A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Chile 74 of 245 , originally uploaded by John (& Beth) Zacherle . Bicentennial Room in the Chilean National Library in Santiago Chile by A+F Arquitectos, 2009. See Arch Daily for information on the project. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

My first thought upon seeing mention of the ULI Amanda Burden Urban Open Space Award , which " celebrates and promotes vibrant, successful urban open spaces by annually recognizing and rewarding an outstanding example of a public destination that has enriched and revitalized its surrounding community," I figured the The High Line would be a no-contest winner. But taking a look at the rules I noticed that projects must "h ave been open to the public for at least one year and no more than ten years" (my emphasis). Section 1 of the High Line opened in June last year, making it ineligible for the $10,000 award " made possible through the generous contribution of Amanda Burden, New York City Planning Commissioner. " Another New York project unfortunately not eligible due to the same restrictions is the West Harlem Waterfront by W Architecture . It is a much less well-known park but one with as strong an impact on its community as the High Line. So what Nor...

fwmsh-27 , originally uploaded by Fort Worth Museum of Science and History . Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in Fort Worth, Texas by Legorreta + Legorreta, 2009. Photograph is by Kevin Buchanan for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which has building information on its web site and a flickr set with more of his photos. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Just found out about Minds in the Gutter: a call for submissions . Sounds like a good idea for a competition, applicable well beyond New York City's boundaries. Every time it rains in New York City, our combined sewer system gobbles up stormwater running off all hard surfaces - roadways, sidewalks, rooftops and parking lots - into the same network of pipes that carry our sewage. This system quickly reaches capacity, and the stormwater and sewage overflow into local waterways on the order of 27 billion gallons per year. This limits how New Yorkers can safely access the waterfront, and impairs our estuary ecosystem. It’s also a waste! Almost 30% of NYC’s surface is made of streets and sidewalks that contribute to this problem. DESIGN QUESTION: How do we utilize the existing 6K miles of roadway and accompanying 12K miles of sidewalk as an opportunity for stormwater management? The majority of roads are crowned, water flows some distance along a gutter adjacent to sidewalks and existi...

Stuttgart , originally uploaded by arne boell . Z-UP in Stuttgart, Germany by Architekturbüro Wolfgang Kergaßner , 2009. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Yesterday The Architect's Newspaper announced that the Director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture , Jospeh Grimma will be leaving his position to return to Europe. Storefront's web page confirms this and gives details on the search for his replacement (send your CV and letter of interest to them by February 7th if you're interested). This news comes only a few days after the Cooper-Hewitt announced their new Director, Bill Moggridge, "designer of the first laptop computer in 1980 and co-founder of IDEO , the renowned innovation and design firm." And last month The Architect's Newspaper also broke the story that Olympia Kazi is taking over as Executive Director at the Van Alen Institute , leaving the same post at the Institute for Urban Design . Neither organization's web page mentions this shift (IUD still lists Olympia as Executive Director under Staff and the Van Alen lists Joan Ockman as Interim Director under the same). Olympia's move ...

Frank Gehry: The Houses by Mildred Friedman, published by  Rizzoli , 2009. Hardcover, 272 pages. ( Amazon ) The same year that the Guggenheim opened in Bilbao I splurged on Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works by Francesco Dal Co and Kurt W. Forster. After the book received an update six years later I couldn't help think that publishers put out so-called monographs to make money many times over on basically the same product. Cynicism aside, the subsequent publication points out how monographs that call themselves complete works aren't really "complete" until the architect has stopped designing buildings, usually the result of death. This collection of houses by the Pritzker Prize-winning archi...