A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

unité d'habitation , originally uploaded by dianavieira . Interbau Apartment House in Berlin-Tiergarten, Germany by Oscar Niemeyer (1957). To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

In a story that could only set back architects further in the mind of the public by equating "starchitects" with "cry babies," bdonline reports that "two of the world’s leading architects, Rem Koolhaas and Norman Foster, have clashed over claims of a 'remarkable similarity' between two of their most ambitious projects," the former's Rak Gateway in the Emirates and the latter's just-revealed 6sq km "zero-carbon, zero-waste" Masdar Development in Abu Dhabi. Let's see what all the fuss is about. Here's OMA's plan: And here's Foster's plan: Certainly the timing of these two square projects raises some eyebrows, though the similarities -- or at least the imagery that's being looked at -- is only the plan. I'm sure these two project "on the ground" are very different from each other. But a few thinks irk me about the hoopla, as well as the plans themselves: :: The assertion of authorship at the s...

Thomas Mayer has 69 photographs of Peter Zumthor's Bruder Klaus Field Chapel, "a concrete chapel on the edge of a field in Mechernich, southern Germany, built by local farmers in honor of their patron saint, the 15th-century hermit Bruder Klaus," according to icon . (via dezain )

stairman , originally uploaded by esmuz . A not-too-familiar view of Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

The fun: (via vod:pod ) The serious: Seminars about Long-Term Thinking ( The Long Now Foundation ): :: Jared Diamond :: Rob Neuwirth :: Stewart Brand

Meinel Optical Science Building , originally uploaded by photograph er? . The Meinel Optical Science Building at the University of Arizona in Tuscon by Richärd & Bauer Architecture , 2006 To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

The Age of Missing Information by Bill McKibben, published by Random House, 1992. ( Amazon ) In 1990 ecologist Bill McKibben undertook an experiment: watch 24 hours of television broadcast on one day on all the channels of his home's cable system (over 90 channels), spend 24 hours camped by a mountaintop near a small pond, and compare and contrast the information gained on each day. Naturally, the 24-hour cable day lasted much longer than one day, as the author needed to gather numerous videotapes from friends and colleagues and then spend weeks and months watching what could only be imagined as a lot of the same. But he patiently watched every minute (minus reruns), even commercials, and documents a frac...