A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu edited by William S. Saunders, published by  Birkhäuser , 2012. Hardcover, 256 pages. ( Amazon ) Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City edited by Terreform, published by  UR (Urban Research) , 2018. Paperback, 300 pages. ( Amazon ) One of the most memorable crits I attended during the World Architecture Festival a couple weeks ago was Turenscape's presentation of Puyangjiang River Corridor , which involved the demolition of the channelized river's concrete embankments and subsequent "softening and remediating" of the 10-mile-long river corridor. Even though the concrete-lined river sprouted industrial uses along its banks, Turenscape convinced the city's mayor to remove the concrete and the industry in order to bring the river back to life. How, the jury asked the designer from Turenscape, did they manage to do that? "Six months of drinking with the...

A Feeling of History by Peter Zumthor, Mari Lending, published by  Scheidegger & Spiess , 2018. Paperback, 80 pages. ( Amazon ) Swiss architect Peter Zumthor finishes buildings so sporadically that the presence of each in various strands of architectural communication lasts years rather than days or weeks. It was five years, for instance, between two recently completed works: the Steilneset Memorial (2011) and the Allmannajuvet Zinc Mining Museum (2016), both in Norway. When I saw Zumthor speak with Paul Goldberger at the Guggenheim in February 2017, these were the two projects Zumthor focused on. In general, discussions around these and other Zumthor projects unfold over time, unlike projects by prolific firms such as BIG or Kengo Kuma Associates, where lots of attention follows an opening, only to give way quickly to the next project's completion. In turn, Zumthor's slowness invites interviews — but ones that play out over time rather than ones that take place in o...

The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century  by Mark Lamster Little Brown, 2018 Hardcover, 528 pages Mark Lamster had me in the Prologue. The Dallas Morning News architecture critic begins his biography of Philip Johnson on the famous architect's death bed. Like his iconic Glass House from 1949, Johnson's life was full of myth, arising from his architecture, his words, and his actions — all of them controversial throughout his many decades. But Lamster opens  The Man in the Glass House  by focusing on Johnson's humanity: his ill health, his difficulty in eating, the list of drugs he took to prolong his life, the tai chi master that came to the house a few days a week. When Johnson dies on the last page of the Prologue, I actually shed a tear; not out of sadness for Johnson's passing, which happened in January 2005 just shy of his 99th birthday, but because of Lamster's sensitive and eloquent portrayal of it. The Prologue's...

Exposed Architecture: Exhibitions, Interludes and Essays by LIGA Park Books, 2018 Paperback, 312 pages Five years ago, coinciding with a couple conferences on architectural exhibitions, I did a short survey of venues devoted to architecture for World-Architects. With only eleven institutions, the survey was far from comprehensive, though it made up for this with a diversity of locales and approaches to displaying architecture. One of the youngest – two years old at the time of publication – of the bunch was LIGA, Space for Architecture in Mexico City, which I had only marginal knowledge of at the time. An "uneven balance between lots of construction and no discussion" in Latin America led to the creation of LIGA and made it "a necessary platform to create a local architectural culture." Amazingly, the ambitious impetus of LIGA and its diverse seasonal programming (four exhibitions per year) took place in a corner storefront of only 160 square meters (photos...

The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in America by Alan Mallach, published by  Island Press , 2018. Paperback, 326 pages. ( Amazon ) Although I live in New York City, I haven't lived here all my life and therefore I like to think I'm more aware of some biases held by New Yorkers. With twelve years now as a NYC resident, following decades in Chicago and half a decade in Kansas, I've grown to understand, for instance, why people here are so focused on the city, as if blinders shut out the world – or at least parts not deemed worthwhile – beyond the shores of the five boroughs. Not as cliché or hyperbolic is the way the media in NYC shapes issues well beyond the city, something natives might not be so aware of. Take gentrification, a very real issue for residents of lower-income neighborhoods that witness rezonings, public works improvements, widespread development, and then displacement. With rising rents, stagnant wages for working classes, and rising inequality, ...

Michigan Modern: An Architectural Legacy by Brian D. Conway with photographs by James Haefner, published by  Visual Profile Books , 2018. Hardcover, 300 pages. ( Amazon ) [Eero Saarinen's General Motors Technical Center (1956) graces the cover.] When thinking "modern architecture" what places come to mind? In the United States, at least, it's probably the Chicago Loop's commercial architecture, or Southern California's residential architecture, or even Columbus, Indiana's surprising density of modern architecture of all types. But Michigan? Most likely that doesn't bubble to the top. Yet even a cursory glance at this lovely coffee table book of 34 buildings in Michigan from the late 1920s to earlier this decade reveals that is a huge oversight. The state -- or at least concentrated portions of its southern half -- is crammed with some amazing modern architecture. [Frank Lloyd Wright's Dorothy Turkel House (1957) is one of the book's ma...

TEN Arquitectos/Enrique Norten: Lines of Investigation by Enrique Norten, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2017. Hardcover, 320 pages. ( Amazon ) Although the when and where are hazy, the first time I learned about the architecture of Enrique Norten it was definitely  Televisa Edificio de Servicios , which won the first Mies van der Rohe Award for Latin American Architecture back in 1998. It is a relatively early work for the Mexican architect, and although the curved form of the award-winning building is echoed in other projects (e.g. Escuela Nacional de Teatro , also in Mexico City), the buildings of Enrique Norten and TEN Arquitectos are a diverse bunch, sharing a strong understanding of tectonics and a formal bravado that are appropriate to every given site. My appreciation of Norten's work was carried through to last decade, when I was writing my Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture  and when Norten had expanded his firm to N...

Pictures of the Floating Microcosm: New Representations of Japanese Architecture by Olivier Meystre, published by  Park Books , 2017. Hardcover, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) It's hard to deny the appeal of drawings by Japanese architects. I've succumbed, for instance, to the intricate perspective sections and plans of Atelier Bow-Wow and "Architectural Ethnography," the Japanese exhibition at this year's Venice Architecture Biennale, which was co-curated by one-half of Atelier Bow-Wow and focused on drawings by architects and non-architects alike. The two-dimensional output of Japanese architects in the last two decades is evident through their high level of detail, lack of hierarchy in lines, abundance of white space, and sometimes cartoonish qualities. But why is it like this and what are these drawings trying to express? These and other questions are addressed by Olivier Meystre in his analytical, accessible, and lavishly illustrated study on drawings and model...

Sun Path House and Other Cosmic Architectures by Christian Wassmann, published by  Koenig Books , 2017. Hardcover, 136 pages. ( Amazon ) A few pages into this case study of Christian Wassmann's Sun Path House  -- a freestanding backyard addition to a house in Miami Beach -- is the architect's sketch of the Great Samrat Yantra in Jaipur, India. Wassmann description of the astronomical observatory makes it clear it had a strong influence on him, both during his education, when he saw photos in a book, and at the beginning of his practice , when he visited it in person. Therefore, the link between the 18th-century sundial in India and Wassmann's aptly named Sun Path House, which is anchored -- literally and figuratively -- by a curved concrete wall that traces the arc of the sun on the summer solstice, is readily apparent. But another earlier project comes to the fore in my mind: Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye. [Spread from Studio Christian Wassmann Studio | Image so...

Downward Spiral: El Helicoide's Descent from Mall to Prison edited by Celeste Olalquiaga and Lisa Blackmore, published by  UR (Urban Research) , 2018. Paperback, 268 pages. ( Amazon ) If any decade could be called "the driving decade" it would definitely be the 1950s. Domestically, it encompassed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which saw the federal government pay for thousands of miles of highways, many barreling through cities. In turn, buildings downtown had to be designed and reconfigured for the automobile. One bold example, which was proposed in 1959 and built five years later, was William Tabler's "Motor-Pool Hilton" in San Francisco, which wrapped a hotel around a parking garage; people could drive up the ramp and park right next to their room. But a look at the building disappoints , since the automotive aspect driving the design -- turning it into a hybrid between a hotel and a motor lodge -- is hidden. To see a true auto-architecture aro...

Cook's Camden: The Making of Modern Housing by Mark Swenarton, published by  Lund Humphries , 2017. Hardcover, 328 pages. ( Amazon ) Back at the end of 1999 I took a trip with my family to London for the millennium festivities. Each day I would venture around the city looking at architecture and then join my family for dinner at a pub near the hotel. Most of my day outings focused on newer buildings, such as the Jubilee Line stations and Future Systems' Natwest Media Center , but one of the older buildings I went to see was Alexandra Road Estate , a housing project designed by Neave Brown and completed in 1979. (It's near Abbey Road, making it a two-in-one visit for architects that are fans of the Beatles.) The project is most noticeable for the long, curving concrete terraces facing a pedestrian walk, depicted on the cover of Cook's Camden , an impressive history of modern housing projects built in that corner of London under Camden borough architect Sydney Cook. ...

Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale by Léa-Catherine Szacka, published by Marsilio, 2017. Paperback, 264 pages. ( Amazon ) One week from today the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale opens to the public. To get myself in the mindset for a trip to Venice to cover the event for World-Architects, I just read this book that takes an in-depth look at the 1980 Biennale, what is considered the first true architecture Biennale in Venice (the art Biennales date back to the late 19th century). I've known about the The Presence of the Past  exhibition, curated by Paolo Portoghesi, for a while, mainly through images of the "Strada Novissima" in the Arsenale. But reading Léa-Catherine Szacka's case study of the exhibition, I realized just how narrow my understanding was – limited in large part to a superficial appreciation of the twenty Postmodern facades lining the "Strada." But the exhibition was a bit more than those false fronts, and t...

Revisiting Postmodernism by Sir Terry Farrell and Adam Nathaniel Furman, published by  RIBA Publishing , 2017. Paperback, 200 pages. ( Amazon ) An architect would need to have been asleep for the past five or ten years to not realize that Postmodern architecture has made some sort of comeback. A younger generation of architects is embracing the Platonic forms, pastel colors, and historical glances of the movement that took hold of the architectural profession in the 1970s and 80s. What exactly today's neo-Postmodernism is, and how prevalent of an effect it will have on the profession, is hard to say, since the design of neo-Modern buildings — glass boxes — is alive and kicking. Nevertheless, it's hard to deny the evident appreciation of Postmodern sensibilities that is being filtered through today's technology (e.g. Photoshop) and the critical distance that comes from the younger generation not experiencing Postmodernism firsthand. Just look at last year's Chicago ...

WORKac: We'll Get There When We Cross That Bridge by Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, published by  The Monacelli Press , 2017. Hardcover, 360 pages. ( Amazon ) Amale Andraos and Dan Wood started WORKac in 2003 after both worked at OMA. They are celebrating fifteen years with this monograph, its title a play on the familiar phrase, "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." The title flip-flop, combined with the way the text snakes itself across the edge of the cover around "WORKac," hints at the firm's sense of humor , the playful nature of their work, and the way the duo upends conventions . The neon orange, green and pink lettering also alludes to the structure of the book: five-year chunks that hinge upon global events circa 2008 ("post-housing bubble") and 2013 ("post-oil-price crash") but also correspond with happenings in the office and in the life of the married partners (notably children and a deanship). These five year c...

Las Torres de Ciudad Satélite by Fernando González Gortázar, published by  Arquine , 2014. Paperback, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) I picked up this book in June 2016 after coming across it in a bookstore, but I didn't actually read it until this week. The reason I pulled it off the bookshelf was a screening of Jill Magid's The Proposal , a documentary film focused on the Brooklyn artist's obsessions with Mexican architect Luis Barragán, the holding of his professional archive in Switzerland, and Magid's attempt (the proposal of the film's title) to get the archive returned to Mexico. I have other books on Barragán, but I read this one before and after seeing the film since Federica Zanco, the wife of Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum and the caretaker of the archive, wrote the lengthy Foreword to the book, a historical case study of one of Barragán's most unique and exceptional projects: the Torres de Satélite , entry markers to a large development north of Mexico City...

What Is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines by Paul Shepheard, published by  MIT Press , 1994. Paperback, 132 pages. ( Amazon ) Buildings: Between Living Time and Rocky Space by Paul Shepheard, published by  Circa Press , 2016. Hardcover, 180 pages. ( Amazon ) "There is a scale of things all to do with the land , at on end of which are the forces of nature, the perception of which, at any given place, I would call landscape . At the other end of the scale are the local difficulties solved, and the opportunities opened, by our use of machines — and somewhere in between are the buildings, which, if conceived grandly and accurately enough, can extend outward to embrace each end of the scale. Landscapes, buildings, and machines." This quote falls on page 41 of What Is Architecture? and it serves as a decent encapsulation of the three subjects Paul Shepheard tackles in the popular book. The book came out in 1994, when I was in the middl...

The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion by Interboro Partners (Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca, Georgeen Theodore), published by  Actar , 2017. Hardcover, 460 pages. ( Amazon ) Back in 2011, Interboro Partners won MoMA PS1's Young Architects Program, installing "Holding Pattern" in the courtyard of the Long Island City, Queens, institution that summer. Although seven years old, the installation comes to mind when reviewing their new book,  The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion , for a few reasons: It was the first I'd heard of Brooklyn's Interoboro; "Holding Pattern" was accompanied by a mural designed by Lesser Gonzalez to visually explain the installation's concept, a diagram very similar to the one he made for the book's cover and accompanying foldout poster; and although the installation's most striking feature was the "soaring hyperboloid" of fabric over the courtyard, its most lasting impact came from the furnishings...