of books and magazines, but also interiors, packaging, branding, architectural graphic, furniture, and product design. Here I highlight some of the architecture books in my library that he designed. Richard Meier, Architect : Vignelli designed a series of books with Meier and this was the first one, coming out in 1984. The design, per the Vignelli Associates website , "reflects the character of his buildings: structured, subjective and, above all, not trendy." The cover sets everything up, both for the book's contents and Vignell...