A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Before heading home from work I read that one of the massive pieces of glass at the Fifth Avenue Apple store broke from the impact of a snowblower . I couldn't resist hopping off the subway 20 minutes later to take a closer look. [All photos by John Hill] The story linked above guesses that the cost to replace the glass will be $450,000, based on the bill for renovating the cube in 2011, when it changed from 18 panes per side to 3. Considering that each pane is made up of (I think) 5 layers of ~10'x32' tempered glass laminated to each other, this cost does not seem surprising. Based on the uniform pattern of the break, it's obvious the tempered glass and plastic layer did their job... ...so much so that the store is still open regardless of the 300 square feet of broken glass overhead:

Here are some photos of the Brick House (2011) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Ventura Virzi Arquitectos, photographed by Federico Kulekdjian . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool , and/or :: Tag your photos  archidose

The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective on Resilience by Alexandros Washburn, published by  Island Press , 2013. Hardcover, 264 pages. ( Amazon ) On January 13, a couple weeks after he ended his seven-year post as Chief Urban Designer of the NYC Department of City Planning, Alexandros Washburn spoke at the Center for Architecture about his new book, The Nature of Urban Design . Like many events at the Center, it started a little bit late, prompting members of the audience to ask Rick Bell, AIANY Executive Director, if Washburn was riding his bike to the event on the not-too-cold winter day. Needless to say, the author's reputation preceded his arrival at the podium where he discussed his firsthand experience of Hurricane Sandy in his neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn, his mentors, his definitions of urban design, his ideas on risk and resiliency, and his post-Bloomberg-administration path. Like the book, Washburn started the talk with stories and images of ...

It was 15 years ago this month that I started the website A Weekly Dose of Architecture . On January 18, 1999, I posted a feature on Louis I. Kahn's Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, the first of many weekly "doses." Actually, if I would have strictly kept to the weekly calendar this website would have 780 projects and about 500 book reviews (those didn't start until 2003), but given my sometimes sporadic posting the actual number is a bit less but still sizable considering it's just been me the whole time. So with the website turning 15 years old, it seems like a good time to retire the site. This may sound like the end of something, yet I'll still be posting at A Daily Dose of Architecture, including the occasional project and book review. So why retire the weekly doses? Well: Websites like ArchDaily cover projects at such a great (visual) depth and quantity to make this website superfluous, especially if I don't take the effort to...

New Museums in China by Clare Jacobson, published by  Princeton Architectural Press , 2013. Hardcover, 241 pages. ( Amazon ) As of 2013 there are supposedly 3,500 museums in China. This is about 1,000 more than two years before that, but still only roughly 20% of the number of museums in the United States. Of course, quantity is not the same as quality (both in terms of architecture and exhibitions), but Clare Jacobson's book on new museums in China shows that the country can boast of some of the best new architecture for museums anywhere on the planet. Jacobson highlights 51 museums in 31 cities, a smattering relative to the thousand museums supposedly completed in just the last two years, but enough to illustrate the variety of approaches to museum commissions in China, from quasi-vernacular designs to alien forms that call attention to the buildings more than their contents. Jacobson, an architecture and design writer based in Shanghai, discusses the vie...

WMS Boathouse at Clark Park in Chicago, Illinois, by Studio Gang Architects, 2013 Jeanne Gang and Studio Gang Architects (SGA) have been infatuated with water for some time now – metaphorically, in the rippling facade of the Aqua Tower; directly, in landscape projects like the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo ; or on the large scale, in projects like Reverse Effect , which proposes re-reversing the Chicago River, among other tactics, to improve the ecosystem of Lake Michigan. A recent addition to the above water-related projects in their hometown of Chicago is the WMS Boathouse at Clark Park, situated along the Chicago River about eight miles north and west of the Loop. Like Reverse Effect , the boathouse is envisioned as a means of remediating one of Chicago's waterways. As SGA describes it: "By creating a key public access point along the river’s edge, it supports the larger movement toward an ecological and recreational revival of the Chicago River....

On the northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and East 30th Street sits an impressive temple-like building that may look familiar to some TV watchers. The building is portrayed as the library of Finch on Person of Interest , but well before this fictional existence the building served as the home for the New York School of Applied Design for Women . Designed for the school by one of its professors, Harvey Wiley Corbett, the building was completed in 1908 and designated a NYC landmark in 1977. The school, which eventually became the Pratt-New York Phoenix School of Design, sold the building to Touro College in 1991, who in turned sold the building in 2006. Since last month the building has been home to DSM New York , a seven-story fashion bazaar curated by Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons fame. [All photos by John Hill] Some glimpses of the " high-priced temple of consumerism " can be had from outside, but for the most part what's going on in DSM is hidden behind the ...