A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Nelson Fine Arts Center in Tempe, Arizona by Antoine Predock, 1990 Located on the Arizona State University campus, Antoine Predock 's Nelson Fine Arts Center melds itself into the urban/desert location of the school. With the architects refusal of denying a place's physical presence, the center confronts the desert in a series of spaces that creates a procession from the open exterior to the intimate spaces of the interior. Consisting of galleries, studios, a theater, and an auditorium, access to the Center happens in multiple locations. In each case the transition from the heat and dryness of the exterior to the ultimately mechanically-controlled interior spaces is dealt with in a unique manner. The auditorium and theater entry is accessed by piercing a circular, brick arcade, which also acts as an aqueduct to deliver water to three fountains, one at the theater entry. This fountain, coupled with the subtle...

Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 2000 The first large-scale project to be built in the largest construction site in the world (post-wall Berlin), Renzo Piano 's Daimler Benz towers sits in Potsdamer Platz, the German pre-War equivalent of Times Square, giving an optimistic start to the developments at Potsdamer and the rest of Berlin. Eschewing the typical Berlin architecture of heavy walls with punched openings, Piano created a "light construction" building that seems original, yet not out of place. The office building parallels Piano's development of a personal style that finds a suitable and original tectonic solution to programmatic concerns, while becoming beautifully expressive structures. The project is made up of a tower and stepped low-scale buildings of seven to nine stories. Although the tower's ...

Villa Ottolenghi in Lake Garda, Italy by Carlo Scarpa, 1978 Built late in his career, the Villa Ottolenghi is one of Carlo Scarpa's more overlooked buildings. Located in the Veneto region of Italy, the house portrays some of the themes used in the architect's work, particularly the relationship between the natural and the artificial and the unpredictable nature of human life. And although this building pays particular attention to the craft and detailing of construction, typically the most appealing aspect of Scarpa's designs, it also expands beyond much of his other work in its attention to space, a product of site factors and practical concerns. Due to zoning regulations the villa could be a maximum of one story with a limited interior area. In response to this the architect decided to bury much of the house into the terrain, reducing the scale of the house, but also creating a unique relationship to t...

Kyoto Design Store in Kyoto, Japan by David Chipperfield, 1989 British architect David Chipperfield 's first public commission, a shop for Japanese fashion designer Issey Miyake, led to a series of similar public works in Japan, including the Design Store in Kyoto. His design ideas that focus on space, light and craft appeal to a Japanese sensibility that looks at the design of the built environment in a similar fashion. And although the built work has an aesthetic likeness to the work of Tadao Ando (especially in the predominant use of concrete, steel, glass, and wood), Chipperfield's theories about architecture are unique, particularly in their approach to the ideas mentioned above. Rejecting the typical process by which architects devise plans, and then elevations that work in concert with the plan (the generator), Chipperfield's buildings are...

Woodcarving Museum in Inami, Japan by Peter Salter, 1993 This project for a woodcarving museum in Inami, Japan, is indicative of Peter Salter's (along with fellow Architectural Association tutor Chris MacDonald) interpretation of natural forces and landscape elements toward design. Intended to accommodate religious sculpture and fretted transom screens (though also displaying wood sculpture, associated with an annual international exhibition taking place at Inami each year) the museum attempts to focus on the boundary between inside and outside by integrating with the surroundings. The illustrations at left give an indication of the strong relationship between nature and the crude, though thoughtfully detailed, structures of the museum. The permanent collection of the museum is made up of objects originally intended for domestic use. By taking these objects from their original context and relocating them in a ser...

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...