A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Toyama Observatory Tower in Kosugi, Toyama, Japan by Shoei Yoh, 1992 Before the New York intellectual duo Diller + Scofidio proposed a habitable cloud hovering above a Swiss lake for Expo 2000, Shoei Yoh built the Toyama Tower in Kosugi for Prospecta 1992 in Kosugi, Toyama, Japan; an "open-frame cube" utilizing fog effects to create the sensation of walking in the clouds. The 32m high structure accomplishes one of the architect's goals: for visitors to contemplate the beauty of nearby mountains, a popular pastime in Japan. Unlike Diller + Scofidio's project, where the building's structure disappears behind the mist created by miles of piping, Yoh's structure is overt. The Toyama Tower is definitely an object in the landscape. Each approach can be seen as a reflection of each culture. Diller + Scofidio's embrace of technology and its use in society leads to a d...

Velodrome & Pool in Berlin, Germany by Dominique Perrault, 1999 Dominique Perrault 's name became internationally known after he designed Francois Miterrand's last grand projet , the National Library in Paris, France. In that design he explored the relationship between building, landscape, and the city, inserting a submerged courtyard between the four "L"-shaped towers of the library. Here the landscape is brought inside the realm of the building, while his design for an Olympic velodrome and pool in Berlin, Germany, brings the buildings inside the realm of the landscape. Deriving their footprints from their athletic functions, the pool and velodrome are a square and circle, respectively, located symmetrically in a large park with grass, trees, and paths. Instead of merely placing the buildings on the site, though, Perrault submerged the interior functions into th...

Blades Residence in Santa Barbara, California by Morphosis, 1997 In the 1980's, and a couple years in the following decade, Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi created a consistent, influential body of work under the name Morphosis . Parting ways in 1991 Rotondi created the firm ROTO that explores architecture through tectonics and an alternative design process related to construction. Carrying on under the name Morphosis Thom Mayne continues to explore design on the fringe, maintaining contact with clients that enable him this freedom. The Blades Residence in Santa Barbara, California is one such design. Similar to the Crawford Residence, done when Rotondi was still with Morphosis, the Blades Residence uses a curved wall to set up the design. While the former used a circular arc to orient views toward the ocean and cradle the house the latter uses an elliptical arc that violates any ...

Park Road House in Toronto, Ontario, Canada by Donald McKay and Company, 1992 Situated in a suburban area of Toronto, Ontario, the Park Road House by Donald McKay and Company is an exercise in technology and contextuality. Standing out from its neighbors primarily in shape the house uses common materials, brick and wood, with uncommon ones (in residential applications), steel framing and metals, to create a tension within its context. The house, though, is suburban in its program: introverted with outdoor spaces oriented to the backyard. The street elevation calls attention to the entrance with a steel canopy projecting parallel to the main, three-story mass of the house. The two-story entrance volume incorporates low ribbon-windows and wood siding to help decrease the scale of the house towards the street. The rear of the house incorporates awnings, similar to the entry canopy, with large expanses of glass, steel m...

The following is an excerpt from Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn , which looks at the evolution of buildings by their users; from storefront renovations by retailers and house additions by families to the transformation of an architectural masterpiece: Britain's Salisbury Cathedral. 1754 - Salisbury's nave is 80 feet high. The original choir screen (or pulpitum) in the center foreground was at first brightly painted and had sculptures of kings in its niches with angels above them, but political events of the mid-16th-century (the Dissolution and the Reformation) removed them. The organ dates from 1661. ca. 1865 - In 1787 the famous architect James Wyatt (later infamous for overzealous remodeling) was hired by a wealthy bishop to redo Salisbury. The original screen and old organ were replaced with a new screen by Wyatt and a new organ by Samuel Green. Bright medieval painted stone walls and ...

Ricola Marketing Office Building in Basel, Switzerland by Herzog & de Meuron, 1998 The Ricola marketing office building at Laufen, Basel and accompanying text are by Herzog and DeMeuron. The new building sits in the midst of a small-scale and rustic building development of no architectural quality worthy of the name. By way of compensation, the surrounding gardens with their hedges and trees provided a wonderful environment for a transparent architecture linking interior and exterior space. We dispense with an imposing multi-storey volume and decide instead on a low-level polygonal complex which fits like a pavilion into the Ricola garden. We wanted an architecture whose external form and geometry did not reveal themselves at first sigh, but, thanks to folds in the facades, breaks up into individual components which each embrace or reflect a particular place in the garden, or manage to project it far into the building...

Musée D'Ethnographie in Paris, France by Peter Eisenman, 1999. By showing the different ways in which people represented their faces and their bodies, and the ways they used nature and negotiated with the supernatural, the museum of humankind served to cultivate universal sensitivity and render thought on our common condition more acute. -Jean Jamin Assuming that a museum of ethnography has as much right to be as, say, an art museum, defining the role of the former in a given culture is a difficult objective. Most of these museums transplant artifacts from ancient cultures to locations displaced from their origin, for example tools from an extinct African tribe on display in the United States. The tool or piece of art is dislocated from its original purpose and meaning, on view as an aesthetic object subject to aesthetic criticism. What can be learned from these objects in this context?...