A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here's a wrap-up of my 31 buildings/places in 31 days:             #1 - Phyto Universe #2 - One Bryant Park #3 - Pier 62 Carousel #4 - Bronx River Art Center #5 - The Pencil Factory #6 - Westbeth Artists' Housing #7 - 23 Beekman Place #8 - Metal Shutter Houses #9 - Bronx Box #10 - American Academy of Arts and Letters #11 - FDR Four Freedoms Park #12 - One Madison Park #13 - Pio Pio Restaurant #14 - Queens West (Stage II) #15 - 785 Eighth Avenue #16 - Big Bambú #17 - Event Horizon #18 - Murano #19 - William Lescaze House #20 - Morgan Library and Museum #21 - MTA Flood Mitigation #22 - Wilf Hall #23 - Yohji Yamamoto #24 - NYU Center for Academic and Spiritual Life #25 - Nehemiah Spring Creek #26 - Longchamps #27 - 9th Street Residence #28 - Crocs #29 - Art et Industrie #30 - Tartinery Nolita #31 - Sperone Westwater Gallery Also see my 31in31 Flickr set .

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton ). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label . The Sperone Westwater Gallery , designed Foster + Partners , is nearing completion about a block north of the New Museum . This piece continues the transformation of the Bowery, from Cooper Union down to Chinatown. In the ten or eleven years since I stayed at a hostel on the Bowery the street has seen numerous new buildings as well as restaurants and shops, displacing the old flophouses and mainstays like CBGB's. I always liked to think of the Bowery as un-gentrifiable, a zone immune to the changes in neighborhing SoHo, NoHo, the Lower East Side, and the East Village. Of course I was wrong, but a nine-story building with a bright red elevator on its facade is probably the last thing I would have expected...

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton ). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label . Spotted at The Architect's Newspaper , Tartinery Nolita is a new restaurant located on Mulberry next to Spring Lounge. Designed by SOMA Architects , the facade is marked by deep-set, black-steel fins projecting from the storefront glazing. These fins -- spaced randomly across the elevation --work to hide and reveal the spaces behind. The shallow bar occupies the northern end (right in photos), and the double-height dining area sits to the south. The bar-code design is more interesting from across the street than from the adjacent sidewalk (the top image of the archpaper piece testifies to this). But from directly in front of the restaurant, the double-height dining area attracts the most attention....

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton ). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label . Although completed a couple years before 2000, the former Art et Industrie sculpture garden is something I was intrigued about, so I searched it out over the weekend and took a close look at it. Designed by Architecture Research Office ( ARO ) and located at the corner of Thompson and Broome Streets, the meat of the project is basically two solid-steel fences that follow the corner. I'm not sure what Art et Industrie displayed in its indoor and outdoor galleries, but the fence is like a piece of Modernist sculpture: well-crafted, simple, and easy to miss. Painted a dark gray, thin sheets of steel (I'm guessing about 8' by 8') are welded to matching steel H-shape supports which double as deep r...

This is a series for August 2010 which documents my on-the-ground -- and on-the-webs -- research for my guidebook to contemporary NYC architecture (to be released next year by W. W. Norton ). Archives can be found at the bottom of the post and via the 31 in 31 label . View Larger Map For now the above street view shows what architect William J. Rockwell faced in turning a Tennessee Mountain restaurant into a Crocs flagship store, located at Spring and Wooster Streets in SoHo. Alterations to the early 19th-century, many-times-renovated corner house required Landmarks (LPC) approval. When compared with the photo below, taken earlier today, the changes were fairly minimal, occurring on the ground floor. The three-story garage behind the house was demolished, but then LPC turned down Mitchell's first design which resembled the old garage. Instead they recommended "a modern transitional glass piece," according to The Architect's Newspaper . The new piece has som...