A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Designed Ecologies: The Landscape Architecture of Kongjian Yu edited by William S. Saunders, published by  Birkhäuser , 2012. Hardcover, 256 pages. ( Amazon ) Letters to the Leaders of China: Kongjian Yu and the Future of the Chinese City edited by Terreform, published by  UR (Urban Research) , 2018. Paperback, 300 pages. ( Amazon ) One of the most memorable crits I attended during the World Architecture Festival a couple weeks ago was Turenscape's presentation of Puyangjiang River Corridor , which involved the demolition of the channelized river's concrete embankments and subsequent "softening and remediating" of the 10-mile-long river corridor. Even though the concrete-lined river sprouted industrial uses along its banks, Turenscape convinced the city's mayor to remove the concrete and the industry in order to bring the river back to life. How, the jury asked the designer from Turenscape, did they manage to do that? "Six months of drinking with the...

What Is Architecture? An Essay on Landscapes, Buildings, and Machines by Paul Shepheard, published by  MIT Press , 1994. Paperback, 132 pages. ( Amazon ) Buildings: Between Living Time and Rocky Space by Paul Shepheard, published by  Circa Press , 2016. Hardcover, 180 pages. ( Amazon ) "There is a scale of things all to do with the land , at on end of which are the forces of nature, the perception of which, at any given place, I would call landscape . At the other end of the scale are the local difficulties solved, and the opportunities opened, by our use of machines — and somewhere in between are the buildings, which, if conceived grandly and accurately enough, can extend outward to embrace each end of the scale. Landscapes, buildings, and machines." This quote falls on page 41 of What Is Architecture? and it serves as a decent encapsulation of the three subjects Paul Shepheard tackles in the popular book. The book came out in 1994, when I was in the middl...

Zaha Hadid: The Complete Buildings and Projects , published by  Rizzoli , 1998. Paperback, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) The Complete Zaha Hadid, Expanded and Updated , published by  Thames & Hudson , 2017. Hardcover, 320 pages. ( Amazon ) Back in 1998, six years before she would win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, Rizzoli published The Complete Buildings and Projects of Zaha Hadid, featuring an introductory essay by Aaron Betsky, over sixty buildings and projects, and one spread of furniture and objects. At only 176 pages, it is a slim volume, about half as big as the latest expanded and updated  Complete Zaha Hadid , published recently by Thames & Hudson. Between the first edition and latest update there were a few more: in 2009, 2013, and 2016, when I wrote about it briefly . The number and frequency of the updates testify to the increasing output of Hadid's eponymous firm after her Pritzker Prize win, but the latest comes so soon after the previou...

Wang Shu Amateur Architecture Studio  edited by Michael Juul Holm, Kjeld Kjeldsen and Mette Kallehauge, published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art/ Lars Müller Publishers , 2017. Hardcover, 240 pages. ( Amazon ) Wang Shu: Imagining the House by Wang Shu, published by  Lars Müller Publishers , 2012. Paperback, 168 pages. ( Amazon ) Like their buildings, books on Wang Shu and Amateur Architecture Studio are a rarity. I own three books on the 2012 Pritzker Prize-winning architect, who runs the studio with his wife, Lu Wenyu; as far as I know there aren't any more. Two of the three books are published by Switzerland's Lars Müller Publishers; one collects sketches on six projects and the second presents nine projects through photographs and coincides with an exhibition of the same at the Louisiana Museum of Art. With its scarcity of color and photographs, Imagining the House  is an architecture book for architects; this may seem meaningless (aren't al...

"Old + New" is a new series that pairs two books: one old and one new. Most of the reviews on this blog are fairly recent titles sent to me by publishers, but I wanted to expand the reviews to include older books from my library. To do so I'm using this series to review new books and, when appropriate, dig out an old book and include it as part of the review. This series does not replace my typical  book reviews  or  book briefs  or my  Unpacking My Library  blog; it merely expands how I present books on this blog. Unexpected Chicagoland  by Camilo José Vergara and Timothy J. Samuelson, published by The New Press, 2001. Hardcover, 164 pages. ( Amazon ) Detroit Is No Dry Bones: The Eternal City of the Industrial Age  by Camilo José Vergara, published by University of Michigan Press, 2016. Flexicover, 304 pages. ( Amazon ) Camilo José Vergara  is an American treasure. Educated in sociology and skilled in photography,...

"Old + New" is a new series that pairs two books: one old and one new. Most of the reviews on this blog are fairly recent titles sent to me by publishers, but I wanted to expand the reviews to include older books from my library. To do so I'm using this series to review new books and, when appropriate, dig out an old book and include it as part of the review. This series does not replace my typical book reviews or book briefs  or my Unpacking My Library blog; it merely expands how I present books on this blog. Architecture in Austria: A Survey of the 20th Century edited by Sasha Pirker (Architekturzentrum Wien), Jaime Salazar (Actar), published by  Birkhäuser / Actar , 1999. Hardcover, 334 pages. ( Amazon ) Architecture in Austria in the 20th and 21st Centuries edited by Architekturzentrum Wien, published by AzW/ Park Books , 2016. Flexicover, 440 pages. ( Amazon ) Ever since undergraduate architecture school in the early 1990s, I've been a fan of Au...