A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Here are some photos of the Can Framis Museum (2009) in Barcelona, Spain, by BAAS Arquitectura , photographed by Maciek Lulko . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos #archidose

From April 7 to April 21, Paddle8 is hosting an online benefit auction for the Storefront for Art and Architecture that leads up to the Storefront's Spring Benefit , honoring artist Do Ho Suh and architect Thom Mayne, at 432 Park Avenue on April 21. Below are 10 highlights from the nearly 70 works that "TRANScend boundaries." Online Bidding Ends Apr 21 at 12:00pm EST. [ David Adjaye - Smithsonian Sketch ] [ Erieta Attali - Glass-wood House (designed by Kengo Kuma), New Canaan USA ] [ Denise Scott Brown - MGM Film Studio, Los Angeles, 1967 ] [ Robert Herman - The Apple Store, New York, 2014 ] [ Bjarke Ingels - W57 ] [ Andrew Kovacs - AXONOMETRICS, 2015 ] [ Thom Mayne with Morphosis Architects - 6th Street Fragment: Large Heavy Metal, 1988 ] [ Christina McPhee - Transsynaptic Model, 2015 ] [ Do-Ho Suh - Rubbing/Loving Project: Door Closure, Corridor, 348 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011, USA, 2015 ] [ Rafael Viñoly - 432 Park Ave: Sketch w...

Urban Literacy: Reading and Writing Architecture by Klaske Havik, published by  nai010 Publishers , 2014. Paperback, 256 pages. ( Amazon ) Well known architect and author Juhani Pallasmaa supplies the foreword to this book by Klaske Havik, a professor at Delft University of Technology and contributing editor of OASE. The choice is not surprising, since I've read interviews with Pallasmaa where he recommends that architecture students read fiction instead of books on architecture. Within fiction are found "truths" about how individuals interact with their surroundings, exhibiting the fusion between internal states and the settings of stories. For Havik, fiction is key to creating a new approach for architecture – a literary approach – that takes advantages of the descriptions of places and spaces in novels toward improving the design of the same. It's a provocative thesis that is explained through a triad of interrelated concepts: description, transcription, and p...

It's warm again – finally! – so here is a list of the four architectural walking tours I'm doing with the 92Y in April and May. The first one is this Saturday. Click on the links below to purchase tickets. Saturday, April 18, 11am - 1:30pm Columbus Circle and Lincoln Square Look at and go inside some recent buildings in the West 50s and 60s, from the Hearst Tower and the transformed Lincoln Center to the Apple Store. Saturday, April 25, 11am - 2:30pm Brooklyn G Train Tour Hop on and off the G train from Carroll Gardens to Clinton Hill and Williamsburg, taking in townhouses, campus facilities and other buildings along the way. Saturday, May 16, 11am - 1:30pm Columbia University Look at recent additions to the campuses of Columbia University and Barnard College in Morningside Heights, take a sneak peek at Columbia’s expansion into Manhattanville and head up to Inwood to see Columbia’s new athletics complex. (And maybe see DS+R's Columbia University Medical Ce...

Here are some photos of the Karlsruhe 2015 Pavilion by Jürgen Mayer H., set to open on June 17 in Karlsruhe's Palace Garden. Photographs here are by Frank Dinger , who has many more photos of the KA300 Pavilion (it is part of the celebrations around Karlsruhe's 300th anniversary) in his Flickr set on the project . To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just: :: Join and add photos to the  archidose pool To contribute your Instagram images for consideration, just: :: Tag your photos #archidose

It was hard not to laugh at the " Depends Legends " commercial on last night's Saturday Night Live, a highlight of an otherwise mediocre episode. In trying to overcome the stigma in talking about grown-up diapers, the fake commercial recalls the " Oops! I Crapped my Pants " ad from a 1998 SNL episode. But why feature "Depends Legends" here, on an architecture blog? Because in the middle of the 90-second piece – whose description is "There's no shame in wearing diapers when you're wearing Depend Legends, the diaper with classic movie stars' faces on it" – is the "Masterpieces of Art and Architecture" line featuring Fallingwater . Although incorrectly labeled as "Falling Water" with two words instead of one, it's obvious to see why the building worked its way between Clark Gable, the women of Law & Order, and other screen stars. [Screenshot from "Depends Legends" commercial | source ] Watc...

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure Japan doesn't have much of a tradition with earth architecture, especially rammed earth construction. Earth Architecture, an excellent resource on the subject, has only eight posts categorized "Japan." Of those only one post is on rammed earth architecture (Loco Architects' now-hard-to-track-down Experimental House ), while the rest are on earthenware, adobe bricks and even "shiny mud balls." Given the above, I was amazed to discover a couple rammed earth buildings designed by Tadashi Saito and his firm atelier NAVE, which I came across at Japan-Architects . Descriptions at Japan-Architects and on the architect's own web page are all in Japanese, but I was able to cobble together the fact that Saito experimented with rammed earth for the 2013 Art Setouchi festival, creating the Zenkonyu x Tamping Earth building . The description at Art Setouchi says: The Shiwaku islands were once famed for their skilled sh...