A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Part of today's afternoon session at the 2012 MAS Summit is the presentation of ideas for Grand Central Terminal's Next 100 Years . Some photos, in order of the presentations. Claire Weisz and WXY Studio: Roger Duffy and SOM: Norman Foster and Foster + Partners:

I'm at the MAS Summit today (visit my twitter feed for some occasional updates), where renderings and models for the 425 Park Avenue invited competition are on display. Norman Foster's winning design was unveiled a couple weeks ago , but I had yet to see the designs of the three other competitors—Zaha Hadid, OMA, Richard Rogers. So here they are. Renderings: Top to bottom, left to right: Zaha Hadid, OMA, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster Models: Left to right: Zaha Hadid, OMA, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster

About a month ago the Dumbo Arts Festival took place in that part of Brooklyn that is Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Not surprisingly, there was plenty of art and installations, one of which was Skylights: Dumbo by Engin Ayaz, Adrià Navarro López, Rozit Ardit and Esther Sze-Wing Cheung. I didn't make it to the festival, but for me and everybody else who missed it, here's a video of the installation and its construction: And some explanation from the design team: Skylights: Dumbo is a site-specific sculptural pavilion that utilizes ambient lighting within Brooklyn Bridge Park to show star constellations on the ground via cast shadows. The pavilion is organically shaped by site and programmatic constraints such as orientation, views and shadow paths. With its specific shape, location and perforation, the canopy is illustrates the complete star map of New York for the evenings of September 28-30th, the dates of Dumbo Arts Festival 2012. The motivation behind t...

All eyes are on Ohio with the recent opening of MOCA Cleveland . Here is a look at it and some other pieces of contemporary architecture in Ohio, photographed by Taiyo Watanabe . MOCA Cleveland, Farshid Moussavi (2012): Glass Pavilion at Toledo Museum of Art, SANAA (2006): Contemporary Arts Center (Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art) in Cincinnati, Zaha Hadid Architects (2003): Akron Art Museum in Akron, Coop Himmelb(l)au (2007): The Vontz Center for Molecular Studies at the University of Cincinnati, Frank Gehry (1999): Zimmer Stair at University of Cincinnati, Wes Jones - J.P;A (1996): Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, I.M. Pei (1995): Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Eisenman Architects (1989): To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Thursday is the opening night of the 2012 New York Architecture and Design Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas Theater, with a special screening at Time Warner Center. For a schedule of films being screened in the four-day festival, visit the ADFF website . Some of the highlights include 16 Acres (opening night at Time Warner), Coast Modern , Design Is One: Lella and Massimo Vignelli (opening night at Tribeca Cinemas), Diller Scofidio + Renfro: Reimagining Lincoln Center and the High Line , Mendelsohn’s Incessant Visions , and Modern Tide: Midcentury Architecture on Long Island .

"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with two- or three-sentence first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than can find their way into reviews on my daily or weekly pages. 1: MAS Context 14: Communication | MAS Studio | Summer 2012 MAS Context is a quarterly journal created by Chicago's MAS Studio, led by Editor in Chief Iker Gil. The main idea driving the journal is the multidisciplinary responses to a particular topic for each issue. Those responding to issue 14's theme of communication include the Center for Urban Pedagogy , Klaus , Sam Jacob , Craighton Berman , Oriol Tarragó, and a bunch of international curators. Respectively they are coming at communication from civic policy, architectural criticism/cartooning, architectural practice, illustration, sound design, and exhibitions; and that's ...

Ai Weiwei: Art | Architecture edited by Yilmaz Dziewior, published by Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2011. Hardcover, 150 pages. ( Amazon ) As early as 2006 the well-known Chinese artist Ai Weiwei mentioned through his blog that he did not wish to pursue architecture anymore. Two years later the Olympics in Beijing were held, centered about the " Bird's Nest " stadium designed by Herzog & de Meuron with Ai Weiwei. That year supposedly saw his last architectural engagement (the Serpentine Pavilion, also designed with Herzog & de Meuron this year, is somewhere between art and architecture, so probably excluded). It may not seem like much for an artist to make this sort of proclamation, but according to texts in this book on Ai Weiwei's art and architecture, he had been involved with roughly 60 buildings completed before the Olympics. This number is high for a practicing architect but extremely high for an artist. Yes, Ai Weiwei's involvement was typ...