A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Piranesi Unbound by Carolyn Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor Princeton University Press , September 2020 Hardcover | 9 x 11-1/2 inches | 240 pages | 193 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780691206103 | $65.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : A draftsman, printmaker, architect, and archaeologist, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–78) is best known today as the virtuoso etcher of the immersive and captivating Views of Rome and the darkly inventive Imaginary Prisons. Yet Carolyn Yerkes and Heather Hyde Minor argue that his single greatest art form—one that combined his obsessions most powerfully and that he pursued throughout his career—was the book. Piranesi Unbound provides a fundamental reinterpretation of Piranesi by recognizing him, first and foremost, as a writer, illustrator, printer, and publisher of books. Featuring nearly two hundred of Piranesi’s engravings and drawings, including some that have never been published before, this visually stunning book returns Piranesi’s artworks ...

The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity by Michael P. Murphy with Jeffrey Mansfield and MASS Design Group Cooper Hewitt, November 2021 Hardcover | 7-1/4 x 10 inches | 256 pages | 250 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781942303312 | $45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The Architecture of Health is a story about the design and life of hospitals—about how they are born and evolve, about the forces that give them shape, and the shifts that conspire to render them inadequate. Reading architecture through the history of hospitals offers a tool for unlocking the elemental principles of architecture and the intractable laws of human and social conditions that architecture serves in each of our lives. This book encounters brilliant and visionary designers who were hospital architects but also systems designers, driven by the aim of social change. They faced the contradictions of health care in their time and found innovative ways to solve for specific m...

Sigurd Lewerentz—Pure Aesthetics: St Mark’s Church, Stockholm Concept and photography by Karin Björkquist and Sébastien Corbari Park Books , October 2021 Hardcover | 7-3/4 x 10-3/4 inches | 352 pages | 235 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783038602439 | $75.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : St Mark’s Church in Björkhagen, one of Stockholm’s southern districts, is one of Sigurd Lewerentz’s (1885–1975) key designs. But unlike Lewerentz’s other famous church, St Peter’s in Klippan, no book has been published to date that constitutes a fitting tribute to this masterpiece of brick brutalism. This opulent new building monograph now fills this gap. Some two hundred new color photographs and explanatory plans, alongside essays by distinguished authorities on Lewerentz’s architecture, turn this book into a visual feast. It demonstrates the exquisitely atmospheric St Mark’s Church both as a stand-alone object and in the context of its surrounding urban landscape. Moreover, it picks out many ...

Sandfuture by Justin Beal The MIT Press , September 2021 Paperback | 5-1/2 x 8-3/4 inches | 257 pages | 22 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780262543095 | $24.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Sandfuture is a book about the life of the architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), who remains on the margins of history despite the enormous influence of his work on American architecture and society. That Yamasaki's most famous projects—the Pruitt-Igoe apartments in St. Louis and the original World Trade Center in New York—were both destroyed on national television, thirty years apart, makes his relative obscurity all the more remarkable. Sandfuture is also a book about an artist interrogating art and architecture's role in culture as New York changes drastically after a decade bracketed by terrorism and natural disaster. From the central thread of Yamasaki's life, Sandfuture spirals outward to include reflections on a wide range of subjects, from the figure of the architect in...

Sketchbooks: Collected Measured Drawings and Architectural Sketches by George Saumarez Smith Triglyph Books , October 2021 Hardcover | 10 x 12-1/2 inches | 240 pages | English | ISBN: 9781916355439 | $55.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : George Saumarez Smith, a director of ADAM Architecture, is celebrated for the elegance of his work as one of Britain’s foremost Classical architects. As a student at Edinburgh University, he belonged to the last year group to be taught the skill of measured drawing as part of the core syllabus and it would become a passion for him. Sketchbooks: Collected Measured Drawings and Architectural Sketches presents a selection of the drawings that he has made in the last twenty-five years, in a series of sketchbooks each of which is named after one of the Roman Emperors. The drawings display a supreme mastery that goes beyond technique and assumes the status of art. They constitute a series of concentrated observations on buildings from different parts of...

Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know by Michael Sorkin Princeton Architectural Press , November 2021 Hardcover | 5 x 7 inches | 144 pages | English | ISBN: 9781648960802 | $19.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : From iconic architect and critic Michael Sorkin comes a joyful celebration of architecture and city-making, told through his famous list, in one beautiful, illustrated book. Equal parts poetic, practical, playful, and wise, Two Hundred and Fifty Things an Architect Should Know presents a compelling and perceptive list of essential knowledge that Michael Sorkin composed during his renowned career as an architect, urbanist, critic, and force for justice and equity in design. In this first posthumous collection of Sorkin's work, entries are paired with 100 poignant and elegant color and black-and-white photographs, illustrations, and archival images. The handsome, foil-stamped cover and timeless design makes this the perfect gift for architects, students of...