A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know by Michael Sorkin Princeton Architectural Press , November 2021 Hardcover | 5 x 7 inches | 144 pages | English | ISBN: 9781648960802 | $19.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : From iconic architect and critic Michael Sorkin comes a joyful celebration of architecture and city-making, told through his famous list, in one beautiful, illustrated book. Equal parts poetic, practical, playful, and wise, Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know presents a compelling and perceptive list of essential knowledge that Michael Sorkin composed during his renowned career as an architect, urbanist, critic, and force for justice and equity in design. In this first posthumous collection of Sorkin's work, entries are paired with 100 poignant and elegant color and black-and-white photographs, illustrations, and archival images. The handsome, foil-stamped cover and timeless design makes this the perfect gift for architects, students of...

Building Bad: How Architectural Utility is Constrained by Politics and Damaged by Expression by Jonathan Ochshorn Lund Humphries , September 2021 Hardcover | 6-3/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 232 pages | 34 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781848224667 | £45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : In this book, the author argues that architectural functionality is often constrained by political and economic forces, while it is also effectively undermined by modes of expression. Utilitarian building elements—for example, windows or skylights intended to bring daylight into offices or factories—may be subject to excessive heat gain, thereby coming into conflict with an evolving politics of energy conservation and global warming mitigation. Yet at the other extreme they may be deployed as part of expressive systems whose value, understood in terms of symbol and metaphor, can overwhelm these utilitarian considerations. Politics and economics, in other words, establish lower and upper bounds for all uti...

Reconstructing the Stockholm Exhibition 1930 by Atli Magnus Seelow Arkitektur Förlag/Chalmers Institute of Technology, May 2016 Paperback | 7-1/2 x 10-1/2 inches | 272 pages | English/Swedish | ISBN: 9789186050948 | 219 kr PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The Stockholm Exhibition 1930 of Arts and Crafts and Home Industries ('Stockholmsutställningen 1930 av konstindustri, konsthantverk och hemslöjd') and the manifesto Acceptera , published the following year by the exhibition organizers, mark the breakthrough of Modern Architecture in Sweden as well as in other Nordic countries. The exhibition is organised by Svenska Slöjdföreningen ('Swedish Arts and Crafts Society'), managed by its director, the art historian Gregor Paulsson, and designed to a large extent by Gunnar Asplund. Paulsson conceives the exhibition as a comprehensive and future-oriented display programme encompassing the three themes of "Architectural and Construction Details", "Streets and Ga...

Managing Energy Use in Modern Buildings: Case Studies in Conservation Practice Edited by Bernard Flaman and Chandler McCoy Getty Publications , October 2021 Paperback | 8-1/2 x 10-1/2 inches | 192 pages | 166 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781606066973 | $59.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : This timely volume brings together case studies that address the urgent need to manage energy use and improve thermal comfort in modern buildings while preserving their historic significance and character. This collection of ten case studies addresses the issues surrounding the improvement of energy consumption and thermal comfort in modern buildings built between 1928 and 1969 and offers valuable lessons for other structures facing similar issues. These buildings, international in scope and diverse in type, style, and size, range from the Shulman House, a small residence in Los Angeles, to the TD Bank Tower, a skyscraper complex in Toronto, and from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, a cultur...

Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley Lars Müller Publishers , January 2017 Paperback | 4-1/4 x 7 inches | 288 pages | 181 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783037785119 | $20.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The question Are We Human? is both urgent and ancient. Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley offer a multi-layered exploration of the intimate relationship between human and design and rethink the philosophy of design in a multi-dimensional exploration from the very first tools and ornaments to the constant buzz of social media. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outside space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Colomina’s and Wigley’s field notes offer an archaeology of the way design has gone viral and is now bigger than the world. The...

The Evolving Project:  The Journal of Architectural Education and the Expansion of Scholarship Edited by Igor Marjanović, Marc J. Neveu, Sara Stevens ORO Editions , April 2021 Paperback | 8 x 10 inches | 300 pages | English | ISBN: 9781951541699 | $40.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Through a selection of essays from the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE) and its 75-year history, this volume showcases not only the development of a single publication but also the evolution and expansion of the entire discipline. This book celebrates the rich history of the JAE , which is the longest continually running peer-reviewed journal in the discipline of architecture, as a major platform for the dissemination of new pedagogical and scholarly ideas. From discourses on drawing and design processes to issues of new media and the environment, The Evolving Project is a journey in space and time that documents the changing project of architectural education after World War II—namely its tran...

All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough by Rafael Herrin-Ferri Jovis , October 2021 Paperback | 4-3/4 x 7 inches | 272 pages | 244 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783868596564 | €22.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The borough of Queens has long been celebrated as the melting pot of America. It was the birthplace of North American religious freedom in the seventeenth century, hosted two World’s Fairs in the twentieth, and is currently home to over a million foreign-born residents participating in the American experience. In 2013, Spanish-born artist and architect Rafael Herrin-Ferri began to paint a portrait of the “World’s Borough”—not with images of its diverse population, or its celebrated international food scene, but with photographs of its highly idiosyncratic housing stock. While All the Queens Houses is mainly a photography book celebrating the broad range of housing styles in New York City’s largest and most diverse...