A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Praxis is celebrating the release of its 8th issue with a couple parties. Click the image below for more information.

The Architecture League of New York is turning 125 this year. One of the projects commemorating this milestone is Architecture and The Mail , a "collaboration between Jeannie Kim and Hunter Tura, The Architectural League of New York and 1000 designers and 1000 thinkers." They propose to "produce a series of 1000 unique postcards, each depicting a single unpublished image from a relatively unknown designer, and we will send them to a selected group of 1000 influential architects, urbanists, academics, curators, journalists, and critics, who will have the opportunity to respond." Submit yours today!

Much has been written about the glut of painted concrete monstrosities that started sprouting in Chicago's River North in those halcyon days of the 1990's building boom. Lynn Becker cogently summed it up in his Chicago Reader piece " Stop the Blandness ", while also helping to put a stop to the trend. Back then, people at City Hall pushed what they thought the mayor wanted: neo-traditional brick and stone boxes. Of course, with tight budgets, high rise residential developments tended to end up as painted concrete enclosures with punched windows sitting atop massive, unfriendly parking garages, a far cry from traditional. Since then, a few things have happened reversing this trend: the zoning ordinance was rewritten with new parking requirements (among many other things), the Chicago building code developed its own energy code, and the mayor came to embrace contemporary architecture. These had the effects of, respectively, masking parking structures behind pretty facad...

Lobby wall by artist Matt McCoy with BNIM Architects . Moving In/Moving Out by Marcie Miller Gross and el dorado architects . These and more at AIA Kansas City's Allied Arts & Craftsmanship Awards 2005 .

After work last nite I headed to my local bookstore to get this month's issue of Frieze , which focuses on art & architecture. While browsing the racks, a magazine I hadn't seen stood out: the Summer Preview 2006 issue of Innovative HOME Magazine , the quarterly rag of the Institute for Home Innovation , "the premier international organization dedicated to advancing and effecting change within the shelter industry, and promoting the creation of today's 'life-homes.'" At first perusal, I thought this magazine was jumping on the Dwell bandwagon, but instead of aiming for the general public this is billed as a trade publication, geared to architects, designers, and other building professionals. Perhaps that explains the $12.95 price tag.

Last month I posted about Tikopia , a tiny island in the South Pacific. In that post I talked about its geography, history, and means of survival. This last was tested in 2002 when the island was hit by Cyclone Zoe, "one of the most intense tropical cyclones ever observed in the South West Pacific Ocean," according to Wikipedia , which also quotes statistics that "would put Zoe amongst ten most intense storms on record and the strongest ever outside of the north western Pacific." In the image above , Tikopia is almost literally in the eye of the storm. To quote Wikipedia once again: A storm surge of 5-10m was reported by residents [of Tikopia]. At least 70 houses were revealed to have been destroyed by initial surveys. Reports described devastation as "total", with almost all vegetation and man-made structures shredded or blown away, and at least two villages being completely washed away by storm surge and waves. Amazingly, no direct fatalities were...

As briefly mentioned last week , I felt the need to make a trip over the weekend to James Turrell's new skyspace at the corner of Halsted and Roosevelt, in order to experience it for myself before making any further judgment on it success. After spending a little bit of time there, I find myself in agreement with Edward, who said that the water " does not 'drown out' the noise and chaos enough ." This can be attributed to the fact that four equally-spaced openings allow access to the interior, leaving roughly half of the enclosure to be "filled" by the falling water. Furthermore, the water falls in thin streams, rather than sheets, so any visual obstruction is minimal. In terms of noise, Hugh Pearman makes the observation that the Yorkshire skyspace "appears to capture the background noises of the park." The same is true here, where the sounds of traffic are actually intensified by the raised walls. So after my visit, I find myself in agreemen...