A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

For this last post of 2022 I looked back at the dozens of books I reviewed or featured as "Book Briefs" on this blog, and the ones I reviewed on World-Architects. From those books I gathered just over a dozen favorites, grouping them into some common themes that happened to come to the fore: places, architects, and books/writers; they are listed below with brief commentary and links to my original reviews. Although these are my favorite books from 2022, not all of them were published this year (I'm often slow at getting around to books so I don't always follow the annual spring/fall cycle of publishers). As such, I've listed at bottom some recent and forthcoming books I'm looking forward to reading and (hopefully) reviewing in the new year. Until then, warm holiday wishes!  4 Books on 4 Places: Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City  by Jorge Almazán + Studiolab, published by ORO Editions (2022)  — A beautifully illustrated analysis of various "sp...

This latest 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 — features six books in three pairs. 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. Two "Green" Books: Green Reconstruction: A Curricular Toolkit for the Built Environment  edited by Reinhold Martin, Jacob R. Moore, Jordan Steingard | Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture | September 2022 | 7-1/4 x 10-1/2 inches | 266 pages | $0 ( available as a PDF ) The Buell Center describes Green Reconstruction  as "an outline, an open work, for the repair of a world ravaged by three intersecting crises — of mutual care, of racial oppression, and of climate, all intersecting in turn with economic inequality." As the subtitle of the book mak...

Conceiving the Plan: Nuance and Intimacy in Civic Space Edited by Yael Hameiri Sainsaux Skira , August 2022 Hardcover | 12-1/4 x 12-1/4 inches | 240 pages | 170 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9788857246543 | $45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : In Honor of Diane Lewis (1951–2017) How are civic spaces imbued with nuance, and in what ways does such a quality persist in the city? Can one discuss intimacy in architectural terms? Across a series of speculative projects for civic space—first exhibited as part of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, in the Italian Pavilion— Conceiving the Plan engages these questions in dialogue with the legacy of the late architect and longtime Cooper Union Professor Diane Lewis. For Lewis the city was not only the result of a great number of historical, and ultimately inextricable, strata of form and memory; it was also greater than the sum of its individual architectures and a mental universe all its own. Lewis’s unique presence—her unmistakable vo...