A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

"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. See my recent installments on magazines: " a bunch of journals " and " a bunch more journals ." 1: eVolo #05: ARCHI73C7UR3 X3NOCUL7UR3 | eVolo Magazine | Winter 2013 | Amazon The fifth issue of eVolo Magazine is the first with a guest editor. Carlo Aiello hands over the reigns to Juan Azulay of MTTR MGMT with Benjamin Rice. Xenoculture is the issue's theme, and its focus is on the other that dwells within; the exuberant, the grotesque, the mutations that the majority fears, or at least are wary of. It's a topic that can easily be limited to the aesthetic, but the editors insert some pretty interesting i...

Here are some photos of the Witte Kaap (2011) in IJburg, Amsterdam, Netherlands, by Claus en Kaan Architecten , photographed by Wojtek Gurak . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Three days to go in +POOL's Kickstarter bid to raise $250 grand for a "floating test lab." They're less than $75,000 away from the goal—a real nail biter! Check out the film for more information on the project. Head over the Kickstarter and buy yourself a tile !

Pomerol, Herzog & de Meuron by Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine BêkaPartners, 2013 Book: Hardcover, 140 pages DVD: All-Region PAL, 58 minutes One of the most important buildings in the rise of the studio of Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron is the Dominus Winery in California's Napa Valley, completed in 1998. The project—a long and low punctured rectangular box made of local basalt stone gabions—catapulted them from eccentric Swiss architects working on the German border in and around their hometown of Basel to eccentric Swiss architects working on the international stage. Winning the Pritzker Prize in 2001 certainly helped, but envisioning that prize without the winery is impossible. Sure, the duo won the competition for the high-profile Tate Gallery in London a few years before completing the winery, but Dominus illustrated to everybody how the architects could find solutions ideally suited to a building's program and place without ever apparently repeat...

Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in Denver, Colorado, by David Adjaye Associates, 2007 They say that a book should not be judged by its cover. The same sentiment should surely be applied to architecture, since what a building presents to the street—its facade—is never a totally accurate depiction of what is happening inside. This pertains to traditional buildings as well as modern architecture, but it is particularly pronounced in the case of the latter, particularly all-glass exteriors that reflect the surroundings rather than giving a peek inside. A building where this is pronounced especially is David Adjaye 's competition-winning design for the MCA Denver . What looks like a simple glass box at first glance is fairly complex in three places: the back of the building, the interior, and the rooftop. On approach to the building, a Cor-ten clad mass detached from the museum on one side draws one's attention. The house is also designed by Adjaye (the LN House ...

Tomorrow night PBS is premiering Herman's House , a POV documentary by Angad Singh Bhalla that looks at the relationship between convict Herman Wallace and artist Jackie Sumell. Here's the trailer: And here's the short description: Herman Wallace may be the longest-serving prisoner in solitary confinement in the United States—he's spent more than 40 years in a 6-by-9-foot cell in Louisiana. Imprisoned in 1967 for a robbery he admits, he was subsequently sentenced to life for a killing he vehemently denies. Herman's House is a moving account of the remarkable expression his struggle found in an unusual project proposed by artist Jackie Sumell. Imagining Wallace's "dream home" began as a game and became an interrogation of justice and punishment in America. The film takes us inside the duo's unlikely 12-year friendship, revealing the transformative power of art. [ full description ]

One of the most important things on the Internet (for both hosts and visitors) is the use of thumbnails to attract attention. Think of what you decide to click on through the day, and most likely links with thumbnails are near the top. This applies to articles on a website generally, but also to architects and how they present themselves on sites like Architizer and Archinect, where firm logos are prominent. (A few years ago I looked at how some firms used these thumbnails to show their own faces , but for the most part logos prevail.) So what are some of the trends in how architects brand themselves through logos? Browsing through Archinect and Architizer I found some consistencies that are presented below, though this is hardly an exhaustive list. Logos often work in concert with firm names (What acronym is formed by the name? How does the logo express what the architects and firm are about?), but the below groupings focus solely on their appearance. Given that many people will d...