A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

I'm in Venice this week covering the Venice Architecture Biennale for World-Architects, so head on over to the W-A Daily News to read my coverage  of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition.

Here are a couple photos of  Bosco Verticale  (2014) in Milan, Italy, by  Stefano Boeri Architetti . (Photographs:  Burçin YILDIRIM ) 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

Last week the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA), designed by Louis I. Kahn and completed in 1977, reopened after being closed for three years as part of its three-phase, nearly decade-long conservation effort. Knight Architecture and Peter Inskip + Peter Jenkins Architects served, respectively, as architect and conservation architect on the project. My visit during the press tour last week was my first time experiencing the inside of building in person, so I can't say firsthand how much the conservation effort differs from before. But I can say the building is just incredible, a place of extremes: dramatic and calming, light-filled and rich with shadows, institutional and domestic. Below is a tour through the building that highlights YCBA's design elements more than the conservation efforts. [All photographs by John Hill] The YCBA is located on the southwest corner of Chapel and High Streets on Yale's campus in New Haven, Connecticut. Located across the street fro...

Here are some photos of  House in Amersfoort  (2007) by  RIK LAGERWAARD ARCHITECTEN BNA BV . (Photographs: Sebastian Deptula ) 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

On April 3rd the Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (CBST) made its move – literally, as a procession – from its old digs at 57 Bethune Street in the West Village to the ground floor of a Cass Gilbert landmark on West 30th Street near Herald Square. Designed by New York's Architecture Research Office (ARO), the synagogue occupies actually three floors: the ground floor, a mezzanine, and a basement. Although the synagogue's main spaces are tucked away from the street, it has a highly visible street presence thanks to large expanses of storefront glass. In other words CBST, the largest LGBTQS synagogue in the world, is out and proud, a clear change from the hidden, dark home it occupied for nearly 40 years. [All photographs © Elizabeth Felicella/Esto] ARO's design for CBST is fairly straightforward but subtly special in the right places. It's clear the budget for the 17,000-square-foot project was not high, but that did not preclude ARO from laying out the spaces to m...

Construction Matters by Georg Windeck, co-edited by Lisa Larson-Walker, Sean Gaffney and Will Shapiro, published by  powerHouse Books , 2016. Hardcover, 230 pages. ( Amazon ) Right after graduating from architecture school at Kansas State University in 1996 I moved to back to Chicago, getting a job in the firm DeStefano + Partners a few months later. Working for a firm whose partners were formerly employed by SOM, and working alongside many intern architects who had attended the Illinois Institute of Technology, I quickly learned the differences between my education and others. Whereas K-State was strong on conceptual design (basing studio projects on concepts rather than just function), history, drawing, and environment and behavior, the lineage of architects who trained at IIT following Mies van der Rohe excelled in technical considerations. "What material is your building made of?" was a little-heard question during jury reviews at K-State, but projects at IIT started...

Here are some of my photos of St. Ann's Warehouse (2015) in DUMBO, Brooklyn. The building was renovated by Marvel Architects and the Triangle Garden (most of the photos here) was designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates . 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

Aldo van Eyck by Robert McCarter, published by  Yale University Press , 2015. Hardcover, 264 pages. ( Amazon ) Aldo van Eyck: Seventeen Playgrounds by Anna van Lingen and Denisa Kollarova, published by Lecturis, 2016. Paperback, 96 pages. ( Amazon ) Searching my memory, I have a hard time figuring out exactly when I learned about Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. He was not a staple of architectural history classes when I was in architecture school in the early 1990s, at least not up there with other postwar modern architects, such as Louis I. Kahn, and the postmodern architects that followed. Maybe I learned about him in a modern architecture seminar during my fifth year, but if so projects like the Municipal Orphanage in Amsterdam would have made a stronger impression on me. This Van Eyck gap in my undergraduate education can be chalked up only partly to his portfolio, which had one masterpiece (the Orphanage) alongside lots of temporary playgrounds and nume...

Coming across the Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro by São Paulo Arquitetura on Architizer this morning ... ...I couldn't help focus on the folded concrete section at right... ...seeing in it the facade of the demolished American Folk Art Museum by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects: Yes, this is a shallow, image-based comparison. And I'm not asserting that the architects found inspiration in the Folk Art facade. Rather, I compare it to seeing the face of a recently departed friend on strangers I pass on the street. With its recent demolition, my mind finds traces elsewhere of the building that used to be -- what is now a hole waiting to be filled by MoMA:

Here are some photos of the  Waterliniemuseum  (2015) in Bunnik, Netherlands, by Studio Anne Holtrop with  Rapp+Rapp , West 8 and Jonathan Penne Architecten. (Photographs:  Klaas Vermaas ) 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's a quick tour through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute's "Manus x Machina" exhibition that opens to the public on May 5th. While the treat for most people will be taking in the fashion on display, which veers between the handmade (Manus) to the computer-made (Machina), my photographs from today's press preview focus on the exhibition design by OMA's New York office. The exhibition, located on two levels in the Met's Robert Lehman Wing, is reached via the Medieval Sculpture Hall, which OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu described as having a "church-like atmosphere": Following the long strip of carpet, one comes to an arched opening signaling the exhibition, "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology": There are three choices after walking through the opening: 1) Turn left or right to follow the corridors and look at niches filled with dresses: 2) Go downstairs to the lower level, where most of t...