A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Ando and Le Corbusier is a two-volume project that shows how the works of two pioneers of modern architecture – Le Corbusier and Tadao Ando – connect human experience to the basic givens of existence: interactions among human beings and personal encounters with nature, including wind and natural light, within a spare material framework shaped by once-new technologies such as reinforced concrete – expressed in two different and remarkable approaches to architecture. Ando and Le Corbusier, Volume 1: Tadao Ando  provides a historical overview of Ando’s work for major art institutions in the United States after 2000. It includes a detailed account of his US buildings by Michael Conforti, Director Emeritus of the Clark Institute of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts, an Ando project; “The Cult of Fudo in the Architecture of Tadao Ando,” a new essay by Kenneth Frampton on Ando’s critical regionalist response to climatic and cultural issues; and a comprehensive description of Ando’s “Art ...

The Minimal Intervention by Lucius Burckhardt, edited by Markus Ritter and Martin Schmitz Birkhäuser , October 2022 Paperback | 5 x 7-1/4 inches | 166 pages | 13 illustrations | English (translated from German by Jill Denton) | ISBN: 9783035625301 | $26.99 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Lucius Burckhardt (1925–2003) outlined his theory of the “smallest possible intervention” back in the early 1980s. The idea of minimal intervention runs through his entire oeuvre, from his critique of urbanism to the science of walking. The “smallest possible intervention” denotes a planning theory that assumes two “views” within landscape design: that which is actually visible and that in our mind’s eye. The theory of the minimal intervention means not interfering excessively with the existing landscape, but instead working with the landscape in our minds to develop an aesthetic understanding of the environment. In this book, available for the first time in English, the Swiss sociologist applies thi...

G. E. Kidder Smith Builds: The Travel of Architectural Photography by Angelo Maggi, foreword by Michelangelo Sabatino AR+D Publishing , August 2022 Hardcover | 8 x 11 inches | 272 pages | English | ISBN: 9781954081536 | $60.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : George Everard Kidder Smith (1913–1997) was a multidimensional figure within the wide-ranging field of North American architectural professionals in the second half of the twentieth century. Although he trained as an architect, he chose not to practice within the conventional strictures of an architecture office. Instead, Kidder Smith “designed,” researched, wrote, and photographed a remarkably diverse collection of books about architecture and the built environment. His work and life were deeply interwoven and punctuated by travel related to the research, writing, and promotion of books that sought to reveal the genius loci of the countries whose built environments he admired and wished to share with a broader audience. From th...

Here is the next installment of  "Book Briefs,"  the series of occasional posts featuring short first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that publishers send to me for consideration on this blog. Obviously, these briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than those that end up as long reviews. This installment features three books put out by Altrim Publishers : one case study and two travel guides. Hāthigaon: A Settlement of Elephants and Mahouts  by Sanjeev Vidyarthi, Megha Bhatnagar, Gaurav Bhatnagar and Rajan Bhatt | Altrim Publishers | 2022 | 10 x 10 inches | 124 pages | €32 | Amazon A couple of years ago I learned about RMA Architects' Hāthigaon Housing in Working in Mumbai , the 2020 monograph on Rahul Mehrotra's firm. In that book the housing project for elephants and their caretakers ( mahouts ) near Jaipur, India, is documented across fourteen pages. While that length is sufficient for conveyin...