A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Unprecedented Realism: The Architecture of Machado and Silvetti K. Michael Hays Princeton Architectural Press , 1995 Paperback | 9 x 12 inches | 280 pages | 248 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0910413602 | $40.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : For almost two decades the work of Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti has remained at the forefront of theoretical production. Their rigorously detailed and exquisitely drawn projects characterize an attitude of aesthetic realism towards materials, construction, function, and the cultural role of architecture. Yet the conditions they address, and the effects they produce, are unprecedented. Their projects synthesize seemingly incompatible images, uses, and typologies. Unprecedented Realism is not an illustration of theory. Rather what emerges is a constructive theory of architecture that understands the process of design itself as a distinct mode of knowledge as theoretical research that is still irreducibly architectural. The book prese...

The New Farm:  Contemporary Rural Architecture   Daniel P. Gregory Princeton Architectural Press , June 2020 Hardcover | 8 x 10 inches | 192 pages | 150 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1616898144 | $45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Recent generations of farmers have reinvented the family farm and its traditions, embracing organic practices and sustainability and, along with them, a bold new use of modern architecture. The New Farm profiles sixteen contemporary farms around the globe, accompanied by plans and colorful images that highlight the connections among family, food, design, terrain, and heritage. Visit a Tasmanian sheep shearers' quarters with a dramatic coastal view and a bamboo-wrapped farm shed in Kentucky. Learn from a fourth-generation poultry breeder and newcomers who have stepped off the corporate ladder and into the barnyard. Projects include an olive oil grove and mill in California, the storied Stone Barns Center in New York, and organic farms in Cana...

The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream Stefan Al The MIT Press , March 2017 Hardcover | 8 x 10 inches | 272 pages | 72 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780262035743 | $34.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West, with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs, then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates, followed by replicas of Venetian canals, New York skyscrapers, and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015—ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently, the Strip decided to get classy, with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the “implosion capital of the world” as developers, driven by competition, got rid of the old to make way for the new—offe...

Memory Houses Robert Hutchison Architecture Arquine , March 2020 Hardcover | 7 x 9-1/2 inches | 152 pages | 90 illustrations | English/Spanish | ISBN: 978-6079489526 | $32.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Seattle-based architect Robert Hutchison’s Memory Houses is a project that investigates mortality and memory through the lens of architecture. Speculatively situated along the banks of the Wye River on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where the architect grew up, architectural typologies such as dwelling, chapel, lighthouse and memorial weave together a spatial narrative about loss and recollection. Distant as well as more recent architectural memories make cameo appearances in the memory houses: the stave churches of Norway and the Great Mosque of Córdoba that Hutchison experienced as a child; the lighthouses of the Chesapeake Bay; the timber grain elevators of the Palouse; the Colosseum and the Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome. This publication, with a hot-stamped cover and end she...

Sendai Mediatheque: Toyo Ito Albert Ferré, Tomoko Sakamoto Actar Publishers , April 2003 Flexicover | Page Size inches | 240 pages | English | ISBN: 978-8495951038 | $19.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Calling him a “creator of timeless buildings,” the Pritzker Jury further praised Ito for “infusing his designs with a spiritual dimension and for the poetics that transcend all his works.” Among those works, the Jury singled out his Sendai Mediatheque, whose innovative use of structural tubes “permitted new interior spatial qualities.” The book Sendai Mediatheque presents the process of design and construction of Ito’s prototype during the six years between the building’s initial design through to its completion in 2001. The Mediatheque aspires to integrate real and virtual worlds – or, in Ito’s words, “the primitive body of natural flow and the virtual body of electronic flow”.  Long after its completion, the Mediatheque is still evolving as an evolutionary building that combine...

Platform 12: How About Now? Carrie Bly, Isabella Caterina Frontado, Natasha Hicks Actar Publishers / Harvard GSD , January 2020 Paperback | 7-1/4 x 10-1/4 inches | 152 pages English | ISBN: 978-1948765367 | $34.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : This installment of the GSD Platform series celebrates—and places itself within—the rich tradition of student publications at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Offering questions of the past to ground questions of the present, How About Now? summons the enduring concerns and preoccupations that designers constantly revisit, reconsider, and redefine in response to a changing world. Platform represents a year in the life of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Produced annually, this compendium highlights a selection of work from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, and design engineering, and exposes a rich and varied pedagogical culture committed to shaping the fut...