A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Last week dose explored three  "places in time" : St. Louis in the early decades of the 20th century; Detroit between 1935 and 1985; and Chicago suburb Oak Park ca. 1906, when Frank Lloyd Wright completed Unity Temple. Those three US-centric books were split between two historical surveys and one case study.  The same applies to the European/Asian books here, with a survey of brutalist architecture in Paris followed by a survey of Indonesian architecture trained in Germany around 1960 and a case study of a care center for people with mental disabilities in Belgium. Brutalist Paris: Post-War Brutalist Architecture in Paris and Environs  by Nigel Green and Robin Wilson, published by  Blue Crow Media , July 2023 ( Amazon  /  Bookshop ) Dipl.-Ing. Arsitek: German-trained Indonesian Architects from the 1960s  edited by Moritz Henning and Eduard Kögel, published by  DOM Publishers , July 2023 ( Amazon  /  Bookshop ) Living in Monnikenheide: Ca...

Concrete Map Chicago edited by Iker Gil Blue Crow Media , 2018 Double-sided, 16.54 x 23.39 inches Think "Chicago architecture" and most likely concrete doesn't spring to mind. Brick, as in the Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, for sure. And steel, of course, in the towers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his followers. But think deeper: Frank Lloyd Wright designed the masterful Unity Temple in Oak Park, which left its concrete frame exposed. And before his influential 860-880 Lake Shore Drive apartment towers, Mies built the Promontory Apartments in Hyde Park, which likewise exposed its concrete structure. Although these two concrete buildings are not included in Concrete Chicago Map , they signal that the material was not completely alien to the Windy City. It would take architects working in the 1960s and later — those looking to move beyond the restrictions of these two, ever-present giants — to fully explore concrete's potential across Chicago and its sub...