A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Earlier today I was browsing useful + agreeable's archives and was struck by a few images that all happen to be in Chile. Check out their archives yourself for much, much more non-Chilean stuff.

As part of its exhibition opening Friday, Leonardo da Vinci: Man, Inventor, Genius , the Museum of Science and Industry features fifteen of the exhibit's forty Modern-Day Leonardos online. The website explains, [Da Vinci's] willingness to go against accepted beliefs in his fearless quest for knowledge; his pursuit of truth without bias; and his belief that in even the smallest parts of nature we find the blueprints for amazing technologies echo in the work of today's leading scientists and engineers. Of these fifteen "Leos", two are related to architecture. Santiago Calatrava "Combining art, science, technology, and architecture, his designs twist, lean provocatively or look like they could take flight at any moment." William McDonough "WM + P'’s innovative and ecologically sound design solutions have proven to be good for the bottom line, as well as for people and the environment." When I think of da Vinci, I think of his broad range of a...

Here's a visual tour of the Novy Dvur Monastery west of Prague in the Czech Republic. An estate was acquired for the new Cisterian monastery, which included a Baroque manor house and three agricultural wings framing a courtyard. The new monastery was designed by John Pawson , an appropriate choice for a monastic order with an historic "emphasis on the quality of light and proportion, on simple, pared down elevations, restrained detailing and spatial clarity." Pawson's scheme preserves the Baroque manor, while replacing the three agricultural wings with new construction built upon the old footprints. The pared down elevations and space of the new Church is apparent in these drawings. The existing buildings were extremely deteriorated, requiring extensive restoration -- carried out by Atelier Soukup -- and helping to determine what could be reused and what would need to be demolished. Since construction started with the manor house restoration, b...

I found out about this installation by Jasper de Haan over at Dexigner. Blue Darkroom is a "spatial installation in a room whose walls are coated with phosphorescent paint," on display now in NAI's Nest gallery -- "a simply designed gallery for solo presentations measuring 15m2 (160sf), where each six weeks a different artist, architect or designer shows personal work" -- until May 6. The eerie and cloudy effect portrayed in the photograph above recalls the loss of detail and depth of Diller + Scofidio's Blur Building in Switzerland, below. While the latter uses an undefined boundary (misted droplets of water) to disorient the visitor, the former works within a well-defined boundary (15m2 room) in a manner that appears to create the same effect.

And the trees are getting frisky.

Architecturally, there's only one really big bit of news today. In a rather unexpected announcement, Brazilian Paulo Mendes da Rocha has been named the 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate . The Pritzker media kit and a photo booklet of the architect's work are available in PDF format. I'm a big fan of the relatively unknown (before today, at least) architect who I've featured twice on my weekly page: :: Brazilian Museum of Sculpture :: Square of the Patriarch Congratulations Paulo!

Suggestion Box by Illegal Art. ( Amazon ) One of the projects of Illegal Art -- a collaborative of artists whose goal is to create interactive public art to inspire self-reflection, thought and human connection -- is Suggestion Box. In this project, participants carried around a white box with the word Suggestion on each side, asking passers-by to contribute suggestions without any parameters or restrictions. Naturally, the responses -- a small portion of the 1,800 initial ones featured here in the original handwriting -- are wide-ranging, from the serious like "Abolish the death penalty in the USA" to the less than serious like "People should not have dogs that look li...