A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Tomorrow is Memorial Day here in the US, so I'm taking the week off. It won't be all relaxation, though, as I'll be setting up this blog's new newsletter (more information on the transition here  and sign up for the new newsletter here ). For email subscribers, this will be the last post you'll receive via Feedburner. One week from today will be the first weekly newsletter sent via Substack. It won't have much in the way of content, since I'm taking off this week, but it will be a first test to determine if I imported the email subscribers properly and have a handle on the Substack system. Fingers crossed. Thomas Heatherwick's Little Island opened on May 21 , just in time for Memorial Day weekend. Until then, have a great week!

The Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture: From the Founders to Shinohara and Isozaki David B. Stewart Kodansha International, 2003 Paperback | 8-1/2 x 11-1/4 inches | 304 pages | 356 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9784770029331 | $50.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The year 1988 commemorated the fourth generation since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 defined Japan's position-political, economic, and cultural-in the modern world. This period of history, which witnessed the rise, defeat, and rebirth of contemporary Japan, has been widely written about. Nevertheless, there remains, in the realm of architecture, an intractable gap in our knowledge of this span of more than a century. It is precisely that breach which Making of a Modern Japanese Architecture(with its more than 400 illustrations) undertakes to repair. It brilliantly charts the course of the art of building in this very old and yet, in a sense, quite new country from the middle of the nineteenth century to the onse...

Modern Architecture and Interiors Adam Štěch Prestel , August 2020 Paperback | 6 x 8-1/4 inches | 878 pages | 868 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783791386096 | $40.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : In 2006, architecture and design curator Adam Stech embarked on a photographic project to document the best Modernist architecture around the globe. More than thirty countries and more than a decade later, the fruits of that monumental project are gathered in this impressive collection covering nearly a century of architectural history. Driven by a passion for rediscovering forgotten or lesser known architectural treasures of Modernism, Stech took thousands of diverse photographs of exteriors and interiors. This survey features often overlooked details and hidden projects that Stech helps bring to light. His brief commentary on each featured building reveals insights into his vast collection of images that includes treasures of Italian Modernism, American mid-century classics, South Amer...

1972 - Nakagin Capsule Tower Noritaka Minami; Essays by Julian Rose and Ken Yoshida Kehrer Verlag , December 2015 Paperback | 9-1/2 x 11 inches | 100 pages | 55 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783868285482 | $45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Completed in the year 1972, Kisho Kurokawa's Nakagin Capsule Tower is one of the few visionary proposals realized by an avant-garde architectural movement called Metabolism. An experimental apartment complex designed with 140 removable capsules, this building in Tokyo embodies the future of urban living as envisioned by Kurokawa at that moment in postwar Japan. More importantly, it is a reminder of a future that was never realized in society at large and exists as an architectural anachronism within the city. In recent years, the building has faced the threat of demolition to make way for a more conventional structure. In the book 1972 , Noritaka Minami uses photography to document the current state of individual capsules as a response t...

Building with Nature: Creating, Implementing and Upscaling Nature-Based Solutions Erik van Eekelen and Matthijs Bouw (Editors) nai010 Publishers /EcoShape, December 2020 Paperback | 6-3/4 x 9-1/4 inches | 280 pages | 200 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9789462085824 | $55.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Building with Nature offers a proven, innovative approach to creating Nature-based Solutions for water-related infrastructure that harnesses natural forces for the benefit of the environment, the economy, and society. EcoShape is a consortium of contractors, engineering firms, research institutes, NGOs, and governmental authorities. In the past decade, it has conceptualized implemented, and analyzed Building with Nature projects in several countries. These projects demonstrate the capacity to build Nature-based Solutions at scale so as to create sustainable flood protection and cultivate resilient, ecologically rich living and working environments. Building with Nature, therefore, ...

Old Is New:  Architectural Works by New Material Research Laboratory Hiroshi Sugimoto and Tomoyuki Sakakida Lars Müller Publishers , May 2021 Hardcover | 6-3/4 x 9 inches | 400 pages | 202 illustrations | English (Heibonsha has published a Japanese edition ) | ISBN: 9783037786468 | 55€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : "The oldest things are the newest" – this paradoxical idea is present throughout the oeuvre of contemporary Japanese artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. In 2008, Sugimoto and the architect Tomoyuki Sakakida founded the New Material Research Laboratory, an architectural firm that researches and develops “new materials” from known materials and techniques by applying a different approach and interpretation. The Laboratory's aim is to rethink the use of old materials passed on to us from ancient times, the Middle Ages and the modern period. It advocates for a reconnection of the present with a bygone era, and to extend that connection to the future throu...

Interrupted Projections: Another Global Surface, or Territorial Recodings on the WorldSheet Neil Denari TOTO Publishing , September 1996 Paperback | 8-3/4 x 11 inches | 87 pages | Japanese/English | ISBN: 9784887061422 | 1500¥ EXHIBITION DESCRIPTION : GALLERY MA featured the work of the young Las Angeles architect Neil M. Denari in a show titled "INTERRUPTED PROJECTIONS." Denari has won wide acclaim for his various projects, such as his radical entry in the Tokyo International Forum Competition for which he received Honorable Mention. While not quite breaking free from the constraints of tradition and standards, Denari seems to challenge the conservatism of contemporary "architecture," always making viewers conscious of the essence of architecture and its latent potential. For Denari, contemporary architecture exists within a society filled with a mixture of coded images that trancends the concrete "thing" itself. Denari seeks to discover the possibil...