A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Living the City: Of Cities, People and Stories by Lukas Feireiss, Tatjana Schneider, TheGreenEyl Spector Books , September 2020 Paperback | 8 x 11 inches | 340 pages | English | ISBN: 9783959054171 | 24.00€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Cities are full of stories—running in parallel, contradictory, overlapping and inseparably linked. Such stories are told in Living the City by referencing various projects from architecture, art, and urban planning. The book aims to show processes and possibilities for action in cities based on more than fifty projects from all over Europe. The publication first looks at urbanites before expanding into emotionally and poetically charged stories that consider very basic activities such as loving, living, moving, working, learning, playing, dreaming, and participating in the city. The book is being published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name at the former airport in Tempelhof, Berlin, which runs from September to November 2020. With ...

GAM.17: Wood. Rethinking Material Edited by Tom Kaden Jovis , May 2021 Paperback | 9 x 11 inches | 296 pages | German/English | ISBN: 9783868596632 | 19.95€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : As an organic building material, wood is held in particularly high esteem in this age of climate crisis. A component of environmentally friendly resource cycles, wood demonstrates its innovative potential when used in new technological developments and hybrid applications that are suited to complex, modern architectural tasks. We have only just started reimagining wood as a cutting-edge, versatile building material of the future. GAM. 17 takes a new look at wood—at its multi-faceted nature and architectural possibilities— and proposes building and design concepts that fully utilize the material’s potential for a more climate-friendly construction industry. This is further complemented by a look back at the history of building with wood and the ideological entanglements that have long stood in the w...

Houses: Vo Trong Nghia & The Work of VTN Architects Preface by VTN Architects; Introduction by Vo Trong Nghia; Edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers , July 2021 Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 11 inches | 320 pages | English | ISBN: 9781946226952 | $59.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : In an age of overpopulation and rapid urban development, most Vietnamese houses are located within crowded cities. Therefore, the residents suffer from polluted air with little green space for themselves. The presence of televisions, Internet, and social media also poses problems for urban dwellers. People are mentally stressed from constant social pressure and the modern lifestyle. They have limited space for activities, for living life, and for enjoying nature. Understanding the situation, VTN Architects’ “Houses for Trees” connect people to nature, creating pockets of greenery within our concrete cities. Our houses become ecosystems that merge natural energy and natural materials to pro...

GAM.01: Tourism and Landscape Edited by Urs Hirschberg, Günter Koberg, Jörn Köppler and Roger Riewe Springer Verlag, May 2004 Paperback | 9 x 11 inches | 224 pages | German/English | ISBN: 9783211206331 | 26€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The transformation of space, both physically in the form of buildings and complexes, and non-materially, i.e. in its social perception and utilization, is the core issue explored by GAM . The articles in GAM.01 - Tourism and Landscape cover a range of topics from the current problems of the Huaorani in the rainforests of South America to the plans for winter sports resorts in the French Alps, from the Fürst-Pückler-Land landscape park being built on industrial wastelands in the eastern part of Germany to the pseudo worlds of hotel complexes in Las Vegas. GAM , published by the Faculty of Architecture at Graz University of Technology, sees itself as a platform for an international architecture discourse. With contributions by  George Baird, Regina...

Next Generation Tourism: Touching the Ground Lightly John Spence, Henry Squire, Patrick Bellew, Timothy Newton; Edited by Nina Rappaport and Rukshan Vathupola Yale School of Architecture, June 2021 Paperback | 8 x 10 inches | 136 pages | English | ISBN: 9781948765930 | $35.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The book features current sustainability and material research and design for innovative strategies centered around ecology, sustainability, and the rise of future tourism models on the resort island of Gili Meno, Indonesia. It focuses on sustainability of materials, climate issues, and development in fragile island areas where exploitation of resources are being monitored for future development. It is said that our actions impact the environment seven generations into the future. In fact the growing concern about the global impact of tourism and the associated waste produced by leisure industries is outdated. This Yale graduate advanced architecture studio analyzed the current ec...

Boredom, Architecture, and Spatial Experience by Christian Parreno Bloomsbury Visual Arts , February 2021 Hardcover | 6-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches | 272 pages | 20 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781350148130 | $115.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Boredom is a ubiquitous feature of modern life. Endured by everyone, it is a by-product of modernity, and of situations, spaces and surroundings. As such, this book argues, boredom shares an intimate relationship with modern architecture – one that has been little-explored in architectural history and theory. Boredom, Architecture and Spatial Experience explores that relationship, showing how an understanding of boredom affords us a new way of looking at and understanding the modern architectural experience. It reconstructs a series of episodes in architectural history from the nineteenth century to the present, to explore how boredom became a normalized component of modernity, how it infiltrated into the production and reception of modern arc...