A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

This blog is going on a mini summer vacation for a couple weeks, so I'm highlighting a handful of architectural events taking place in New York City in that time – with one a nice scenic drive up north. If you don't see anything of interest, head over to New York Architecture Diary for more comprehensive listings. From June 22 Kaneji Domoto at Frank Lloyd Wright's Usonia Center for Architecture, Manhattan Unlike such exhibitions as Frank Lloyd Wright at 150 , which celebrate Wright's output on his sesquicentennial, this exhibition curated by Lynnette Widder focuses on the contribution of one of his apprentices, Kaneji Domoto, who designed a handful of the 47 houses at Usonia in Westchester County. June 27 Sarah Williams Goldhagen Book Talk: Welcome to Your World: How the Built Environment Shapes Our Lives Skyscraper Museum, Manhattan I've been slowly making my way through this enjoyable and thought-provoking book about how new discoveries in cognitive ...

Allan Wexler: Absurd Thinking-Between Art and Design edited by Ashley Simone "with the close collaboration of Ellen Wexler," published by  Lars Miller Publishers , 2017. Hardcover, 296 pages. ( Amazon ) I first became acquainted with the architectural art of Allan Wexler in 2009 – well, maybe it was earlier, but that was the first time I wrote about it on this blog . It seems that since then I come across his work, unawares, in a number of places I go. There's the Overlook in the LIRR Terminal in Brooklyn, which became part of my G Train walking tour upon discovering it while scouting the route. There are the easy-to-miss but hard-to-forget  Two Too Large Tables in Hudson River Park at 29th Street. And how could I forget my first encounter with the Parsons Kitchen , which was pulled out for drinks following a crit some years ago. These are just a few of the many Wexler artworks found in the new monograph published by Lars Müller Publishers. Wexler, who collabor...

With all of the Frank Lloyd Wright 150th anniversary brouhaha, there's plenty of Wright to read and to look at . But what about listening? To fill that apparent void, head over to 99% Invisible and check out a couple episodes from February about one aspect of Wright's career: Usonia. Episode 256: Usonia 1  focuses on the first Usonian house: the Jacobs House built in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1937. The show intersperses audio clips from Wright and Jacobs with a visit to the house by Avery Trufelman. Appropriately, Episode 247: Usonia the Beautiful  picks up on the Usonian theme and heads to the Usonia community in Pleasantville, a 50-minute train ride north of New York City. Trufelman speaks with Rolald Reisley, who still lives in the house Wright designed for him in the early 1950s, about his experience with Wright and how the community has changed over time. The episode also ventures outside of Pleasantville to see what happened with Wright's dream of mass-produced...

A memorial for architect and educator Diane Lewis , who died on May 2 at the age of 65 , will be held on Monday, June 26, in the Guggenheim Museum's Lewis Theater. A reception will follow at the Burden Mansion. An RSVP is necessary, so email dianelewismemorial@gmail.com to confirm attendance and receive further details.

Head on over to World-Architects to read my review of MoMA's  Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive .

Yesterday an advance copy of Mark Hagan-Guirey's Frank Lloyd Wright Paper Models: 14 Kirigami Buildings to Cut and Fold  ( Amazon ) arrived in the mail. It was a pleasant surprise. So today I couldn't help but try one of the projects, even though it's been a while since I've wielded an X-acto knife. The directions recommend an X-Acto knife with plenty of blades, a self-healing cutting mat, a metal ruler, skewers, and a bone folder. I have most of those from my days of architecture school and practice so was ready to go. I started with the Jacobs House , since it has the fewest cuts and folds and no overly tricky cuts; even then, I goofed and folded the "mountains" as "valleys" and vice-versa. After I reversed those folds and got kind of comfortable with the technique I moved on to Fallingwater. Like Jacobs, it made sense to start with the straight cuts (solid lines), then tackle the freehand jagged cuts, and finally "half-cut" the...

ITALOMODERN 1: Architecture in Northern Italy 1946–1976 by Martin and Werner Feiersigner, published by  Park Books , 2016. Paperback, 352 pages. ( Amazon ) ITALOMODERN 2: Architecture in Northern Italy 1946–1976 by Martin and Werner Feiersigner, published by  Park Books , 2016. Paperback, 552 pages. ( Amazon ) Brothers Martin and Werner Feiersinger shared a passion and followed through on it, producing two amazing books about thirty years of postwar architecture in Northern Italy. The two researched, selected, visited, photographed, drew, and wrote about hundreds of buildings, creating an unparalleled survey with many surprises. For the most part, Martin, an architect practicing in Vienna, was responsible for the selection, texts and plans, and Werner, a sculptor and photographer also in Vienna, took the photos. Their contributions are accompanied by an essay by fellow Austrian Otto Kapfinger and biographical material on the architects of the buildings; all o...

Here are some photos of The Sequential Roof (2016) at the Arch_Tec_Lab of the Institute of Technology in Architecture (ITA) in Zurich by Gramazio Kohler Research . (Photographs: Trevor Patt ) 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

Next week I'll be putting together a review of MoMA's Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive , but in the meantime here is a slideshow of my photos of the exhibition from a press preview yesterday, the 150th anniversary of Wright's birth.

The  "So You Want to Learn About"  series highlights books focused on a particular theme: think "socially responsible architecture" and "phenomenology," rather than broad themes like "housing" or "theory." Therefore the series aims to be a resource for finding decent reading materials on certain topics, born of a desire to further define noticeable areas of interest in the  books I review . And while I haven't reviewed every title, I am familiar with each one; these are not blind recommendations. Today is the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's birth, and with that sesquicentennial are lots of celebrations . These include exhibitions, such as Unpacking the Archive at the Museum of Modern Art, and numerous new and reissued publications. The latter provoked me to put together this small list of books on Wright – small in that it's a tiny fraction of the hundreds of books devoted to the architect, but these are the one...

An Organic Architecture: The Architecture of Democracy by Frank Lloyd Wright, published by  Lund Humphries , 2017. Hardcover, 104 pages. ( Amazon ) I should start by stating that I'm not a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's writing.  In my 2009 review of Robert Twombly's Frank Lloyd Wright: Essential Texts , I wrote that "the texts are far from readable ... with a certain anachronistic style ... distancing Wright's language from today but also requiring a patience from the reader to distill the main ideas." I've yet to muster enough patience to tackle Wright's 500-plus-page autobiography from 1943, but his earlier An Organic Architecture  offers a suitable, shorter alternative. Its publication by Lund Humphries coincides with the 150th anniversary of Wright's birth, a good time for people to look once again at the master architect's works – buildings and  writings. For the most part, An Organic Architecture is a more enjoyable read than ot...

On June 8, 2017, from 10 am–5:45 pm, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth "through a series of activities related to the architect’s masterwork: the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum." Admission to the museum will be reduced to, appropriately enough, $1.50. Details on the day's events are below. At 10:30 am and 11 am, join an actor-historian portraying Frank Lloyd Wright in Cafe 3 for a special history lesson on the design and construction of the Guggenheim. At 12 pm, join a focused tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright building with Ashley Mendelsohn, Curatorial Assistant, Architecture and Digital Initiatives. Tour meets at the Information desk on the Rotunda Floor. At 1 pm, head to the Rotunda to wish Frank Lloyd Wright a happy birthday and watch him blow out his birthday candles.

Thursday, June 8, 2017, is the 150th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's birth. To celebrate the architect and his buildings, my posts this week are devoted to Wright. To start, here are some photos by  Ximo Michavila  of the V. C. Morris Gift Shop (1948) in San Francisco. At the time of these photos, the building served as the Xanadu Gallery , but it closed in 2015 and since last year preservationists have been working to protect the landmark building's interior and its many significant details. 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

A couple months ago I reviewed Camilo José Vergara's latest book, Detroit Is No Dry Bones: The Eternal City of the Industrial Age , which presents the photographer's ongoing documentation of the city, particularly overlooked areas that haven't changed for the better. Although known primarily as a photographer, his background in sociology means he is also an excellent writer. In "The Other Shinola: A Proposal," published at World-Architects, he speculates on the impact of the popular local brand if it embraced Detroit's African American culture.

Here are some of my photos of renovations recently completed at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in Midtown Manhattan by Diller Scofidion + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler. For more on the project, read my piece at World-Architects . New lounge on the first floor: New glass wall opposite the lounge with a view to the Sculpture Garden: Extension of "Bauhaus Stair" to first floor: New lounge/espresso bar and museum store on second floor: Detail of museum store: Detail of lounge/espresso bar and its view to the Sculpture Garden: Renovation of cafe on second floor: Gallery on third floor: 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