A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here is the next installment of  "Book Briefs,"  the series of occasional posts featuring short first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that publishers send to me for consideration on this blog. Obviously, these briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than those that end up as long reviews. Ambiguous Territory:  Architecture, Landscape and the Postnatural edited by Cathryn Dwyre, Chris Perry, David Salomon, Kathy Velikov | Actar Publishers | August 2022 | 6-1/2 x 10 inches | 320 pages | $39.95 |  Amazon  /  Bookshop Ambiguous Territory began as a symposium and exhibition at the University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning in fall 2017, with the exhibition traveling to three other schools of architecture in Virginia and New York over the next two years. The Ambiguous Territory  book features the 40-plus projects from the exhibition as well as close to...

AIA Guide to Chicago by American Institute of Architects Chicago, edited by Laurie McGovern Petersen University of Illinois Press , June 2022 Paperback | 5 x 10 inches | 648 pages | 580 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780252086731 | $42.95 | "The new fourth edition of the acclaimed guidebook" ( click here for publisher's description and author bio ) REFERRAL LINKS :       Architectural Guide Chicago: A Critic's Guide to 100 Post-Modern Buildings in Chicago from 1978 to 2025 by Vladimir Belogolovsky DOM Publishers , August 2022 Paperback | 5-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 280 pages | 745 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783869224183 | €38 | "This book looks at Chicago through the prism of Post-Modernism — under the premise that this style did not cease to exist sometime in the 1990s, but is, in fact, still with us today." ( click here for publisher's description and author bio ) REFERRAL LINKS :       REVIEW : Full disclosure: I wrote a g...

When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect by Eva Hagberg Princeton University Press , September 2022 Hardcover | 6-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 232 pages | 35 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780691206677 | $33 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Aline B. Louchheim (1914–1972) was an art critic on assignment for the New York Times in 1953 when she first met the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. She would become his wife and the driving force behind his rise to critical prominence. When Eero Met His Match draws on the couple’s personal correspondence to reconstruct the early days of their thrilling courtship and traces Louchheim’s gradual takeover of Saarinen’s public narrative in the 1950s, the decade when his career soared to unprecedented heights. Drawing on her own experiences as an architecture journalist on the receiving end of press pitches and then as a secret publicist for high-end architects, Eva Hagberg paints an unforgettable portrait ...

Parks of the 21st Century: Reinvented Landscapes, Reclaimed Territories by Victoria Newhouse with Alex Pisha Rizzoli , September 2021 Hardcover | 8-1/2 x 11 inches | 356 pages | English | ISBN: 9780847870622 | $75 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Parks are essential to our well-being; this has never been clearer than it is today, and a recent surge of park development offers us much to celebrate. Parks of the 21st Century presents 52 parks in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Europe, and China that have turned despoiled and polluted land (including former factories, railroads, and industrial waterfronts) into beneficial landscapes.   Landscape architects have been referred to as “the first environmentalists,” and Parks of the 21st Century shows how parks are being designed as proactive, dynamic green spaces. The High Line in New York is an early example of how an obsolete railroad could be transformed. Opened in 2009, it now attracts nearly 8 million visitors a year. In addition to providin...

Here is the next installment of  "Book Briefs,"  the series of occasional posts featuring short first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that publishers send to me for consideration on this blog. Obviously, these briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than those that end up as long reviews. This installment features four recently published monographs in two pairs: two small ones (for architecture books) followed by two big ones. Verify in Field: Projects and Coversations Höweler Yoon  by Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon | Park Books | May 2022 | 7-3/4 x 9-1/4 inches | 360 pages | $50 |  Amazon  /  Bookshop Verify in Field , the second monograph on Boston's Höweler + Yoon , comes about a dozen years after their first book, Expanded Practice , and as the studio moves forward in its third decade of existence. In 2009, at the release of the first monograph, their most famous project was mos...

The Layman's Guide to Classical Architecture by Quinlan Terry, edited by Clive Aslet Bokförlaget Stolpe , March 2022 Hardcover | 8-3/4 x 10-3/4 inches | 250 pages | 220 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9789189069817 | $38 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : In this beautiful illustrated survey, British architect Quinlan Terry (born 1937) presents his ultimate guide to classical architecture. With intricate and lively sketches, he explains the classical orders of architecture that were created by Vitruvius around 100 AD. The tradition of building using these orders was maintained well into the 20th century, until modernism began to dominate architecture. With this book, Terry, a strong proponent of classical architecture, aims to place focus on the kind of architecture that dominated the field for almost 2,000 years in the West—the vocabulary and heritage of which is known by few today. The book contains a large number of Terry’s drawings and sketches from travels, as well as linocuts...

Vitruvius Without Text: The Biography of a Book by André Tavares gta Verlag , July 2022 Paperback | 4-1/2 x 6-3/4 inches | 250 pages | 61 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783856764227 | $30 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Vitruvius’s De Architectura , written in the first century BCE, has been revered as the first treatise on architectural theory. Since its resurrection during the Renaissance, the enigmatic text has been adjusted, refined, and redefined in subsequent iterations. This book bypasses exegeses of the text to focus on the material history of the printed editions disseminated throughout Europe. It surveys over a hundred editions of Vitruvius from 1486 to the present, tracing the power of the printed page in establishing the Roman author as an authority. Focusing on the impact of the physical objects that embody the Vitruvian canon, Vitruvius Without Text highlights how book history and architectural history cross paths while illuminating how a symbiotic relationship emerge...