A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Like many people with a lot of books, I keep track of my library with an app/website, tagging books with keywords to better filter and find them. The tags I use move from general terms like "architecture" (the most) and "fiction" (the least) to specific terms that reflect a high number of books by a particular author ("frampton," as in Kenneth) or maybe about a certain architect ("wright," Frank Lloyd). One of the oft-used tags on the specific end of the spectrum is "moma," which includes books published by the Museum of Modern Art, be it Robert Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture or exhibition catalogs, as well as books actually about MoMA, like Terence Riley's The International Style: Exhibition 15 and The Museum of Modern Art . As of today, I have 34 books tagged "moma" in my library, spanning from  The International Style in 1932 ( the 1990s reprint , mind you, not the first edition ) to  Emerg...

Imagining the Future of the Museum of Modern Art (Studies in Modern Art 7) John Elderfield (Series Editor) Museum of Modern Art , 1998 Paperback | 8-1/2 x 10 inches | 304 pages | English | ISBN: 9780870700569 | $35.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : This illustrated volume documents the entire expansion planning process including the architects' proposals, and transcripts of the various speeches, debates, and forums concerning the two-year effort to select an architect for the expansion of the Museum. Presented in this volume are the charette submissions, or design exercises, of the ten initial architects, as well as the competition proposals from the three finalists-Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, Yoshio Taniguchi, and Bernard Tschumi. After an extensive review of these proposals, the commission was awarded to Taniguchi, a model of whose design appears on the cover of this publication. 48 color and 256 b/w illustrations. John Elderfield is Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting...

Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America Sean Anderson, Mabel O. Wilson (Editors) The Museum of Modern Art , March 2021 Paperback | 8 x 10 inches | 176 pages | 185 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1633451148 | $45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America is an urgent call for architects to accept the challenge of reconceiving and reconstructing our built environment rather than continue giving shape to buildings, infrastructure and urban plans that have, for generations, embodied and sustained anti-Black racism in the United States. The architects, designers, artists and writers who were invited to contribute to this book—and to the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art for which it serves as a “field guide”—reimagine the legacies of race-based dispossession in 10 American cities (Atlanta; Brooklyn, New York; Kinloch, Missouri; Los Angeles; Miami; Nashville; New Orleans; Oakland; Pittsburgh; and Syracuse) and celebrat...

Built in USA: Post-war Architecture Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Arthur Drexler (Editors) The Museum of Modern Art , 1952 Hardcover | 7-1/4 x 10 inches | 128 pages | 190 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-1199554352 | $7.50 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : This book is the Museum of Modern Art's report on the best of American architecture today. Private houses, skyscrapers, schools, a hospital, a retail store, a chapel and a stadium are among the 43 buildings amply illustrated by plans and photographs. With the mid-century modern architecture has come of age, and American architecture in particular has come to occupy a position of special prominence in the world. The qualities that have brought our building to this preeminent position are reviewed in an introductory essay by Professor Henry-Russell Hitchcock, America's leading historian of modern architecture. Arthur Drexler, Curator of the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Architecture and Design, has provided a critica...

MoMA PS1: A History Klaus Biesenbach, Bettina Funcke (Editors) The Museum of Modern Art , October 2019 Hardcover | 9-1/4 x 10-3/4 inches | 304 pages | English | ISBN: 978-1633450691 | $65.00 Publisher's Description : Since its inception in the early 1970s, MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, has been a crucible for radical experimentation. Committed to New York City as well as to maintaining an international scope, PS1 has always put the artist at the center, engaging practitioners at work in every discipline from performance, music, dance, poetry and new media to painting, sculpture, photography and architecture. This groundbreaking publication captures the vibrancy of a long and venerable tradition that began with the legendary series of performances and events organized by founder Alanna Heiss under the Brooklyn Bridge in 1971. Organized into four main sections that delve into the former school’s rich history as an art center during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s up to ...

American Art of the 1960s: Studies in Modern Art 1 John Elderfield (Editor) The Museum of Modern Art , December 1991 Paperback | 8-1/2 x 10 inches | 184 pages | 137 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-0870704581 | $25.00 Publisher's Description (PDF): This month, The Museum of Modern Art publishes American Art of the 1960s , the first issue in Studies in Modern Art, an annual scholarly journal concentrating on works of art in the Museum's collection, on the Museum's program, and related topics. Edited by John Elderfield, director of the Department of Drawings and curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Studies in Modern Art includes essays by both Museum of Modern Art curators and outside scholars. The first issue takes as its subject aspects of the Museum's collection of American art from the 1960s and its exhibition activities during the decade. The Museum of Modern Art's collection bears vivid testimony to the richness and diversity of a...

Complexity and Contradiction at Fifty Robert Venturi (Vol. 1), Martino Stierli, David Brownlee (Vol. 2 Editors) The Museum of Modern Art , July 2019 Hardcover w/slipcase | 6 x 8 inches | 144 pages (Vol. 1), 192 pages (Vol. 2) | 350 illustrations (Vol. 1), 75 illustrations (Vol. 2) | English | ISBN: 9781633450622 | $45.00 Publisher's Description : Now available in its original edition along with critical commentary, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture is the founding text of postmodernism in architecture First published in 1966, Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture , widely considered the foundational text of postmodernism, has become an essential document in architectural theory and criticism. This new two-volume boxed set presents a facsimile of the original edition paired with a compendium of new scholarship on and around Venturi’s seminal treatise. The ten selected essays, a number of which were presented at a three-day internationa...