A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Accessing my Bloglines feeds earlier today, I was greeted with the message: As you may have heard, we are sorry to share that Bloglines will officially shut down on October 1, 2010. As a matter of fact, I hadn't heard, but I'm not surprised. As the Ask.com (owner of Bloglines) blog indicates , "being locked in an RSS reader makes less and less sense to people as Twitter and Facebook dominate real-time information flow." With the closure of Bloglines, I'm removing the link from the sidebar and will see about migrating the feeds elsewhere. Somehow I doubt I'll reinstate them somewhere similar, instead going with the flow and letting Facebook and Twitter drive people's intake of information.

A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Toronto by Margaret Goodfellow and Phil Goodfellow, published by D&M Publishers, 2010. Paperback, 192 pages. ( Amazon )   Toronto's so-called "Cultural Renaissance" -- part of a carefully orchestrated 21st-century political plan that guided development in Ontario's capital city towards making it the Creative City (PDF link) -- produced a plethora of high-profile architecture with big-name designers, but also less striking additions to the cityscape in and beyond the city's core. The second includes houses, public spaces, offices, retail, medical and educational facilities, the bread and butter of the city's diverse neighborhoods; the first includes notable buildings like the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) by Daniel Libeskind , the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) by Frank Gehry, and the Gardiner Museum by Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects . Bruce Kuwabara, of the last, i...

Quotes come from an american-architects.com Building of the Week feature on the Penn Music Building. Photographs of Penn Music Building by David Lamb ; photographs of Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall by Peter Vanderwalker . Two recent upper educational projects by Boston's Ann Beha Architects highlight the two predominant approaches to dealing with new interventions inside and beside historic buildings. The Music Building at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia creates "a dialogue between old and new," while the renovation and restoration of the Diana Chapman Walsh Alumnae Hall at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts blurs the distinction between old and new. Penn's Music Building roughly doubles the existing square footage, basically twinning the old building to create a new whole. The architects analyzed "the [existing] façade and massing organization, setting datum lines, proportions, heights and configurations, as a framework fo...

8-tallet courtyard , originally uploaded by openyourap . Tiered landscaping in the courtyard of the 8 House in Southern Ørestad, Copenhagen, Denmark by Bjarke Ingels Group (2010), featured previously . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Tribute in Light , seen from Midtown yesterday, a night with low clouds and fairly low visibility. I'm still amazed how effective a tribute the light installation is, be it near or far.

Mark No. 27 Mark Magazine, 2010 Paperback, 268 pages ( Amazon ) Previously I've featured a couple reviews of issues of Mark Magazine, a Dutch publication that comes out six times a year. The latest, No. 27, follows the same basic format started with No. 17: A Notice Board with images and brief descriptions on new projects is followed by a Cross Section, where completed buildings receive longer copy, but not as much depth as the Long Section, the main beef of the issue with articles on buildings, exhibitions, designers, cities, etc.; Viewpoint focuses on individual architects or firms and the Service Area concludes each issue, with a potpourri of books, products and materials. The more issues of Mark that I see, the more I gravitate to the Long Section and Service Area. Number 27's Long Section includes coverage of Peter Eisenman 's in-progress City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where two buildings are c...

Earlier this summer I mentioned Jan Gehl's new book, Cities for People . Well, a week from today Gehl will be talking about the book at the Center for Architecture. The details: Cities for People: A Talk with Author Jan Gehl CES: 1.5 LU; 1.5 HSW When: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 Where: At The Center For more than forty years, Jan Gehl, renowned urban planner and Danish architect, has helped transform urban environments from Copenhagen to New York and cities around the world based on his research into the ways people actually use—or could use—the spaces where they live and work. In Cities for People, which is extensively illustrated with over 700 images, Gehl presents his latest work creating (or recreating) cityscapes on a human scale. He clearly explains the methods and tools he uses to reconfigure unworkable cityscapes into the landscapes for people. Introduction by Chair Amanda Burden, FAICP, Hon. AIA, NYC Department of City Planning...