A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Wang Shu Amateur Architecture Studio  edited by Michael Juul Holm, Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Kallehauge, published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art/ Lars Müller Publishers , 2017. Hardcover, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) Wang Shu: Imagining the House by Wang Shu, published by  Lars Müller Publishers , 2012. Paperback, 168 pages. ( Amazon ) Like their buildings, books on Wang Shu and Amateur Architecture Studio are a rarity. I own three books on the 2012 Pritzker Prize-winning architect, who runs the studio with his wife, Lu Wenyu; as far as I know there aren't any more. Two of the three books are published by Switzerland's Lars Müller Publishers; one collects sketches on six projects and the second presents nine projects through photographs and coincides with an exhibition of the same at the Louisiana Museum of Art. With its scarcity of color and photographs, Imagining the House  is an architecture book for architects; this may seem meaningless (aren't al...

I have four architectural walking tours in June and July. Click on the links below to purchase tickets from the 92Y. Saturday, June 3, 11am - 1:30pm The High Line and Its Environs Walk the 1.5-mile-long elevated park from tip to tip, learning about the park and the new buildings it has sparked. Saturday, June 17, 11am - 2:30pm Brooklyn G Train Tour Hop on and off the G train from Carroll Gardens to Clinton Hill and Dumbo, taking in townhouses, campus facilities and other buildings along the way. Saturday, July 8, 11am - 1:30pm 57th Street, River to River This architectural walking tour looks at the changing landscape of Manhattan’s Midtown architecture by focusing on the street that has become known as Billionaires’ Row. Saturday, July 22, 11am - 1:30pm Columbia University Look at recent additions to the campuses of Columbia University and Barnard College in Morningside Heights, take a sneak peek at Columbia’s expansion into Manhattanville and head up to Inwood to se...

Here are some photos of the Cascara Bridges at the Madrid Rio project in Madrid, Spain, by MRIO Arquitectos (Burgos & Garrido, Porras La Casta, and Rubio & Álvarez-Sala) and West 8. The concrete bridges feature mosaics by artist Daniel Canogar. (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

Earlier today I decided to check out the new Amazon Books, which opened a few days ago. The bricks-and-mortar version of the online powerhouse is located in Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle. The store makes its presence known only subtly, with signage in the two windows above the BOSS logos on the right: The store is located on the third floor of the building's mall, here seen from the outlook on the second floor: Given the layout of the mall, the store is accessed via a bridge, which features some signage to entice shoppers below to take the escalator up a couple floors: On this Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, there was a line to get into the store. For whatever reason (safety, not going over their occupancy limit, making it feel like an event, who knows?), the store let only ten people in at a time. My wait was about ten or fifteen minutes – more time that I would spend in the store. As has been written about all over the place, one gimmick of the seven-and-cou...

On Tuesday, May 23 I'll be giving a book talk at the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan. The event takes places from 6:30pm to 8pm and is free. Head to the Skyscraper Museum website to reserve a ticket. Update 05/26 : Video of my talk is embedded below.

MAS Context 30-31: Bilbao Edited by Iker Gil Spring 2017, 456 pages The year 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Frank Gehry's contribution to the Bilbao effect.  Contribution  is an important word here, since all too often the Bilbao effect is defined solely as the outcome of the architectural icon, ignoring the wider infrastructural improvements and other pieces of architecture added to the Basque city before and since. Even twenty years later, this is the case: Bilbao = Gehry's Guggenheim. This double issue of MAS Context is then a welcome publication on the city, coming at a time when the impact of the building and other urban developments can be gauged. The two issues that fit together side by side to create the double issue are hinged about the year of the museum's opening: one is devoted to what came before and the other to what has followed. This split acknowledges the importance of the museum but shifts the focu...

Yesterday the Graham Foundation announced "over $560,000 in new grants to individuals around the world to support 72 innovative projects engaging original ideas in architecture." On my first skimming of  the list of exhibitions, film/video/new media projects, public program, publications, and research, one award stood out above the rest: Francesco Dal Co's "definitive book on Carlo Scarpa." The Italian architectural historian has authored books on Scarpa already, including his Complete Works (Rizzoli, 1986) and a case study of Villa Ottolenghi  (Monacelli Press, 1998). Yet even with the numerous other monographs on the architect (most recently Robert McCarter's Carlo Scarpa published last year by Phaidon), Dal Co's forthcoming book from Yale University Press sounds very promising. [Brion-Vega Cemetery, San Vito d'Altivole, 1978 | Photo: Francesco Maria Gabriele Vozza] The description from the Graham Foundation website (my emphasis): As t...

A slideshow of photos from today's hard hat tour of The Shed designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the Rockwell Group: And a video of the 100-foot-tall shed in action: The Shed -- it's alive! A post shared by John Hill (@therealarchidose) on May 24, 2017 at 1:21pm PDT The building will open in 2019.

A+T – publisher of books and magazines on public spaces , work places , renovations , and collective housing – has just released 50 Urban Blocks , a "set of cards containing 50 examples of how to design an urban block." Unlike previous titles from a+t, the deck of cards are hypothetical designs rather than specific case studies. Each scenario is given the same rectangular area, so they can be compared and contrasted easily. As in other a+t publications, the illustrations are accompanied by data, so each can be evaluated in terms of density, height, and other factors. I could see the  50 Urban Blocks  being particularly helpful for students as well as young architects in need of some ideas on how to move forward with a project. Although they might not be faced with such a straightforward block, the cards offer plenty of ways to think about solid/void, site coverage, and other considerations.

Head over to World-Architects to read my recap of the small but illuminating El Helicoide: From Mall to Prison exhibition at the Center for Architecture. The show focuses on the El Helicoide building in Caracas, which was built as a mall in the late 1950s but never used as such; it now functions as a prison – an illegal one at that. The exhibition will be joined in the summer by the book  From Mall to Prison: El Helicoide's Downward Spiral , published by Urban Research ; it will be celebrated with a book talk on July 13th at the Center. Further, a complementary program, Modern Architecture and Design in Venezuela , will be held with exhibition curator Celeste Olalquiaga and others at the Center on May 30th.

On Tuesday, May 23, the Storefront for Art and Architecture is holding its spring benefit, ARTIFACT , at Federal Hall in Lower Manhattan. Storefront will be honoring Denise Scott Brown and Murray Moss, and will be launching New Artifacts , specially commissioned pieces by Adam McEwen, LOT-EK, and Murray Moss with Lobmeyr. [LOT-EK's LITE-SCAPES SF, 2017] ARTIFACT takes place from 7pm to midnight at Federal Hall, 26 Wall Street. Tickets can be purchased here . Although it's the same evening as my book talk at the Skyscraper Museum , there's plenty of time to do both – that's my plan.

Anish Kapoor's Descension is on display at Brooklyn Bridge Park's Pier 1 until September 10th. I visited yesterday and made a short video of it (turn up the volume for best effect):

Here are some of my photos of Pierhouse and 1 Hotel Brooklyn Bridge by Marvel Architects. 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 Experience of Architecture by Henry Plummer, published by  Thames & Hudson , 2016. Hardcover, 328 pages. ( Amazon ) Although usually overshadowed by form, material and technique when it comes to books on architecture, experience seems to be making a comeback. Recent years have seen a few books with an emphasis on experience: Architecture and Movement: the Dynamic Experience of Buildings and Landscapes by Peter Blundell Jones and Mark Meagher, The Space Within: Interior Experience as the Origin of Architecture by Robert McCarter, and Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives (review forthcoming) by Sarah Williams Goldhagen. Add to those Henry Plummer's The Experience of Architecture  and there's a small-scale trend taking place, one where ideas from the 1970s are popular once again . [Spread with Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre] This book being authored by Henry Plummer means "experience" is firsthand; as in all of his b...

Here are some photos of the  Socio-Cultural Center of Costa Nova  (2015) in Costa Nova, Aveiro, Portugal, by  ARX Portugal . (Photographs: 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