A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

MONU #33: Pandemic Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2020 Paperback | 7-3/4 x 10-1/2 inches | 128 pages | English | ISSN: 1860-3211 | $23.99 ISSUE CONTENTS : Quarantines and Paranoia - Interview with Beatriz Colomina by Bernd Upmeyer; On Constructing a Semana Santa by Ana Morcillo Pallares; Here Not There Urbanism by Jessica Bridger; Lockdown London: Tale of the Tape by Peter Dench; Grasping for (Fresh) Air: Exposing the Inherent Conflict of Public Interiors by Dalia Munenzon and Yair Titelboim; Balco(n)vid-19: How the Pandemic Can Be Hacked by Michaela Litsardaki; New Top City by Eventually Made (Sebastian Bernardy and Vincent Meyer Madaus); Pestilential Cities - Cities as Spheres for Pathogens, Epidemics and Wellbeing by Ian Nazareth, Conrad Hamann and Rosemary Heyworth; The Great Emptiness by Carmelo Ignaccolo and Ayan Meer; Eternal Silence by Nadia Shira Cohen; Isolation and Inequality - Interview with Richard Sennett by Bernd Upmeyer; Transformation Towards Community Resilie...

MONU #32: Affordable Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , April 2020 Paperback | 7-3/4 x 10-1/2 inches | 128 pages | English | ISSN: 1860-3211 | $23.99 ISSUE CONTENTS : Redefining a Radical Social Market Economy - Interview with Jörn Walter by Bernd Upmeyer; The Architecture of the People’s Housing Plan by Sasha Plotnikova; Normal City by Christopher de Vries; Urbanism for All by Richard Florida; Can Affordability Be Flexible? by Savia Palate; The Good Fight - Interview with Anne Mie Depuydt by Bernd Upmeyer; Fair Game by Ellen Donnelly and Marc Maxey; Affordable Housing in New York by David Schalliol; Cologne, Open City by Steffan Robel; Benign Neglect by Fani Kostourou, Cecily Chua, and Elahe Karimnia; Affordable Access: the Economic Impacts of Makerspaces by Nate Bicak; City in the Making by Matthias Lamberts, Ken Vervaet, Jeroen Stevens, and Bruno De Meulder; For the Right to Occupy and Hold Ground by Ana Paula Pimentel Walker, María Arquero de Alarcón, Luciana Nicolau Ferrara, and Ben...

MONU #31: After Life Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2019 Paperback | 7-3/4 x 10-1/2 inches | 128 pages | English | ISSN: 1860-3211 | $23.99 Issue Contents : Democratizing Death - Interview with Karla Rothstein by Bernd Upmeyer; The Cemetery of the Living by Miguel Candela; With Seven Bodies in My Backyard by Omar Kassab and Mostafa Youssef; Constructing Memorial Poles as Monuments by David Charles Sloane; Ghost Life Urbanism by Jérémie Dussault-Lefebvre and Sébastien Roy; Death and Burial: In the Past Lies the Future by Carlton Basmajian and Christopher Coutts; Beyond the Grave: Conscious Consumption in Life and Death by Sybil Tong; Cemetery and Crematorium Futures by Julie Rugg; The Silent City by Nicole Hanson; You Could Be Compost by Katrina Spade (Recompose); Mourn by Nienke Hoogvliet; Rest in Pixels - Interview with James Norris by Bernd Upmeyer; Watching the Wakes of Strangers through the Internet by Andréia Martins van den Hurk; Suburban Halloween Decorations ...

MONU #29: Narrative Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2018 Paperback | 7-3/4 x 10-1/2 inches | 128 pages | English | ISSN: 1860-3211 | $23.99 Publisher Description : Understanding Urban Narratives - Interview with Cassim Shepard by Bernd Upmeyer; Narrative is the New Black - On the Death of Modern Language by Omar Kassab; Hong Kong Is Land by MAP Office (Gutierrez and Portefaix); Les Grands Ensembles by Pierre Huyghe; Bangkok Domestic Tastes by INDA, Alicia Lazzaroni and Antonio Bernacchi; Talk on the Wild Side: Moving Beyond Storytelling in Cities by Nick Dunn and Dan Dubowitz; Narrating an Analogical Urbanism: Rooms+Cities by Cameron McEwan and Lorens Holm; Storytelling “No New York” by Lorenzo Lazzari; The Grid and the Bedrock by Tiago Torres-Campos; Geostories by Design Earth; Narrating Motherland through Migrating Architectural Objects by Seda Yildiz; Right to the Narrative – Walking Interviews by Amila Širbegovic; Wild Pigeon by Carolyn Drake; Detroit’s Nain Rouge...

MONU #27 - Small Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2017 Reviewed by Claudia Consonni When reading MONU ’s issue #27 on Small Urbanism , the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape , curated by Emilio Ambasz in 1972 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, immediately came to my mind. The link between the two arose from the attention that both give to objects and small things, and their relationship to the bigger scale and the environment. This is why I want to talk about the new issue of MONU through a comparison that aims at showing the similarities between the magazine and the exhibition. [Cover from the catalogue of Italy: The New Domestic Landscape , 1972] First, a brief introduction of the exhibition is necessary to understand the importance of the objects in the case at hand, and consequently to appreciate the link with MONU . I found a statement by Ambasz particularly exhaustive in this regard: “When I started the exhibition I knew nothing about It...

MONU #25 - Independent Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2016 Reviewed by Mindaugas Reklaitis [All images courtesy of Bernd Upmeyer/MONU] Sociologist Wendy Griswold wrote in her book Cultures and Societies in a Changing World that "the social world always changes first, with culture lagging behind." This phrase highly impressed me and I started to collect pieces of evidence to prove or reject this idea personally. And while I was reading MONU's most recent issue, #25 on Independent Urbanism , Wendy’s insight was following me in every single page, treating urban environment as an expression of collective culture. Independent Urbanism focuses on countries that recently established or regained their independence, and analyses what consequences this huge social transformation brought to their cities and urban environment. In the wide geography of the case studies, starting with the Baltic countries, former Yugoslavia region and finishing with Taiwan, you ca...

MONU #24: Domestic Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , April 2016 Reviewed by Colin Billings [Cover of issue 24 | All images courtesy of MONU] This, the 24th issue of MONU , is dedicated to "Domestic Urbanism," arguably the root urbanism of the city as a coherent human settlement. It prominently features interviews by MONU editor Bernd Upmeyer with Andres Jaque and Herman Hertzberger – one of the most important and vocal humanizing figures in architecture – along with 17 other contributions from brilliant emerging practitioners and critics. Shot from the perspective of urbanism, MONU #24 exquisitely illustrates the tensions between architecture and its building. The cover artwork by STAR strategies + architecture illustrates the sacred, intricate meshworks of our inner dramas brutally cemented together by the thinnest, most minimal of buildings. Many of the contributions delve into the poetics, profound political aesthetics, or advanced experimentation with the domi...

MONU #22 - Transnational Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , April 2015 Reviewed by Iulia Hurducaș [All photographs are courtesy of MONU Magazine.] Continuing the conversation on urbanism, this issue of MONU Magazine picks up on a topic opened in MONU #8 on border urbanism. Transnational Urbanism expands the topic of trans-border relations between cities close to nation state borders, to interrogate the flux of exchanges that crisscross a multiplicity of borders. As MONU has accustomed its readers, architects, urban planners and designers, policy makers, sociologists, educators, photographers and filmmakers take part in the conversation. They make up a transnational community of researchers spanning from Rotterdam, the headquarters of MONU , to the United States, and East Asia, passing through Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. As Merve Bedir stresses in her essay, they themselves live intense transnational lives. I am a regular reader of MONU ever since my work ...

Boundaries 9: Do It Yourself Architecture Boundaries International Magazine , July-September 2013 MONU #20: Geographical Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , April 2014 As more and more magazines of various ilks cease publication each year (87 in 2013 according to one source, though over 100 started in the same period) or fold into all-digital versions, it's always good to see titles going strong, particularly in the realms of architecture and urbanism. Even with the difficulties in running print media, two titles that continue their own unique and uncompromising paths of exploration are Boundaries out of Italy, which is "entirely devoted to sustainable architecture and cooperative projects, focusing particularly on places where new developments and ideas in architecture are arising," and MONU out of the Netherlands, the self-described Magazine ON Urbanism "that focuses on the city in a broader sense, including its politics, economy, geography, ecology, its social...

Magazine on Urbanism #14: Editing Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , April 2011 Paperback, 128 pages Currently on display at the New Museum in New York City is Cronocaos , an exhibition by OMA/Rem Koolhaas that premiered at the Venice Biennale last year. The enigmatically titled show is focused on preservation, which Koolhaas and gang assert "architects...have been oblivious or hostile to." From their particular point of view this is the case, but for many architects preservation is not so foreign a consideration. Nevertheless OMA/Koolhaas aim to articulate a theory to "negotiate the coexistence of radical change and radical stasis that is our future," a commendable effort that may have the effect of making preservation cool. This latest issue of MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) apperars to be born from the idea of the exhibition. It not only features an interview/visual essay on Cronocaos, but its theme, "Editing Urbanism," asks contributors to address...

Magazine on Urbanism #13: Most Valuable Urbanism Magazine on Urbanism , October 2010 Paperback, 128 pages In my inbox this morning was an email with a link to the results of the MAS Survey on Livability , which asked New Yorkers to respond to questions about their happiness with living in the city and with its different qualities (cleanliness, schools, police, shopping, etc.). This survey is one among what must be hundreds of similar ones that range from examining a city in particular to comparing cities on national and international scales; Forbes has a list of America's Most Livable Cities , Mercer leads an international survey , as does The Economist . Each survey has its own reason for being and corresponding criteria to make judgments, but the overall impression of the quantification of subjective personal experiences is that cities should strive to for being number one, that those on top are safer, cleaner, prettier, better places to live than the rest. In the 13th is...