A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

I'm heading to Venice to catch the Vernissage of the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale and cover it for World-Architects. In turn, this blog will take a short, two-week break. Ciao!

Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale by Léa-Catherine Szacka, published by Marsilio, 2017. Paperback, 264 pages. ( Amazon ) One week from today the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale opens to the public. To get myself in the mindset for a trip to Venice to cover the event for World-Architects, I just read this book that takes an in-depth look at the 1980 Biennale, what is considered the first true architecture Biennale in Venice (the art Biennales date back to the late 19th century). I've known about the The Presence of the Past  exhibition, curated by Paolo Portoghesi, for a while, mainly through images of the "Strada Novissima" in the Arsenale. But reading Léa-Catherine Szacka's case study of the exhibition, I realized just how narrow my understanding was – limited in large part to a superficial appreciation of the twenty Postmodern facades lining the "Strada." But the exhibition was a bit more than those false fronts, and t...

Late last month, in a post about dancers at Casa Luis Barragán , I mentioned seeing and reviewing Jill Magid's The Proposal . I saw the documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival the same day as the post, and yesterday I (finally) posted my review on World-Architects. Read it by clicking here or the image below. [Image: Jill Magid] See also a couple related book reviews on this blog and my Unpacking My Library blog: Las Torres de Ciudad Satélite Critical Spatial Practice 8: The Proposal: Jill Magid

Here are a couple photos of Tencent Seafront Towers  (2018) in Shenzhen, China, by  NBBJ . (Photographs:  Fernando Herrera ) To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos  #archidose

Over the weekend architect Will Alsop died at the age of 70 after a short illness . I'd written about a couple of his notable buildings on this blog: the Peckham Library in London, which won the RIBA Stirling Prize in 2000, and the Sharpe Centre for Design at OCAD University in Toronto. I'd actually seen the latter in person, so I wrote about it from my experience and with my photos; here are a few of those, showing the building propped above its predecessors and the view down to the shadows cast by the angled stilts. It was a jarring building when completed in 2004 and is a strong element in Toronto's architectural renaissance this century.

Here are some photos of Manna House (2014) in Los Angeles by Jeremy Levine Design . (Photographs: Tom Bonner) To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos  #archidose

Revisiting Postmodernism by Sir Terry Farrell and Adam Nathaniel Furman, published by  RIBA Publishing , 2017. Paperback, 200 pages. ( Amazon ) An architect would need to have been asleep for the past five or ten years to not realize that Postmodern architecture has made some sort of comeback. A younger generation of architects is embracing the Platonic forms, pastel colors, and historical glances of the movement that took hold of the architectural profession in the 1970s and 80s. What exactly today's neo-Postmodernism is, and how prevalent of an effect it will have on the profession, is hard to say, since the design of neo-Modern buildings — glass boxes — is alive and kicking. Nevertheless, it's hard to deny the evident appreciation of Postmodern sensibilities that is being filtered through today's technology (e.g. Photoshop) and the critical distance that comes from the younger generation not experiencing Postmodernism firsthand. Just look at last year's Chicago ...