A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Oslo Architecture Triennale 2013: Behind the Green Door edited by Helle Benedicte Berg OAT, 2013 Paperback, 144 pages The 5th Oslo Architecture Triennale — Behind the Green Door: Architecture and the Desire for Sustainability —is currently underway, running until December 1 at various venues in Oslo. Behind the Green Door is the main exhibition and also the name of the catalog for OAT 2013. It is a slim volume that includes a program for OAT (green pages, as seen below) but also a number of essays, interviews, and projects responding to the theme developed by curators Lionel Devlieger and Maarten Gielen of ROTOR (with Criticat). In their foreword to the book (spread below) and introduction to the main exhibition, the curators ask: "Has the widespread use of the 'green' adjective resulted in an almost complete erosion of the meaning?" It's a good question that responds to the rampant use of the word "sustainability" and the placement of the adj...

10 Stories of Collective Housing: Graphical Analysis of Inspiring Masterpieces by a+t research group, published by  a+t , 2013. Paperback, 496 pages. ( Amazon ) Spain's a+t separates its output into magazines and books, with titles in each often fitting into series. The last of the books I reviewed was Density Is Home , which documents 37 contemporary housing projects through the usual high-quality presentations that a+t is known for. But where the drawings, photographs, and statistics help readers learn about the projects and compare and contrast them, the 10 or 12 pages per project mean that there is still room for more to be learned about the buildings. Enter 10 Stories of Collective Housing , which steps back some decades (projects span from ca. 1920 to 1980) to give in-depth case studies on "inspiring masterpieces." The spreads collected here on Fumihiko Maki's Hillside Terrace give a sense of what is included for each project. Of course there ...

Jean-Claude Carrière Theatre in Montpellier, France, by A+ Architecture, 2013 Given the 21st-century goal of reducing carbon emissions in everything from manufacturing and transportation to food production and building, architects and engineers are looking to timber structures as a means of reducing the demand for carbon-intensive concrete and energy-intensive steel. Most of the attention is being given to research aimed at high-rise timber structures, some up to 42 stories tall . But this theater at Domaine d'O in Montpellier, France, designed by A+ Architecture , illustrates the potential in smaller structures in wood. Wood is immediately visible on the exterior of Jean-Claude Carrière Theatre as a diamond-shaped lattice that is variable across the solid facades of the theater. But the use of wood goes well beyond this applied pattern—the exterior walls (tilt-up construction), floors, roof framing, interior walls, glass framing, as well as the facade are all made from...

Here are some photos of the Mannheim Multihalle (1975) in Mannheim, Germany, by Frei Otto with Carlfried Mutschler + Partner and Ove Arup & Partners, photographed by Tatsuya Krause . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

Last night I attended the opening of the Architecture and Design Film Festival , seeing The Human Scale , a documentary that "questions our assumptions about modernity, exploring what happens when we put people into the center of our equations." The heart of the film is Jan Gehl and his eponymous architecture office that is responsible for urban designs in Copenhagen, New York, and other cities around the globe. The film focuses on these two cities as well as Dhaka, Bangladesh; Chongqing, China; and Christchurch, New Zealand. The film's title indicates much of what Gehl and his compatriots promote: walkable and bikeable cities, and low-scale buildings (no more than, say, five stories) that enable often spontaneous interaction. Gehl's presence is fairly small and low-key (unlike the quippy talk he gave at the Center for Architecture three years ago), but architects from his office also chime in, providing much of the film's direction. While Le Corbusier makes...

Tonight is the kickoff of the 2013 Architecture and Design Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas in NYC. Between today and Sunday 25 short and feature-length films are being screened in the festival's fifth year. Some choice films include: The Absent Column , on the (unsuccessful) fight to save Prentice Women's Hospital; Archiculture , on architecture school; Built on Narrow Land , on modern houses by Gropius and others on Cape Cod; The Human Scale , on architect and planner Jan Gehl; The Interior Passage , on the realization of SANAA's Rolex Learning Centre; Oyler House , on Richard Neutra's house designed for a working-class gov't employee (now owned by celebrities); Sagrada - The Mystery of Creation , on what else; Social Life of Small Urban Spaces , the classic William H. Whyte film; The Vision of Paolo Soleri , on the "prophet in the desert." And here is an Ideabook at Houzz that I put together on the film festival:

Here are some photos of the Lucerne Festival Ark Nova (2013) in Matsushima, Japan, by Anish Kapoor and Arata Isozaki , photographed by Ken Lee . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose