A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Ronald Rael, published by  University of California Press , 2017. Flexicover, 200 pages. ( Amazon ) Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure by Ingrid Burrington, published by Melville House, 2016. Flexicover, 112 pages. ( Amazon ) What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower? 70 Questions That Will Change the Way You Think About Architecture  by Jonathan Glancey, published by  Laurence King Publishing , 2017. Flexicover, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) Recently I received a few books on a diversity of subjects that share one trait: they are small. Of course, small page size does not mean the ideas inside aren't grand. Even though their topics don't overlap in any obvious manner, I decided to review them together. [Border Wall as Infrastructure, Rael San Fratello Architects] The output of architect and educator Ronald Rael is varie...

Each of these three books collects a number of architecture projects—from a half dozen to over 50—that fit into particular typologies. One looks at follies, which one can argue are bound together through a certain purposelessness; another examines arts institutions; and the third presents wineries. While these three types don't have an immediate relationship to each other in terms of architectural program or function, they share an emphasis on how buildings fit into landscapes, be they relatively wild, designed, or cultivated. It would be difficult to consider follies that do not have a particular relationship to nature, for example, or near impossible to design a winery that does not have both a functional and aesthetic relationship to the acres of grapes feeding the process. What is also shared in these three books is a dependance on tourism. It is most explicit in  White Cube, Green Maze , given that many of the arts institutions featured in the book are intended to be cultural ...

Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham, published by  University of California Press , 2001. Paperback, 275 pages. ( Amazon ) The four ecologies that Banham refers to in the title of his "light-hearted and affectionate tribute to Los Angles" ( New York Review of Books ) are the beach (what he calls Surfurbia), the foothills, the plains, and the freeways. This last part is definitely an attraction for the author who famously proclaimed, "like...English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante in the original, I learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original." But Banham doesn't rest on any conviction that the automobile created and...

Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings , edited by Jack Flam, published by  University of California Press , 1996. Paperback, 385 pages. ( Amazon ) Jack Flam's collection of writings by artist Robert Smithson , who died in a plane crash in 1973 at the age of 36, separates the writings into three categories: published writings, interviews, and unpublished writings. Presented in chronological order, the published writings trace the evolution of the artist's brief career, from his early geometric, gallery works to his penultimate earthwork Spiral Jetty . The interview portion is highlighted by one conducted with Paul Cummings for The Archives of American Art/Smithsonian Institutio...