A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here are a handful of competitions, a mix of results and announcements. The winner of the LIVE FOREVER The Michael Jackson Monument Design Competition was announced on Friday. "Baddest" is the MJ Public Domain Countdown by fi5e from Hong Kong. It is basically a billboard version of an online countdown that "counts down to the moment when all of Michael Jacksons’ creative content will enter the public domain. In 70 years when the clock reaches zero it will play Billy Jean on loud speakers, making it the first time the song is played free of copyright." The simple design dispenses with the imagery of the King of Pop and focuses on what is shared, his music and the time when it becomes truly part of the public realm. That it can be installed anywhere -- and in any form, that it is a billboard as well as a website means it can be ever more things -- makes sense with its conceptual basis of the universality of Jackson's songs. The winner of 2009 Open Architectur...

Haus der Stille , originally uploaded by *Croz . The House of Silence at Bergen-Belsen Memorial in Lohheide, Germany by Ingema Reuter and Gerd Winner, 2000. To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Seeing Tribute in Light last night made me think not only of the events of September 11 eight years ago, but also what has transpired since then, how much progress in rebuilding has occurred. Two good sources for construction progress are The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey's (PANYNJ) helpful site with progress updates on construction and an image gallery , and Lower Manhattan.info's construction project updates . The below information is culled from these two sites. The official reports documenting progress at the site can be found in PDF format on PANYNJ's site . [Aerial view of WTC site from March 2009 | click image for expanded view with key notes] One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) by SOM Start of construction: July 4, 2004 Target completion date: Mid 2013 Construction progress: Steel erection underway. [Freedom Tower construction, August 2009 | image source ] Tower Two (200 Greenwich Street) by Foster + Partners Start of construction: September 2008...

Last week at a book launch for Norman McGrath's Architectural Photography: Professinal Techniques for Shooting Interior and Exterior Spaces , the author mentioned a new lens by Canon that he boasted would change digital architectural photography: the Canon TS-E 17mm Tilt-Shift Lens . [Canon TS-E 17mm Tilt-Shift Lens | image source ] So what makes the lens so great? Why will it revolutionize architectural photography? Both questions can be addressed with one answer: the lens reduces the post-production (Photoshop) time that is the bulk of digital photography work these days. The combination of full-frame format wide angle (104 degrees) and free combination of tilting and shifting (4mb PDF) means that vertical lines do not converge towards the top of the photo and barrel distortion is eliminated, a la the photograph below. Take a look at just about any professional architectural photographer's portfolio, and, unless the shot is a craning view of a skyscraper, 9 times out of 10 ...

Jacob+ MacFarlane , originally uploaded by kriss69 . Pavillons Quai Rambaud in Lyon, France by Jakob + MacFarlane . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos archidose

Next Thursday is the opening of The Architectural League 's two-month long Towards the Sentient City , an exhibition "critically exploring the evolving relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture, and the city." From the League's announcement : As computing leaves the desktop and spills out onto the sidewalks, streets and public spaces of the city, we are increasingly finding information processing capacity embedded within and distributed throughout the material fabric of everyday urban space. Artifacts and systems we interact with daily collect, store and process information about us, or are activated by our movements and transactions. Pervasive/ubiquitous computing evangelists herald a coming age of urban infrastructure capable of sensing and responding to the events and activities transpiring around them. Imbued with the capacity to remember, correlate and anticipate, this near-future “sentient” city is envisioned as being capable of reflexively monitor...

Window cleaners work their way down one of the bays on the west side of The Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, designed by Cook + Fox . I'm taking Labor Day weekend off. Posts will resume on Tuesday.