A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

HYBRIDS III: Residential Mixed-Use Buildings by Aurora Fernández Per a+t , 2009 Paperback, 272 pages The third and last in a+t's HYBRIDS series focuses on projects where residential components are the driving force behind large-scale developments, after the first issue's look at high-rises and the second issue's exploration of their antithesis, low-rise buildings . Twenty projects, built and on-the-boards, are presented in a+t's consistent, graphically rich format, fitting the book with its companions so comparisons can be made across each. They are arranged in order of floor area, from "36 apartments with a medical center" in France by Hamonic + Masson to Steven Holl 's Sliced Porosity Block in China. The designs are a mish-mash of the first two books, in terms of equal parts low-rise and high-rise; not surprisingly the latter prevails towards the end of the book. In addition to the twenty projects, Fernández Per...

Zamet Center in Rijeka, Croatia by 3LHD The following text and images are courtesy Zagreb-based 3LHD ; photographs are by Domagoj Blazevic and 3LHD. Situated in Rijeka’s Zamet quarter , the new Zamet Center with a total area of 16,830 sm (180,000 sf) hosts various facilities: sports hall with up to 2,380 seats, local community offices, a library, over a dozen retail and service spaces, and a garage with 250 parking spaces. One-third of the sports hall’s volume is cut into the ground, and the rest of the Center is fully fitted into the surrounding landscape. The building’s main architectural elements are ribbon-like linear stripes stretching over the site in a north-south direction. They function at the same time as an architectural design element and as a zoning element which forms a public square and a link between the park on the north and a school along B. Vidas street on the south. The stripes were inspired by “gromaca”, a type of rocks specific to Rijeka, which the ...

PARIS-MASSENA Dwellings: F.Soler , originally uploaded by hororo . Residential building in the Massena quarter of Paris, France by Francis Soler , 1997. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

About a block from the East River and the Pepsi sign in Long Island City is the Richard Meier Model Museum. Its presence is subtly discerned by a sign rendered in the familiar typographics and abundant white space that graces the architect's monographs, web page and everything else with the architect's stamp of approval. [the unassuming front door to the Richard Meier Model Museum] Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend a press tour of the museum with the architect himself, a day before it reopens to the public for its 2010 season. Below are some photographs I shot and some commentary on the 3,600sf space featuring works from the 1960s to the present. [view of the museum from the direction of the entrance] Entering the third floor museum, the primarily wood models stand out in the all-white space. About half of the square footage is occupied by Getty Center models, from small-scale studies to a huge highly detailed, 16-piece model (foreground above) and an inhabitable g...

Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa, Córdoba Capital, Provincia de Córdoba, Argentina , originally uploaded by Federico Kulekdjian Fotografía . Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes Emilio Caraffa in Córdoba Capital, Provincia de Córdoba, Argentina by Gramatica / Morini / Pasini / Urtubey Arquitectos , 2008. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Architizer, as many readers here know , is a website that "empowers architecture" and architects by connecting them with each other and a broader audience. At its root is a Facebook/LinkedIn-esque system where individuals are given a face alongside the usual projects found on the site and elsewhere. But do the firms have faces, beyond the individuals? Well, as a way to kick start my "firm faces" feature in gear again, I browsed the site's Firms tab to see how many firms actually put faces on their logo. Below is a sampling from a quick perusal of the first 50 or so pages. Needless to say, most firms choose to represent themselves through typography, custom illustrations and the occasional building photograph. "Identity" these days is associated with things (custom logos) that are more stable than the people (architects) that actually do the work. No surprise that logos are more common, or that faces occur in smaller firms, but I like the range of...

Shanghai Transforming: The changing physical, economic, social and environmental conditions of a global metropolis edited by Iker Gil, published by  Actar , 2008. Paperback, 272 pages. ( Amazon ) Saturday's opening of the Expo 2010 in Shanghai is a perfect excuse for taking a brief look at Shanghai Transforming , a two-year-old book on the myriad ways the Chinese city is changing. Edited by MAS Studio -founder and former SOM designer Iker Gil, the book includes a number of contributions from names well-known (Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Saskia Sassen) and not, alongside photographs of the metropolis and data visualizations on the book's four area's of focus: the physical, economic, social, and environmental. The last (highly commendable for their thoroughness, clarity, and good design) are the most striking pieces of the book, clearly illustrating the dramatic urban changes taking place. One graph, for example, shows the explosion in sales of air cond...