A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

One building definitely worthy of inclusion in my post on Porous Masonry Walls is the Martha und Daniel Gantenbein Winery in Fläsch, Switzerland by Bearth & Deplazes Architekten. Like Herzog & de Meuron's Dominus Winery in California, the walls filter sunlight entering certain spaces. [Martha und Daniel Gantenbein by Bearth & Deplazes Architekten with Gramazio & Kohler | image source ] Bearth & Deplazes' piece for the winery is an addition to two existing buildings; together they create a new courtyard. The new building's form recalls the older buildings, with a shallow hip roof raised above the textured brick walls. [Martha und Daniel Gantenbein by Bearth & Deplazes Architekten with Gramazio & Kohler | image source ] These brick walls are infill for a regular concrete frame, but the pattern of the brick is anything but regular; circular "bubbles" appear from a distance, while up close the varying directions and shadows of the brick ap...

Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, SP , originally uploaded by pedro kok . The State Museum of São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil by Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 1993. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Former Actarian Michael Kubo is working on "a research project on publishing practices to be exhibited at Pinkcomma gallery in Boston in September 2009." Part of Kubo's research is a survey that is "intended to study the reception and influence of architectural publications for those who have received an architectural education and are currently practicing in various design-related fields." Some details: "You are each asked to list five books (architecture-related or not) that have been important to your education and/or your current practice in the field, be it design-oriented, scholarly, academic, speculative, or any combination of these. Following the selection of five books are a series of general questions on the value of architectural publications today. ... The collected replies will be used to produce a set of information graphics on the role and impact of architectural publications, for exhibition in September and possible publication thereafte...

Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, published by  Wiley , 2008. Hardcover, 272 pages. ( Amazon ) Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature by Douglas Farr, published by  Wiley , 2007. Hardcover, 256 pages. ( Amazon ) Urban Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People by Lance Jay Brown, David Dixon and Oliver Gillham, published by  Wiley , 2009. Hardcover, 304 pages. ( Amazon ) President Obama's nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package promised to spark a building boom, but one focused primarily on the construction and repair of highways, bridges, and other pieces of aging infrastructure that admittedly require attention. These short-term band-aids in the name of job creation raise questions about how the first urban president since Kennedy will address the direction of our cities and suburbs, specifically their unsustainable trends. Where few arguments...

"For Pierre Restany it was the society founded on the eternal that was obsessed with the values of permanence and materiality; today, instead, we share the understanding, matured from the 1960s onwards, that what is real is not eternal. ... The danger of contemporary culture is not the freshness of the image, its here and now, but rather its freezing, mummifying it in a form that remains immutable over time. The obstinate hope for perrenial monuments in the end testifies to a headstrong obtuseness that we have dragged behind us since the time of the Egyptians, and which consists of wanting, at all costs, to exorcise death and refuse the deeper meaning of life, which is precisely that of mutability." - Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi from New Directions in Contemporary Architecture: Evolutions and Revolutions in Building Design Since 1988 (Wiley, 2008, pp. 111) (Luigi Prestinenza Puglisi's book contains a bibliography of "50 books, 10 of which are must-haves." I don...

Here's a tour of some Dutch buildings photographed by Helioscribe . [Sabic European Head Office in Sittard by Group A ] [Smarties, Uithof (student housing) in Utrecht by Architectenbureau Marlies Rohmer ] [ WoZoCo Housing in Amsterdam by MVRDV ] [Qubic (student housing) in Amsterdam by HVDN Architecten ] [ Animal Refuge Center in Amsterdam by Arons en Gelauff Architecten ] To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Everyday Urbanism edited by John Chase, Margaret Crawford, and John Kaliski, published by  The Monacelli Press , 2008. Paperback, 224 pages. ( Amazon ) What is "Everyday Urbanism?" Taken at face value the terms point to a contradiction, the unplanned grouped with the planned. As a movement of urban design it sounds suspect, as if the everyday cannot be designed for, that it is what takes place regardless of urban design, not because of it. Or as one critic has painted it: "it is urban design by default rather than by intention." The expanded edition of 1999's Everyday Urbanism attempts some elucidation of the goals and means of the movement, while broadening its reach beyond the predom...