A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Krueck +  Sexton: From There to Here by Krueck + Sexton Architects, introduction by John Morris Dixon, published by  Images Publishing , 2017. Hardcover, 272 pages. ( Amazon ) I'm not exactly sure when I first became aware of the work of Chicago's Krueck + Sexton (my best guess is seeing their competition entry for the American Library in Berlin in the early 1990s), but they were one of just a handful of firms I wanted to work for when I moved back to Chicago after architecture school in Kansas. Their built work at the time, mainly houses and interior residential projects in the city, exuded Miesian modernism – but with a twist. Although cognizant of, and trained in, Chicago's modernist history (Ron Krueck and Mark Sexton both attended IIT), they were not constrained by it. The over 20 projects covering nearly 40 years of work in this monograph are testament to the formal experimentation born from those Miesian roots. The sizable book organizes the built and ...

Although I've spent very little time at urbanNext – a project by Actar aimed at "expanding architecture to rethink cities" – recently I found myself engrossed with Ricardo Devesa's four-part interview with Richard Ingersoll, which I discovered via Actar's three-part Imminent Commons books . The interview happened during the "Architecture: Change of Climate" conference that took place at the Fundación Arquitectura y Sociedad in Pamplona, Spain, in 2016. I'm not very familiar with the work of architectural historian Ingersoll, who teaches at Syracuse University in Florence and other programs in Italy. My only exposure to date was Sprawltown , a short book from 2006 that I remember enjoying very much. In my review of that book , I noted that Ingersoll "acknowledges that environmental factors, more than human, will push us to change our ways." While all these years later, I would take out "more than human" from that statement, si...

Here are some photos of Broward County Library (1984) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, by Robert Gatje. (Photos: Maciek Lulko ) 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

As posted previously , earlier this year I visited Queens Museum to see  Never Built New York , curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin. This week I finally reviewed it. Head on over to World-Architects to read my review .

Here are some photos of the Hayward and De Breyne Building at Keble College  (1977) at the University of Oxford by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek . (Photos: Neil MacWilliams ) 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

"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with two- or three-sentence first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than can find their way into  reviews on this blog . Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future  edited by Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Hyungmin Pai | Actar | 2017 |  Amazon Imminent Commons was the theme for the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, directed by historian Hyungmin Pai and architect Alejandro Zaera-Polo. The multi-pronged exhibition focused on nine "essential commons as a viable path towards a sustainable and just urbanism": four Ecology Commons (Air, Water, Fire, Earth) and five Technology Commons (Making, Moving, Communicating, Sensing, Recycling). Though the inaugural Seoul Biennale does not (yet) get near the attention or press that the ones in Venice ...

MONU #27 - Small Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2017 Reviewed by Claudia Consonni When reading MONU ’s issue #27 on Small Urbanism , the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape , curated by Emilio Ambasz in 1972 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, immediately came to my mind. The link between the two arose from the attention that both give to objects and small things, and their relationship to the bigger scale and the environment. This is why I want to talk about the new issue of MONU through a comparison that aims at showing the similarities between the magazine and the exhibition. [Cover from the catalogue of Italy: The New Domestic Landscape , 1972] First, a brief introduction of the exhibition is necessary to understand the importance of the objects in the case at hand, and consequently to appreciate the link with MONU . I found a statement by Ambasz particularly exhaustive in this regard: “When I started the exhibition I knew nothing about It...

A trio of exhibitions I visited last week: three of them are closing within the next week, while the third one closes next month. All are worth the effort. Closes Monday, January 22 falkeis.architects: active energy building Austrian Cultural Forum New York 11 East 52nd Street Open M-F 3-5pm by appointment only (via email in link) There's a double appeal to this small exhibition: learning about the design, research, and construction of the Active Energy Building in Lichtenstein, designed by Austrian architects  Anton Falkeis and Cornelia Falkeis-Senn ; and seeing the 11th floor of Raimund Abraham's Austrian Cultural Forum. Instead of walking inside the building and taking a few steps to the public galleries on the lower floors, one must take an elevator ride to see the drawings, model, and photos of the Active Energy Building. Tucked in the building's tapered section between the ACFNY's offices and the apartment of ACFNY director Christine Moser, it's a ...

Green Heart Marina One Singapore—Architecture for Tropical Cities by ingenhoven architects Aedes Architecture Forum, 2017 Paperback, 124 pages While in Berlin last November , ingenhoven architects'  "Green Heart" was on display at the Aedes Architecture Forum. Although I didn't make it to the exhibition, I did manage to get my hands on the catalogue about the amazing Marina One project in Singapore. I'm reviewing it now since the Prime Minsters of Malaysia and Singapore officially opened the project this week . The title, "Green Heart," refers to the green space that sits at the heart of the mixed-use project that is made up of four towers with commercial, office, and residential uses. It's an amazing project that reminds me of the work of Singapore's own WOHA , though on an even-bigger scale. The buildings of both ingenhoven and WOHA in Singapore make it clear that density and vegetation go hand in hand in building sustainably. As...

As an extension of its exhibition,  MILLENNIUM: Lower Manhattan in the 1990s , the Skyscraper Museum has launched an update of Heritage Trails New York , a "digital reconstruction [of] a landmark public history project focused on lower Manhattan of the mid-1990s." [All images via Skyscraper Museum] The "Digital Trail" uses the original Van Dam Heritage Trails map (above) and then places the original entries (below left) and updated entries (below right) next to the map. The interactive page illustrates the changes that happened in Lower Manhattan in a relatively short amount of time – a period marked by the destruction of September 11 and the area's subsequent recovery, as well as more and more people moving into the area. In addition to the interactive map, which works on mobile devices but is best seen on laptops and other large screens, the Skyscraper Museum created a Heritage Trails Archive . The latter is necessary, given how the physical markers s...

Here are a couple photos of the Agricultural Rehabilitation Center KRUS "Granit" (1981) in Szklarska Poręba, Poland, by Stefan Janusz Müller. (Photos: M. M. Czarnecki ) 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 month I signed the contract for my next book with Prestel , tentatively titled NYC Walking Tours . Due to be released in spring 2019, the book collects eight architectural walking tours (plus two new ones) that I've been giving for the last six years  for the 92Y and other institutions in and around New York City. In some ways the new book will be like an update of my first book,  Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture (W. W. Norton, 2011), whose 22 chapters were organized as suggested walking routes. NYC Walking Tours will feature numerous buildings and landscapes from that book but many more that have been completed since then. Due to its structure and length, it will not be as comprehensive as my first book, and it will be more explicit in the routes – where to go, and what to look at. And of course, it will be compact and easy to carry around. This image (something I quickly mocked up and certainly NOT the cover for the book) is a case in point: my ...

Head on over to World-Architects to see which 18 projects I'm looking forward to in 2018 .

Followers of this blog probably know I like architecture documentaries, such as ACB's informative half-hour features on modern and contemporary buildings. In 2016 I blogged about some overlap between those docs and my book 100 Years, 100 Buildings , but many of them were removed from YouTube after ACB's account was terminated. (I found versions of those docs elsewhere, but many embeds in that post are still broken.) A series of architecture documentaries that shouldn't have that issue is A305, aka "History of Architecture and Design 1890–1939." According to the Canadian Centre for Architecture , which is posting the series on their YouTube channel, "Between 1975 and 1982, The Open University broadcast a series of televised courses on the genealogy of the modern movement: A305, History of Architecture and Design 1890–1939. Through twenty-four programs aired on BBC 2, the course team aimed to offer students and viewers a critical understanding of the intenti...

OfficeUS Manual edited by Eva Franch, Ana Miljački, Carlos Mínguez Carrasco, Jacob Reidel and Ashley Schafer, published by  Lars Müller Publishers , 2017. Paperback, 288 pages. ( Amazon ) In my first job in an architecture office right out of school, one of the first things I was given – before I even had my own desk – was an employee handbook. A photocopied, spiral-bound booklet, the handbook delved into the details of what was expected from me as an employee: in terms of attire, sick days, performance, smoking (none, a new rule at the time), timesheets, billing, CAD standards, and so on and so on. The manual increased over time as the 50-person firm I joined more than doubled in a short amount of time. Over that time it functioned as a means of indoctrinating new employees and providing old employees with updates. I never imagined it to be more than a dry guide to office life, something that every office has. In the hands of the Storefront for Art and Architecture ...

...Nada. Zilch. That's right, for the first time in its nearly 50-year history, the AIA is not giving out a Twenty-five Year Award . I learned that news at Architect magazine and then wrote about it for World-Architects , where I couldn't help wonder what was submitted – and what wasn't. Were these buildings submitted? Head on over to World-Architects to read my thoughts on this year's no-Twenty-five Year Award.

Here are a couple photos of the (new-to-me) Sint Rita Church (1966) in Harelbeke, Belgium, by Léon Stynen and Paul De Meyer. (Photos:  Lukas Schlatter .) 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 this week I finally made it out to the Queens Museum to see Never Built New York . Curated by Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin, the exhibition is based on their 2016 book of the same name , with exhibition design by Christian Wassmann. I'll have a review on World-Architects in a couple weeks, linking to it here once it's online . In the meantime, here is a slideshow of my photos of the exhibition, which is split into three parts: gallery with drawings and models, Panorama of the City of New York with NBNY additions, and main space highlighting projects for Flushing, Queens.

Archinect is no stranger to print, having produced  Bracket every couple years or so since the inaugural issue in 2010 . Regardless, Archinect is making a big deal about Ed , the new quarterly print publication it describes as "an experiment in how to evolve architectural publishing." Archinect founder Paul Petrunia further describes Ed as "a hybrid publication ... [that] will charge forward into new territory while taking inspiration and elaborating on trends from Archinect’s dedicated community of participants and contributors." Starting with the first issue that was just released, each Ed  will have its own theme and unique graphic design. Ed 1, under Editor in Chief Nicholas Korody and designer Folder Studio, is themed "The Architecture of Architecture," which immediately brings to mind the theme of the first Chicago Architecture Biennial, "The State of the Art of Architecture," at least in name and being fairly open-ended. Korody's...

Head on over to American-Architects to vote for Building of the Year 2017 . The nearly 50 contenders are culled from the Building of the Week feature that I curate. Voting is online until the end of January with the winner announced in early February.

Here are some photos of the Vauxhall Cross (2005) bus station and transport interchange in Lambeth, London by Arup Associates . (Photos:  Artur Salisz .) Although barely twelve years old, last month the Lambeth Council approved plans to demolish the station in favor of "new transport interchange and public realm improvements" designed by 5th Studio . The Architects' Journal (subscription) has more information on the proposed development plans and the demolition of the distinctive building. 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