A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here are a few photos of Ironbank in Auckland, New Zealand by RTA Studio , the winner of a 2010 New Zealand Architect Award . Photographs are by Phillip Wong . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

The Post-Modern Reader edited by Charles Jencks, published by  Wiley , 2nd Edition, 2011. Paperback, 352 pages. ( Amazon ) The third title in Wiley's AD Reader series* is the second edition of 1992's The Post-Modern Reader , edited by Charles Jencks , a writer and landscape designer living in Scotland. Jencks is known most for articulating post-modernism in architecture through his books, penning or editing a few titles on the topic since 1977's The Language of Post-Modern Architecture . An essay from the seventh edition of that book can be found in this reader covering the post-modern in various arenas: architecture, literature, sociology, economics, feminism, and science. It is obvious from the selection of essays, excerpts, and new writings that the permeation of post-modernism across just about all areas of culture is the focus here, not just the formal appropriation of it in architecture. A new essay by Jencks, "What Then Is Post-Modernism?,...

SFMOMA Expansion in San Francisco, California by Snøhetta, 2011 Since the unveiling of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 's (SFMOMA) expansion plans in late May, responses to the design by Norway-based Snøhetta are strong yet mixed. Most notably San Francisco Chronicle architecture critic John King called it "imaginative and utterly unexpected...an inventive way to double the [museum's] size." Alternatively L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne described the 225,000-sf (20,000-sm) addition to SFMOMA's 1995 Mario Botta building as "a chiseled behemoth, ... disingenuous, impressive and amusing all at once." What each article agrees upon is that the design is preliminary and will probably change greatly between now and the anticipated completion five years from now; the architects even contend that their unveiled design is "a preview of a preview." The design fits a roughly 100-foot by 335-foot (30-meter by 102-m...

[Photos and drawing courtesy The Los Angeles Design Group | click images for expanded/larger views] The Mercantile Lofts consists of 35 "re-imagined" live/work loft residences in Downtown Los Angeles. The building dates to 1906 and is considered to be characteristic of the Chicago Beaux-Arts style, though a quick glance reveals it to more aligned with the Chicago School than the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in the same city. In other words, the building is more modern than classical, and this lobby design by The Los Angeles Design Group is a contemporary insertion fitting its progressive early-20th-century container. Spurred by the physical constraints of the existing building's walls, the architects hypothesized for the 10,000-sf lobby, "is it possible to manufacture more space without changing the size of a room?" They responded to this question in two main ways: wall graphics that "make flat walls appear deep and rich with materia...

Martin Luther Church, Hainburg, Austria , a photo by Ken Lee 2010 on Flickr. Martin Luther Church in Hainburg, Austria by Coop Himmelb(l)au , 2011. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

President Obama presents the Pritzker Architecture Prize to Eduardo Souto de Moura in a ceremony at the White House. June 2, 2011. "That's what architecture is all about. It's about creating buildings and spaces that inspire us, that help us do our jobs, that bring us together, and that become, at their best, works of art that we can move through and live in."

Garden Guide: New York City, Revised Edition by Nancy Berner and Susan Lowry, with photographs by Joseph de Sciose, published by  W. W. Norton , 2010. Paperback, 424 pages. ( Amazon ) Memorial Day Weekend in the United States is traditionally the unofficial start of summer, a three-day weekend when people hit the road to nearby places of interest. With rising gas prices and a growing environmental responsibility people may opt to stay near home on that and subsequent weekends, instead heading outside to parks and other green spaces in town. Living in New York City, there is no shortage of these types of spaces, even though many outsiders may only see the city as acres of concrete around Central Park. But as the city turns old industrial waterfronts to parks and entrepreneurs create gardens in the sky, the choices are much more varied and geographically dispersed. This guide to the city's gardens is a great little companion (only 5.8 x 4.4 x 1.2 inches) for the summer mont...