A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Yes, it's time to pull the plug on A Daily Dose of Architecture , which I started back in 2004, five years after I started A Weekly Dose of Architecture ( I ceased the weekly doses in 2014 ). More accurately, it's time for A Daily Dose of Architecture to morph into something else — what that is will be announced on the first day of 2019. Why stop A Daily Dose of Architecture? Because: I've been preoccupied more and more with other tasks ( World-Architects , writing books , walking tours, freelance writing, etc.), so I've had less time to devote to this "(almost) daily" blog; Most of the content that would have ended up here now makes its way into the World-Architects Magazine , where I'm Editor in Chief; Although there is still a core of great contributors and photos (around 100,000 of them!) on my archidose Flickr pool  — from which I would grab photos now and then, to the tune of more than a fifth of my 5,000 posts — it has become overrun by irrel...

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The end of the calendar year means best-of lists, and for this blog that means architecture books. Unlike traditional publications that limit their lists to books, buildings, or some other output released or completed between January 1 and December 31, I lean toward the way film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum would include only movies he saw and reviewed during the year (so if a film opened in NYC around Xmas to be eligible for an Oscar but didn't play in Chicago that year he didn't consider it) and therefore have limited my list to books I reviewed on this blog at some point in 2018. In turn, half of these dozen books were published this year but the other half came out last year. Accordingly, the alphabetical list is split into two based on the years the books were released, with links to my reviews or "briefs." 2018 Dimensions of Citizenship  edited by Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Ann Lui, Mimi Zeiger The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in America  by Alan ...

The "So You Want to Learn About" series highlights books focused on a particular theme: think "socially responsible architecture" and "Le Corbusier," rather than broad themes like "housing" or "modern architects." 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. About one year ago my book 100 Years, 100 Landscape Designs came out. There were a number of landscape designers that just had to be in the book, one of them being Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994), the great Brazilian landscape designer and artist who single-handedly defined landscape architecture in South America, not just Brazil. (A couple of his landscapes worked their way into my book, both carrying his influential name: Sitio ...

Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu edited by William S. Saunders, published by  Birkhäuser , 2012. Hardcover, 256 pages. ( Amazon ) Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City edited by Terreform, published by  UR (Urban Research) , 2018. Paperback, 300 pages. ( Amazon ) One of the most memorable crits I attended during the World Architecture Festival a couple weeks ago was Turenscape's presentation of Puyangjiang River Corridor , which involved the demolition of the channelized river's concrete embankments and subsequent "softening and remediating" of the 10-mile-long river corridor. Even though the concrete-lined river sprouted industrial uses along its banks, Turenscape convinced the city's mayor to remove the concrete and the industry in order to bring the river back to life. How, the jury asked the designer from Turenscape, did they manage to do that? "Six months of drinking with the...

"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with short first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews (though some might go on to get that treatment), but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than find their way into  reviews on this blog . This installment features four titles — two from Laurence King and two from Thames & Hudson – that are oriented to design and materials in education and practice. The Architecture Concept Book  by James Tait | Thames & Hudson | 2018 |  Amazon  / IndieBound The title page of The Architecture Concept Book  includes title, author, and publisher but also one important number: 565 illustrations. Yes, that's a lot of illustrations. I'd say as many of them are sketches by James Tait as they are photographs by others. In turn, the book explains architectural concepts primarily through the author's words and illustration...

The lack of posts between my roundup of Holiday Gift Books on Thanksgiving and now was due to a trip to Amsterdam to cover the World Architecture Festival for World-Architects . Thankfully I was able to do some sightseeing on what was my first trip to the Netherlands, zipping around Amsterdam and taking day trips to Delft and Rotterdam. Below are photos of some highlights in these three Dutch cities, presented in the order I visited them. AMSTERDAM The bathtub-like addition to the Stedelijk Museum (2012) by Benthem Crouwel Architects : Superlofts Houthaven (2016) by Marc Koehler Architects, which won at WAF in 2017 and was open for tours this year: Het Schip , the Amsterdam School masterpiece from 1920 by Michel de Klerk: ARCAM (Architecture Centre Amsterdam), housed in a shapely building designed by René van Zuuk  (2003): DELFT Delft City Hall and Train Station  (2017) by Mecanoo: BK City (Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment) at TU Delf...