A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Made by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture: An Ethnography of Design by Albena Yaneva 010 Publishers , December 2009 Hardcover | 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 inches | 128 pages | 30 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9789064507144 | €19.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The book presents an ethnographic account of the design rhythm in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Written as a collection of short stories, it draws on the mundane trajectories of models and architects at the OMA and shows how innovation permeates design practice, how everyday techniques and workaday choices set new standards for buildings and urban phenomena. In these stories of invention the "Eureka!" moments are missing. They are replaced by routine gestures of model making, recycling, assembling, recollecting, rescaling. This enquiry on architecture-in-the-making is based on participant observation in the office of Rem Koolhaas, extensive interviews with architects, and photo documentation on various pro...

Building with Nature: Creating, Implementing and Upscaling Nature-Based Solutions Erik van Eekelen and Matthijs Bouw (Editors) nai010 Publishers /EcoShape, December 2020 Paperback | 6-3/4 x 9-1/4 inches | 280 pages | 200 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9789462085824 | $55.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Building with Nature offers a proven, innovative approach to creating Nature-based Solutions for water-related infrastructure that harnesses natural forces for the benefit of the environment, the economy, and society. EcoShape is a consortium of contractors, engineering firms, research institutes, NGOs, and governmental authorities. In the past decade, it has conceptualized implemented, and analyzed Building with Nature projects in several countries. These projects demonstrate the capacity to build Nature-based Solutions at scale so as to create sustainable flood protection and cultivate resilient, ecologically rich living and working environments. Building with Nature, therefore, ...

Metropolitan World Atlas Arjen van Susteren 010 Publishers , 2007 (Second Edition) Flexicover | 7 x 8-3/4 inches | 312 pages | English | ISBN: 978-9064505485 | $X.00 Publisher's Description : With its wealth of facts and clean, abstract design, the Metropolitan World Atlas is a must-buy. Despite the burgeoning interest in metropolitan growth and globalization there has been no way of directly comparing metropolises - until now, that is. This atlas offers a unique survey of global trade networks and their impact on metropolitan space. It documents a total of 101 metropolises, analysing them in easy-to-read ground plans. It also includes index numbers and tables regarding such aspects as population, density, pollution, travel time, data traffic, air and water travel and the size of Central Business Districts. Its unexpected combination of ground plans and statistics makes this atlas a unique work of reference where for the first time metropolitan areas like Beijing, Lagos, Lon...

OASE #103: Critical Regionalism Revisited Tom Avermaete, Veronique Patteeuw, Hans Teerds, Lea-Catherine Szacka (Editors) nai010 publishers , May 2019 Paperback | 6-3/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 160 pages | 50 illustrations | English/Dutch | ISBN: 978-9462084865 | $35.00 Publisher Description : The English architect, historian, critic and educator Kenneth Frampton received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the latest Venice Biennale 2018. There is no architecture student that is not familiar with the book Modern Architecture: A Critical History (1980) of this renowned historian, nor with his essay ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism, Six Points of an Architecture of Resistance’ (1983). In this last text, Frampton searched for an alternative approach towards architecture by defining the specifics of topography, climate, light and tectonics as essential to the art of building. This issue of OASE examines the canonical role of Kenneth Frampton’s concept of ‘Critical Regionalism’,...

Spots in Shots: Narrating the Built Environment in Short Film Mélanie van der Hoorn nai010 Publishers , March 2019 Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 10-1/4 inches | 240 pages | 120 illustrations | English | ISBN: 978-9462084568 | $50.00 Publisher Description : Spots in Shots explores a selection of little-known but fascinating short films made in Europe and the US between 1990 and 2017 that tell stories about architecture and urban development. Based on interviews with the filmmakers, the book asks how cinema can stir public interest in the oeuvres of architects. Among the numerous cinematic gems discussed here are John Smith’s Blight (1996); Kibwe Tavares and Factory Fifteen’s Jonah (2012); Assembly Studios’ Fort Dunlop Green (2004); The Neighbourhood’s Saxton Leeds (2008); Imagen Subliminal’s El Espinar House (2013); Squint/Opera’s Post Barnsley (2003); Jem Cohen & Luc Sante’s Le bled (Buildings in a Field) (2009); Gabriel Kogan & Pedro Kok’s Casa Redux (2014); and Jor...

Urban Literacy: Reading and Writing Architecture by Klaske Havik, published by  nai010 Publishers , 2014. Paperback, 256 pages. ( Amazon ) Well known architect and author Juhani Pallasmaa supplies the foreword to this book by Klaske Havik, a professor at Delft University of Technology and contributing editor of OASE. The choice is not surprising, since I've read interviews with Pallasmaa where he recommends that architecture students read fiction instead of books on architecture. Within fiction are found "truths" about how individuals interact with their surroundings, exhibiting the fusion between internal states and the settings of stories. For Havik, fiction is key to creating a new approach for architecture – a literary approach – that takes advantages of the descriptions of places and spaces in novels toward improving the design of the same. It's a provocative thesis that is explained through a triad of interrelated concepts: description, transcription, and p...

Building as Ornament by Michiel van Raaij, published by  nai010 Publishers , 2014. Paperback, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) Before he took the helm at Dutch website Architectenweb , Michiel van Raaij penned one of my favorite architecture blogs, Eikongraphia (Iconography), which looked at buildings united through their resemblance to other things, things outside architecture. Projects, many not yet built at the time, were given a title that made it clear what sort of building-size iconography was in place: Gherkin, by Foster and Rocks, by Mazzanti , to name just a couple of the built projects. Michiel's comments were always in-depth and insightful, but much of the fun was in seeing the sheer number buildings being designed in such a way. That was 5 or 7 years ago (the posts stopped in the middle of 2010), and today the prevalence of what Michiel calls "building as ornament" is much more widespread. It's hard to go a week without seeing a just completed build...

Book Mountain Spijkenisse: Biography of a Building by Nicoline Baartman and Winy Maas, published by MVRDV/ nai010 Publishers , 2013. Hardcover, 260 pages. ( Amazon ) Book-length case studies of buildings are great for giving more space than a monograph or magazine in explaining the history, design, realization, and in some cases post-occupancy of a particular building. But this type of book begs the question: Who writes it and who is it for? The first could be the architect (the most common), or perhaps the client, or even a freelance writer commissioned by one, both, or neither. And in most cases the answer to the second is "other architects." The answer to the first for this "biography" of MVRDV's Book Mountain in Spijkenisse, the Netherlands, is "all of the above"; and for the second it is "everybody." [Photo: Jonas Klock/Flickr] The library is part of a district in the admittedly unexceptional town of Spijkenisse near Rotterdam...

The Wrong House: The Architecture of Alfred Hitchcock by Steven Jacobs, published by  nai010 publishers , 2013 (second edition). Paperback, 344 pages. ( Amazon ) " Rope contributed in no small way to freeing the filmmaker from his obsession with painting and making of him what he had been in the time of Griffith and the pioneers – an architect ." Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, Hitchcock (1957) This quote is accompanied by seven others at the beginning of Steven Jacobs' book on Alfred Hitchcock, and it serves to reinforce the author's premise that Hitchcock is an architect and therefore deserves a traditional monograph. I doubt anybody would take this premise to mean that Hitchcock  literally worked as an architect, but the role of buildings and their interiors in his films is undeniable. Not only are the buildings he envisioned with his set designers memorable (think of the Bates house from Psycho ), but often the rooms, particularly in houses, serve to height...