A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Issue #6 of Triple Canopy is titled "Model Cities," the first of two issues devoted to "examining various forms of and approaches to urbanism, considered in relation to the current economic crisis, from the perspectives of a number of writers, researchers, artist, and architects." The various contributions are presented on a well-designed web page, formatted in a unique yet simple and straightforward manner, a mix between a slideshow and a scroll. The design and interactivity acknowledge the importance of pages in reading, even in a digital format. Of course one needs good content to accompany the quality design, and that is not a problem here. Some of the projects included in Issue #6 , with descriptions by the editors: " Index or Constructed by Way of Experiment ," by artist José León Cerrillo, is an Internet-specific, interactive collage of archetypal abstract and architectural forms, drawn from the modernist idiom and from Latin American metropoli...

Here are some photos of the CCTV and TVCC buildings in Beijing, China by OMA . Photographs and commentary are by rudenoon . rudenoon's description for the above photo: "This man lived in Hu Jia Lou Xi, Chaoyang District, Beijing, CN, and was one of the few remaining residents who resisted official displacement. He displays a court notice and two photos of cats that had been killed and wired to resisters' doors. The man's face has obviously been distorted to protect his identity. The CCTV (China Central Television) Headquarters project and China World Trade Center Phase 3 are in the background. Residents of the 15-story apartment building closest to the TVCC (shown above before the conflagration and ensuing scandal) staged a protest on Monday morning August 10, 2009 after being publicly threatened with 'forced relocation' in a CCTV statement published in the Beijing Daily, a city newspaper. This photo was taken on June 4, 2008, 6:40 AM, and it, along with more o...

As an investigation of the potential of structural wood panels and prefabrication, Architecture W created this video for presenting the house. An stop-frame Yoda "forces" the two-story house to be assembled before our very eyes. It's very refreshing to see something in cardboard that could have been pulled off in a totally computerized environment. And while the design is preliminary, the video helps explain the general plan of the house as well as how it would be assembled. And it's fun.

Conditions Magazine | Issue 0109 | 96 pages My favorite cover of these four publications features a gorilla in a spacesuit, an appropriate image for an issue with the theme "Strategy for Evolution." Magazines with themes usually have a hard time in getting authors to stick to topic, but here the editors do a good job of presenting various viewpoints on the subject from people in a variety of disciplines. (Unfortunately the editors don't do such a good job with the English copy, though I'll only mention it as something to improve on future issues.) The independent Scandinavian quarterly on architecture and urbanism features articles by architects and urbanists, but also a landscape architect, artist, engineer, and a professor in psychology. So with this wide-spanning input, what are the strategies for evolution? Primarily they deal with issues of sustainability, certainly not a surprising revelation. Nor is the role of technology in dealing with the same and other ...

Here are some photos of the Burnham Pavilion in Chicago's Millennium Park by Zaha Hadid . Photographs are by The New No. 2 . The pavilion sits next to another specially-commissioned pavilion by UNStudio , featured on my weekly page . UNStudio's pavilion opened on June 19th and Hadid's on August 4th; both are on display until October 31st. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

XS FUTURE: New Ideas, Small Structures by Phyllis Richardson, published by Universe, 2009. Hardcover, 304 pages. ( Amazon ) The third installation in the XS series finds yet another focus geared around author Phyllis Richardson's exploration of small buildings. Where the first book celebrated the ideas found in small structures, the follow-up tackled environmental issues, finding a synergy in small and green. The small of the latest looks at extreme structures, those pushing innovation via materials and technologies, those sited at "the edge of possibility." The resulting collection is a snapshot of the architectural profession eight years after the first book, where many of the same themes can ...

Reef in Manhattan, New York by Rob Ley and Joshua Stein A project that would certainly make a fitting addition to the explorations in XS FUTURES is Reef , a recent installation at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City by Rob Ley ( Urbana ) and Joshua Stein ( Radical Craft ). Taking over the roughly 900-sf (84-sm) space, the piece "redefines the role of architectural envelope by capitalizing on emerging material technology" and "creates an interior condition which reacts according to an exterior street-scape, and reasserts an active, willful role in shaping that public space." The first goal is addressed via shape memory alloys, or SMAs, "a category of metals that change shape according to temperature, offer ...