A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Alcoy Community Hall in Alcoy, Alicante, Spain by Santiago Calatrava, 1995 Santiago Calatrava is known for structurally expressive designs, influenced by structure and movement in nature. The Alcoy Community Hall is no exception, but it is also indicative of another strength of his built work: their strong integration into the urban fabric in which they are placed. But where most of his structures call attention to themselves this project literally buries itself underground, reestablishing the importance of the plaza (used for the festival of St. George) while providing the city a civic hall for weddings and exhibitions. The subtle plaza design provides new paving (the pattern echoing the structure of the hall below), furniture and lighting. The paving includes opaque glass panels, which admit light to the hall during the day and illuminate the surface of the plaza at night. Entry to the hall is through either...

Cook House in Oxford, Mississippi by Mockbee Coker, 1991 The Cook House is indicative of the Mississippi firm Mockbee Coker's integration of local vernacular building forms with a personal vision of architecture. The house, actually three structures connected by bridges, relates to the trailer houses, prevalent in the rural South, and their additions. In response to the isolated nature of the rural environment, these trailers would change over time as pieces (porches, decks, awnings) were added to the original trailer. Over the course of their lives, the trailers would become a unique personal expression of the owner's lives. Similarly the Cook House is an expression of the family's lives and beliefs. Situated on a ridge on the Cook's 340-acre farm, the house is a concrete-block volume with wood-frame interior and an open-ended metal roof that gives the house its character. Oriented east-west the ho...

Teatro del Mondo in Venice, Italy by Aldo Rossi, 1979. The theater, in which the architecture serves as a possible background, a setting, a building that can be calculated and transformed into the measurements and concrete materials of an often elusive feeling, has been one of my passions.   -Aldo Rossi Associated with the Italian Neo-Rationalist movement of the 1970's, Aldo Rossi's work employs archetypal forms in an attempt to reestablish a connection with the collective memory of the urban environment. Devoid of functional considerations his buildings are abstractions of typological architectural elements (towers, columns, and gables, to name a few) drawn from his memories. From these experiential reflections comes the power of Rossi's buildings: to achieve a silence that enables them to be part of our memories as well as his. Although with precedence in 18th century floating theaters, popular during carnivals, the flo...

Parc de la Villette in Paris, France by Bernard Tschumi, 1992 Architecture only survives where it negates the form that society expects of it.Where it negates itself by transgressing the limits that history has set for it.   -Bernard Tschumi Bernard Tschumi 's theories on architecture, developed in the 1970's through gallery installations, texts and "advertisements" (left) focused on contemporary society's disjunction between use, form and social values, rendering any relationship between the three to be both impossible and obsolete. His thoughts on disjunction led to the design of the Parc de la Villette in Paris, in which he won a competition for construction in 1983. The Parc consists of 35 red follies, sport and recreation areas, playgrounds, a science and technology museum, and a music center. Tschumi was in charge of planning, in addition to the design of the follies, and superimposed three order...

WoZoCo's Apartments in Amsterdam-Osdorp, Netherlands by MVRDV, 1997 MVRDV is a part of the growing number of young Dutch architects given the freedom to build large projects in their mainland, due to the country's large population density and inherent need for housing. WoZoCo's Apartments for Elderly People (1994-97), a product of the "grey wave", provide 100 units in an area of Amsterdam threatened with loss of green space due to a large increase in density. MVRDV's solution is indicative of the firm's ability to create original designs through practical considerations. Due to zoning regulations regarding adequate daylighting in apartments, only 87 of the 100 units could fit the restricted footprint. To respect the open space on the rest of the site, the remaining units were cantilevered on to the north facade, connected to the transparent...

Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas by Louis I. Kahn, 1972 Space is not a space unless you can see the evidence of how it was made. -Louis I. Kahn Louis Kahn's client, for what was to become his most famous commission, asked for a museum with a human scale and galleries with natural light. Kahn surpassed these conditions, creating his greatest built representation of the ideas he was constantly developing and reevaluating throughout his career, mainly shaping space through the unification of light and structure. A simple composition of parallel concrete vaults, the Kimbell Art Museum (1966-72) reveals itself to the visitor before stepping inside the building, with the porticoes that seem to be a superfluous continuation of the building's vaulting. The unnecessary porches (as referred to by Kahn) define the structural vocabulary of the whole museum: basically a concrete beam (100' x 23') in the shape o...