A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

It's been six years since Phaidon released one of their gargantuan architectural atlases, meaning the publisher was overdue for yet another one. In 2004 they released the first, the  Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture ; four years later came the Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture ; and in 2012 they released 20th Century World Architecture . Another atlas should have come out in 2016 to stick with the every-four-years time span. Instead, we get Atlas of Brutalist Architecture , which comes out next month. [Images via Phaidon ] As boasted by Phaidon : This is the only book to thoroughly document the world's finest examples of Brutalist architecture. More than 850 buildings - existing and demolished, classic and contemporary - are organized geographically into nine continental regions. 878 Buildings, 798 Architects, 102 Countries, 9 World Regions, 1 Style BRUTALISM These spreads give a sense of what's inside the atlas – lots of photogr...

One of the highlights of a semester spent in Italy nearly 25 years ago was a visit to Carlo Scarpa's Castelvecchio in Verona, Italy. With that, I'm super-excited to learn about Richard Murphy's new book,  Carlo Scarpa and Castelvecchio Revisited , put out by his own (I'm guessing) Breakfast Mission Publishing . [Cover and spreads courtesy of Breakfast Mission Publishing ] Some description from the publisher: Carlo Scarpa worked on the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona intermittently between 1957 and 1975. It is perhaps his most important project. His work there draws on all his remarkable skills. It demonstrates how to work creatively within a building which already possesses a complex history. It is a magnificent example of his highly personal language of architecture, not least his incredible eye for detail and mastery of the crafting of materials. And it contains a museum exhibition which is as radical and timeless today as the day it opened in 1964 and has serve...

Last night I was trying to show my daughter how one book I own – the first edition of Learning from Las Vegas  – is worth so much more than many of the other books in my library combined. But instead of finding a price around $800 or maybe even over $1000  I was confronted with $74.15, "26% off a list price of $100." Wait...what? [Covers of the larger hardcover 1972 edition and smaller paperback 1977 edition of Learning from Las Vegas  by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour] Turns out that MIT Press just put out  a facsimile edition of the 1972 book by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. The first edition of Learning from Las Vegas was a large-format hardcover designed by Muriel Cooper, "but the book's design struck the authors as too monumental for a text that praised the ugly and ordinary over the heroic and monumental," per the publisher . So five years later, MIT Press put out a smaller revised edition in paperba...

A+T – publisher of books and magazines on public spaces , work places , renovations , and collective housing – has just released 50 Urban Blocks , a "set of cards containing 50 examples of how to design an urban block." Unlike previous titles from a+t, the deck of cards are hypothetical designs rather than specific case studies. Each scenario is given the same rectangular area, so they can be compared and contrasted easily. As in other a+t publications, the illustrations are accompanied by data, so each can be evaluated in terms of density, height, and other factors. I could see the  50 Urban Blocks  being particularly helpful for students as well as young architects in need of some ideas on how to move forward with a project. Although they might not be faced with such a straightforward block, the cards offer plenty of ways to think about solid/void, site coverage, and other considerations.

On Thursday evening I attended a book launch for Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective  at the Museum of Modern Art. The event, which took place in MoMA's library, celebrated the release of the huge, two-volume, 1,400-page monograph written and edited by Samantha Hardingham and published by AA Publications and the CCA . Actually calling the book a monograph is far from ideal, since the British architect built very little and the book collects a hefty amount of Price's writings alongside his increasingly influential projects; the descriptors "manifesto" or "biography" might be more accurate. Whatever the case, even though the book is large, it seemed that those speaking on Thursday were in agreement that it would be but the first of a number of overdue publications on Price. In this case, size may equate with importance, but it is does not equal definitiveness. One copy of the book was on display in the library; with only a few...

I'll admit I have a love-hate attitude toward the trend of coloring books geared toward grown-ups. Although I like coloring books, even for adults (the mix of patience, concentration, relaxation, and mind/hand skill is beneficial) their popularity means there are just too many of them – 50,450 in Amazon's "Coloring Books for Grown-Ups" category! And with so many, they all tend to look the same, even if they take on different themes: cities, fantasy, flowers, animals, etc. That said, find the bare-bones simplicity of Marc Thomasset's The Brutalist Colouring Book  appealing. [All photos by Geert De Taeye] If Thomasset, who emailed me about his coloring book and sent me these photos, wanted to be funny, he would include one or two gray colored pencils in every order. After all, what is Brutalist architecture but concrete? But just as other coloring books for grown-ups invite juxtapositions of color that could never be found in nature or whatever is bein...

Yes, the title of a brand new book from Lonely Planet is  Toilets: A Spotter's Guide , which appends the phrase: "Nature's call has never been so beautifully answered." Although it's been a while since I've posted about toilets (or 23-foot-high toilets or books printed on toilet paper ), I still contend that the quality of a building can be gleamed from how well the bathrooms were designed. If the below sample pages are any indication, the toilets in the spotter's guide are all about standalone structures and are as much about where they're found as what they look like. Book description from Lonely Planet: Loos with incredible views, lavish lavatories, outstanding outhouses ­ all are featured in this pictorial guide to the world's most stunning toilets. Whether they're high­tech or arty, amusing or amazing, each toilet has a photo and a description of its location. More than 100 restrooms to remember are featured, from Antarctica to...

Yesterday, quite to my surprise, this new book arrived in the mail: The Life of an Architect… and what he leaves behind  (note the little house at the bottom of the cover) is the print version of Mike Herman's arch. , an online comic strip "about the life of architect Archibald and his daily struggle with his office colleagues, employees, clients, contractors, civil servants, consultants, architecture critics and other people involved in the building industry." DOM Publishers' print version is just right. The horizontal format lends itself to the typically three-pane comics. And with one per page the 128-page book can be read in one sitting. The strips aren't bad either! Here's the description from DOM's website : "This title is about the life of architect Archibald and his daily struggle with his office colleagues, employees, clients, contractors, civil servants, consultants, architecture critics, and other people involved in the buildi...

As most architects know – even in today's digital age – an integral part of getting a job is a print portfolio. When it came time for me to look for a job right after graduating from architecture school, I modeled my portfolio on Marcel Duchamp's famous "Boîte-en-valise" (Box in a Valise), which the artist assembled in the late 1930s as a suitcase with "the sum of his artistic work." It included miniatures of Fountain , Nude Descending a Staircase  and Large Glass , among other works. I loved the way it opened, sat upright, and had its contents spill out. I tried to make my portfolio a similar voyage of discovery, though I wasn't nearly as successful in terms of craft and mechanics (nevertheless, it did help me get me a job fairly quickly). I bring this up now because earlier this week I learned the exciting news that publisher Walther König is putting out a reproduction of the Box in a Valise in a limited edition of 1,500 copies – five times as many ...

This one is hard to resist: the 538th issue of a+u is devoted to Louis I. Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum, presenting drawings as well as some photographs and essays by Lawrence Speck and Carlos Jimenez.

Ingrid Böck's Six Canonical Projects by Rem Koolhaas: Essays on the History of Ideas will be released by Jovis on July 28. ( Amazon ) Per the publisher's website : Rem Koolhaas has been part of the international avant-garde since the nineteen-seventies and has been named the Pritzker Architecture Prize for the year 2000. This book, which builds on six canonical Koolhaas projects [Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture; Ville Nouvelle Melun-Sénart; Maison à Bordeaux; Dutch Embassy; Seattle Public Library; and CCTV], traces the discursive practice behind the design methods used by Koolhaas and his office OMA. It uncovers recurring key themes—such as wall, void, montage, trajectory, infrastructure, and shape—that have structured this design discourse over the span of Koolhaas's oeuvre. The book moves beyond the six core pieces, as well: It explores how these identified thematic design principles manifest in other works by Koolhaas as both practical re-applic...

If any architect deserves a monumental survey of their work it is the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger . Heck, the 82-year-old architect deserves the Pritzker Architecture Prize, too. Although nothing can be done about the latter, at least for another year, April sees the release of Robert McCarter's Herman Hertzberger from nai010 publishers, a 524-page monograph with 600 full-color illustrations. For those in The Netherlands, a book launch is taking place in Amsterdam on Saturday, April 11; details are below. [Cover and spreads courtesy of nai010 publishers] Description from the publisher : Herman Hertzberger (b.1932) is one of the most important and critically influential figures in international architecture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A constant champion of fundamentally humanist modern architecture, Hertzberger is rightly regarded as the world’s foremost designer of schools, a building type he has almost single-handedly redefined. Hertz...

Walking past Greenlight Bookstore at lunchtime today a certain book called out to me: Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City is a graphic novel by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez, published by Nobrow. Here's a description of the book from the publisher, though I'd argue with the statement that Moses is "the architect who designed it all": A new graphic biography by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez recounts the achievements of one man who changed the the face of an entire city. Robert Moses: the mastermind of New York. From the subway to the skyscraper, from Manhattan’s Financial District to the Long Island suburbs, every inch of New York tells the story of one man’s mind: Robert Moses, the architect who designed it all. Now, in Christin and Balez’s graphic biography, the rest of Robert’s story will be told. [ Photos inside book from Nobrow ] Available at