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...

AIA Guide to Chicago by American Institute of Architects Chicago, edited by Laurie McGovern Petersen University of Illinois Press , June 2022 Paperback | 5 x 10 inches | 648 pages | 580 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780252086731 | $42.95 | "The new fourth edition of the acclaimed guidebook" ( click here for publisher's description and author bio ) REFERRAL LINKS :       Architectural Guide Chicago: A Critic's Guide to 100 Post-Modern Buildings in Chicago from 1978 to 2025 by Vladimir Belogolovsky DOM Publishers , August 2022 Paperback | 5-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 280 pages | 745 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783869224183 | €38 | "This book looks at Chicago through the prism of Post-Modernism — under the premise that this style did not cease to exist sometime in the 1990s, but is, in fact, still with us today." ( click here for publisher's description and author bio ) REFERRAL LINKS :       REVIEW : Full disclosure: I wrote a g...

The History of Architecture: From the Avant-Garde Towards the Present by Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi DOM Publishers , July 2021 Paperback | 8-3/4 x 9 inches | 528 pages | 700 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783869227139 | 28€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : What exactly gave rise to the phantasmagoric ­buildings of ­starchitects such as Zaha Hadid? How did inter­actions between artists and architects affect architectural production during the twentieth century? Which exhibitions and publications have had a lasting influence over the last century? This concise volume chronicles the move­ments and trends in architecture over the past 120 ­years. Written as a narrative but split into succinct sections, it makes for clear and compelling reading. In his pithy and personal style, the Rome-based critic and archi­tectural historian Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi explores the events and motivations that have driven the work of leading archi­tects from Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn, to Rem Koolh...

German Architecture Annual 2021 Yorck Förster, Christina Gräwe, Peter Cachola Schmal (Editors) DOM Publishers , Year Hardcover | 9 x 11-2/4 inches | 256 pages | 350 illustrations | German/English | ISBN: 9783869227740 | 38.00€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The German Architectural Annual, edited by the German Architecture Museum (DAM), has been documenting contemporary architectural projects in Germany for the past 40 years. This year´s edition of the annual presents the shortlist of 25 buildings selected by the jury for the 2021 DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany. The building reviews, written by architectural critics, along with large-format photographs, provide a deep insight into those works. REFERRAL LINKS :       dDAB COMMENTARY : At the beginning of this year the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) awarded the 2021 DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany to MVRDV and N-V-O Nuyken von Oefele Architekten for WERK12, a five-story mixed-use building near Munich's Os...

The Lost, Last Words of Mies van der Rohe: The Lohan Tapes from 1969 Fritz Neumeyer (Editor) DOM Publishers , December 2020 Paperback | 8-1/4 x 8-1/4 inches | 112 pages | 70 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783869227672 | 28€ PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The German-American architect Dirk Lohan began to record his conversations with his grandfather Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the summer of 1969. The tapes, recorded during the final weeks of Mies’s life, captured some of the architect’s very last words. They were sent to the Mies van der Rohe Archive of the Museum of Modern Art in New York after his death, though they went missing under unknown circumstances. Only an incomplete typescript remains as a testimony to the conversations. The Lost, Last Words of Mies van der Rohe presents this text in its entirety for the very first time. The conversations relayed in the typescript reveal the famously reticent Mies speaking about his own life with a level of detail, precision, and candou...

Moon: Architectural Guide Paul Meuser DOM Publishers , October 2019 Paperback | Page Size inches | 336 pages | 500 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-3869226705 | $39.95 Publisher Description : Architecture on the moon is no longer a naive fantasy dreamt up by space-flight pioneers. In fact, various building typologies for lunar architecture have emerged in recent years. Their prototypes are being tested in hostile regions on Earth and are waiting to be deployed on the moon. This book’s publication marks the 50th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon. It examines all artefacts that we have sent to the moon, from bizarre technologies to habitation modules for astronauts. This architectural guide thus offers a full retrospective of the history of lunar missions, from the space race during the Cold War through to the missions being prepared by China, India, and Israel in the present day. All of these are considered under the rubric of architecture. At the same time, ...

Architectural Guide New York: Critic's Guide to 100 Iconic Buildings in New York from 1999 to 2020 Vladimir Belogolovsky DOM Publishers , March 2019 Paperback | 5-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches | 256 pages | 270 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-3869224312 | €38.00 Publisher Description : This architectural guide brings together 100 of the most original structures built in New York City since 1999. Vladimir Belogolovsky pairs them with such nicknames as Guillotine, Peacock, Shark’s Fin, Turtle Shell, and Woodpecker. The New York-based author’s selection covers buildings realized by the world’s most renowned architects, in a period when their creations were celebrated as art, and personal styles were encouraged by the ­media, critics, and clients. The featured time span begins with the rise of the starchitect in the late 1990s, and ends in the present day. But the mission of the book is not only to document; it is also to celebrate New York’s transformative ­energy. Many of the bu...