A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Platform 11: Setting the Table Esther Mira Bang, Lane Raffaldini Rubin, Enrique Aureng Silva (Editors) Harvard GSD / Actar , November 2018 Paperback | 7-1/2 x 10-1/2 inches | 363 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1948765107 | $34.95 Publisher Description : Platform represents a year in the life of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Produced annually, this compendium highlights a selection of work from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, and design engineering. It exposes a rich and varied pedagogical culture committed to shaping the future of design. Documenting projects, research, events, exhibitions, and more, Platform offers a curated view into the emerging topics, techniques, and dispositions within and beyond the Harvard GSD. In Setting the Table , the first student-led installment of the series, editors Esther Mira Bang, Lane Raffaldini Rubin, and Enrique Aureng Silva assemble a diverse body of work and cut it...

New Geographies 09: Posthuman Mariano Gomez-Luque, Ghazal Jafari (Editors) Harvard GSD/ Actar , January 2018 Paperback | 8 x 10 inches | 208 pages | English | ISBN: 978-145150722 | $29.95 Publisher Description : “Posthuman” signals a historical condition in which the coordinates of human existence on the planet are altered by profound technological, ecological, biopolitical, and spatial transformations. Engendering new ways of being in the world, this condition challenges long-established definitions of the ‘human’, and by extension, of the human environment. Interpreting design as a geographical agent deeply involved in the territorial engravings of contemporary urbanization, New Geographies 09 investigates the urban landscapes shaping the posthuman geographies of the early 21st century, fostering a wide-ranging debate about both the potentialities and challenges for design to engage with the complex spatialities, more-than-human ecologies, and diverse forms and habits of ...

The Function of Style by Farshid Moussavi, edited with Marco Ciancarella, Jonathan A. Scelsa, Mary Crettier and Kate Kilalea, published by  Actar / Harvard GSD / FunctionLab, 2015. Flexicover, 600 pages. ( Amazon ) Those familiar with the first two "Function of" books – The Function of Ornament (2006) and The Function of Form (2009) – will recognize the consistent format that architect/professor Farshid Moussavi and her FunctionLab at Harvard GSD have created with the third installment: hundreds of projects are explored in two-page spreads, with a computer rendering on one side and diagrams and text on the other side. This consistency allows projects to be compared and contrasted, and it enables the main functions – or effects – of a project to be grasped quickly. It's a book by students that, I'd say, is produced for other students. Practitioners might find some value with so much information packed into one book, but what is presented is elementary – the b...