A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

An online version of the National Building Museum's exhibition Liquid Stone: New Architecture in Concrete is available and is very well done and worth checking out. 29 projects are featured, broken up into four categories: Structure, Surface, Sculptural Form, and The Future of Concrete. The wide range of projects displays the almost endless possibilities of concrete as a contemporary building material, from simple and orthogonal designs to sculptural forms and treated surfaces. Many are obvious, such as any building by Tadao Ando, Simmons Hall by Steven Holl, and the Tenerife Opera House by Santiago Calatrava. But others aren't so obvious, like Alberto Kalach's GGG House and the Big Belt House by Massie Architecture , making it a learning experience as much as looking at pretty pictures. ...... White Temple in Japan...Mexican Embassy in Berlin Thanks a lot to Eric M. for the head's up on this link.

To be published in the fall, Taschen's Architecture Now! series continues with installment number three. Again written by Philip Jodidio, the nearly 600-page, $40 book will once again feature "many new and exciting names as well as recent projects by perennial favorites." Sample page; larger and more available at above link.  ( via RE.Design News )

Today's Chicago Tribune lists the " beauties and beasts " as part of their week long coverage on the Loop and its history. Patrick T. Reardon and Blair Kamin weigh in with the following top fives: LOVELIEST: 1. Monadnock Building , 53 W. Jackson Blvd. -- An unadorned wonder, with thick brick walls that curve inward and upward to suggest an Egyptian pylon. 2. Carson Pirie Scott & Co. , 1 S. State St. -- One of the great Louis Sullivan's greatest buildings, its lush, nature-inspired ornament designed to beautify the street and draw in customers. 3. Chicago Board of Trade Building , 141 W. Jackson Blvd. -- The summit of Art Deco elegance, complete with a pyramidal roof crowned by an aluminum statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture. 4. Richard J. Daley Center , block bounded by Washington, Randolph, Dearborn and Clark Streets -- Perhaps the finest Mies van der Rohe-style building not designed by Mies himself. The chief architect? Jacques Brown...

Forbes.com features the Most Expensive Homes in the Midwest , concluding that the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin) is the place to buy luxury estates at rock bottom prices. Compared to the Most Expensive Homes in the Northeast , the Midwest is a bargain, with the price range of the top ten from $10-25 for the Midwest, while the Northeast ranges from roughly $30-75 million. Not surprisingly, the majority of the houses are located in Illinois, either in Chicago or the city's North Shore suburbs. The Chicago houses tend to be large but notable for their architects ( Frank Lloyd Wright , David Adler ) while the suburban houses are much larger with acres and acres of land, typically on Lake Michigan. ( via Archinect )

The Archeworks Papers , edited by Stanley Tigerman Archeworks, 2004 Paperback, 44 pages The first installment in Chicago school Archeworks's eponymous Papers features a lecture given by Victor Margolin at the school in October, 2003 titled, "Healing the World: A Challenge for Designers." Responses to the text are given by Douglas Garofalo and co-founders Eva Maddox and Stanley Tigerman. Margolin argues that in order for design to make a difference socially it must address five forms of capital: human, social, financial, institutional, and physical. By demonstrating that market economies derive success by doing the same, he also cites social programs that use one or more of these capitals successfu...

Ini Ani Espresso Bar in New York, NY by LTL Architects,   Occupying a 350 s.f. storefront on Stanton Street in Manhattan's increasingly-trendy Lower East Side, the Ini Ani Espresso Bar posed an interesting design problem to architects Lewis.Tsurumaki.Lewis . With only $40,000 for the budget (approx. $115 per s.f.) and three months for design and construction, the local three-person firm designed and built all of the finishes, including "the cardboard and cast plaster walls, lights, curtains, door handles, cor-ten door and window frames, front sign and all the furniture," according to the firm's web page. Like most coffee shops, Ini Ani caters to both "for here" and "to go" customers. Th...

My friend Eric posted an image of a woodblock by artist Shiko Munakata, but enlarged in a rice paddy in Inakadate to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth. About 600 of the villagers participated in the evolving land-art, made from variously-colored rice plants. The aerial view reminds me of the work of Kansas artist Stan Herd , who uses crops to create images ideally viewed from an airplane. Like the Munakata work in Japan, Herd's pieces are large scale, temporal, agrarian, colorful, and collaborative, requiring more than one individual for their fruition. They are also reminiscent of ancient earthworks by Native American cultures, making each timeless regardless of their temporary nature.