A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

The Work: Architecture, Urban Design, Drawings and Sculptures by Rob Krier Birkhäuser , August 2021 Hardcover (2 volumes) | 10 x 12 inches | 1,344 pages ( The Work I : 712 pages; The Work II : 632 pages) | 3,000 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783035622799 | €128 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : As an architect, urban planner and sculptor, Rob Krier has created a multifaceted oeuvre which is presented here in a comprehensive manner for the first time. After graduating, Krier first worked with O. M. Ungers and Frei Otto before setting up his own studios in Vienna and Berlin. He later taught at the Vienna University of Technology from 1976 to 1998 and as a visiting professor at Yale University in 1986. Drawing on a wealth of historical models and archetypal patterns, he developed new typologies of streets and public squares as an architect and urban planner, and was responsible for numerous urban development projects throughout Europe. These included the perimeter block development on...

MAD Rhapsody by Ma Yansong Rizzoli Electa , November 2021 Hardcover | 10-1/4 x 12-1/2 inches | 288 pages | English | ISBN: 9780847869626 | $75.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Conceived and designed by Ma Yansong, founder of MAD Architects, MAD Rhapsody documents the buildings of this avant-garde architecture firm and traces the development of their ideas through associated practice including art, research, and exhibition projects. With photographs, drawings, and models, the book highlights 23 projects from the past six years, both built and in process. Known for their “organic and dreamlike architecture” that creates a dialogue with nature, earth, and sky, MAD projects reach all over the globe.   At age 46, Ma Yansong is one of China’s best-known architects. His curvilinear, free-form, and futuristic designs are often compared to those of his mentor, Zaha Hadid. Ma’s greatest inspiration is nature; his opera house in the northern Chinese city of Harbin resembles a snow-capped mo...

OMA NY: Search Term by Shohei Shigematsu, Jason Long Rizzoli , October 2021 Paperback | 8 x 11 inches | 676 pages | 5,565 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780847869206 | $95.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Well into its fourth decade, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), founded by Rem Koolhaas in 1975, remains one of the most influential and successful practices of its kind. OMA describes itself as “a firm operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism that applies architectural thinking to domains beyond.” OMA New York, has grown from an American outpost to a full-fledged operation with its own attitudes, contributing to the evolution of the globally acclaimed office. Through a diversity of projects, the firm has transformed our understanding of the city and our evolving relationship with art, fashion, food, sustainability, and other quintessentially twenty-first-century preoccupations.   The works presented here elaborate on OMA’s philosophy...

Frank Gehry: The Masterpieces by Jean-Louis Cohen Cahiers d'Art/Flammarion, November 2021 Hardcover | 9-3/4 x 12-1/4 inches | 384 pages | 480 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9782080248503 | $85.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : An authoritative compendium on the main masterpieces of Frank Gehry, including 480 illustrations and photographs, produced in collaboration with Cahiers d’Art.   Experimenting with a range of materials from cheap mass-produced items to space-age titanium, and using 3D computer modeling as an architectural tool, Frank Gehry’s buildings are remarkable and surprising, united by the sense of movement they convey. His projects flow, curve, bend, and crumple in novel and unexpected ways, subverting traditional building norms.   From his own home in Santa Monica to the undu­lating Beekman Tower in New York, from the shining curves of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, and his most recent construction, Luma Arles, Gehry ha...

Breuer’s Bohemia:  The Architect, His Circle, and Midcentury Houses in New England by James Crump The Monacelli Press , September 2021 Hardcover | 8-3/4 x 11 inches | 248 pages | English | ISBN: 9781580935784 | $60.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The iconic twentieth-century architect Marcel Breuer was a prolific designer of residential architecture, which is often overshadowed by his early renown as a Bauhaus furniture maker and his large-scale projects. Breuer’s Bohemia surveys the houses he designed in Connecticut and Massachusetts from the 1950s through the ’70s, many of which were commissioned by a few culturally progressive clients—chiefly Rufus and Leslie Stillman and Andrew and Jamie Gagarin—who coalesced around him into a dynamic social circle. Included in this scene were prominent cultural figures such as Alexander Calder,   Arthur Miller, Francine du Plessix Gray, Philip Roth, and William Styron, and more, marking a unique intersection of postwar architecture, ar...