A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Neri&Hu Design and Research Office: Thresholds by Rossana Hu, Lyndon Neri Thames & Hudson , August 2021 Hardcover | 8-3/4 x 11 inches | 352 pages | 500+ illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780500343609 | $65.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Founded in 2004 by partners Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu, Neri&Hu is an interdisciplinary architectural and design practice based in Shanghai that has established an international reputation and following. Through their innovative buildings in China, across Asia, and beyond, the firm has become a design-world favorite, collecting awards such as Overall Winner of the PLAN Award. This lavish volume, the most comprehensive monograph of the studio’s work to date, features more than thirty projects at all scales with specially commissioned photography. Based in research, Neri&Hu “anchors their work on the dynamic interaction of experience, detail, material, form, and light” rather than limiting designs to one specific style. This ethos a...

Palladio by James S. Ackerman Penguin Books, 1976 (2nd edition) Paperback | 5 x 7 inches | 196 pages | 96 illustrations | English | ISBN: 0140208453 | $6.95 BACK COVER DESCRIPTION : Palladio is the most imitated architect in history. His buildings have been copied all over the Western world – from Leningrad to Philadelphia – and his ideas on proportion are still current nearly four hundred years after his death. In this, the first full account of his career to be published in English, Professor James Ackerman investigates the reasons for his enormous and enduring success. He presents him in his historical setting but is constantly alert to his relevance for us today. The Architect and Society  – The aim of this series, specially written for Penguin Books, is to present the great architects of the world in their social and cultural environments. James S. Ackerman was born in San Francisco in 1919 and studied at Yale and New York University. Professor Ackerman lived several yea...

Architecture: From Prehistory to Climate Emergency by Barnabas Calder Pelican Books, October 2021 Hardcover | 5-1/2 x 8-3/4 inches | 576 pages | English | ISBN: 9780241396735 | £20.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The story of architecture is the story of humanity. The buildings we live in, from the humblest pre-historic huts to today's skyscrapers, reveal our priorities and ambitions, our family structures and power structures. And to an extent never explored until now, architecture has been shaped in every era by our access to energy, from fire to farming to fossil fuels. In this ground-breaking history of world architecture, Barnabas Calder takes us on a dazzling tour of some of the most astonishing buildings of the past fifteen thousand years, from Uruk, via Ancient Rome and Victorian Liverpool, to China's booming megacities. He reveals how every building - from the Parthenon to the Great Mosque of Damascus to a typical Georgian house - was influenced by the energy av...

Antarctic Resolution Edited by Giulia Foscari / UNLESS Lars Müller Publishers , August 2021 Hardcover | 7-3/4 x 10-1/4 inches | 992 pages | 1,255 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783037786406 | $80.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Accounting for approximately 10 % of the land mass of Planet Earth, the Antarctic is a Global Commons we collectively neglect. Far from being a pristine natural landscape, the continent is a contested territory which conceals resources that might prove irresistible in a world with an ever-increasing population. The 26 quadrillion tons of ice accumulated on its bedrock, equivalent to around 70 % of the fresh water on our planet, represent the most significant repository of scientific data available. It provides crucial information for future environmental policies, and, at the same time, is the greatest possible menace to global coastal settlements when sea levels rise because of global warming. On the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica, Anta...

Gesture and Response:  25 Buildings by William Pedersen of KPF Architects by William Pedersen ORO Editions , March 2021 Hardcover | 7-3/4 x 10-1/2 inches | 585 pages | English | ISBN: 9781943532308 | $60.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : “Tall buildings have anthropomorphic characteristics that encourage me to think of them as human participants in the city,” writes William Pedersen, FAIA, in the introduction to Gesture and Response .  Within this new book of 25 of Pedersen’s designs, the reader will immediately see how buildings and cities continually reach out and react to each other. Pedersen—co-founder with A. Eugene Kohn, FAIA, and Sheldon Fox, FAIA, of KPF Architects—selected these designs as emblematic of his architectural aspirations, contextual concerns, and material manifestations.  He shows how monumental buildings made from hard glass, stone, and steel can exist at a gentle human scale. From 333 Wacker Drive (1982) in Chicago to Hudson Yards (2019) in New York...

You Have to Pay for the Public Life: Selected Essays of Charles W. Moore Edited by Kevin Keim The MIT Press , 2001 Paperback | 7 x 9 inches | 426 pages | 157 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780262633017 | $55.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Architect Charles Moore (1925-1993) was not only celebrated for his designs; he was also an admired writer and teacher. Though he wrote clearly and passionately about places, he was perhaps unique in avoiding the tone and stance of the personal manifesto. Through his buildings, books, and travels, Moore consistently sought insights into the questions that always underlie architecture and design: What does it mean to make a place, and how do we inhabit those places? How do we continue to build upon but respect the landscape? How do we reconcile democracy and private land ownership? What is original? What is taste? What is the relationship between past and present? How do we involve inhabitants in making places? Finally, what is public life? As t...