A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Conversations with Peter Eisenman: The Evolution of Architectural Style by Vladimir Belogolovsky, published by  DOM Publishers , 2016. Paperback, 160 pages. ( Amazon ) Last year I reviewed Vladimir Belogolovsky's collection of interviews, Conversations with Architects , which he started having following the 2002 World Trade Center Competition. This offshoot of that book features three conversations with Peter Eisenman held in 2003, 2009 and February of this year; the first two are unedited transcripts of interviews from last year's book and one that is completely new. Given this fact, I gravitated to the last interview. The most recent conversation continues with many of the ideas explored in the first two, such as the role of language, the influence of Jacques Derrida, and the City of Culture in Galicia, what should be Eisenman's magnum opus. Although Eisenman admits to not caring about his legacy, he pinpoints a late phase of his career that is marked by projects t...

OAB: Office of Architecture in Barcelona by Carlos Ferrater, published by  Actar , 2015. Hardcover, 320 pages. ( Amazon ) Nine years ago I reviewed Synchronizing Geometry , a monograph on the Carlos Ferrater Partnership that came out of an exhibition on the firm at IIT in 2006, the same year OAB formed. The very first project encountered on opening that book was the Barcelona Botanical Garden, completed in 1999. Likewise, OAB  (an updated version of a 2011 monograph also from Actar) places the same project on the beginning pages, illustrating the importance of the project in Ferrater's career and giving the firm a chance to explore its evolution in the last decade and a half (the firm expanded it seven years ago). The Barcelona Botanical Garden , which consists of a network of triangles laid across the Montjuïc site, is my favorite OAB project, and it is one that clearly inspired other projects; take the AA House (aka Origami House), for instance: square rooms...

Here are a few photos of Frank Gehry's LUMA Arles under construction in Arles, France. (Photos: C D _Fr ) And here are a couple renderings of what the completed project will look like (screenshots via luma-arles.org): 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

Things have been slow on this blog as of late, so now I'm making it official by going on summer break. Posts will resume the second week of August.

Here are some photos of James Corner Field Operations' ICEBERGS  installation now on display at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. (Photos:  Mark Andre ) 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

At lunch today I rode my bike over to Socrates Sculpture Park to check out Sticks , the 2016 Architectural League Folly. Designed by Hou de Sousa in a competition earlier this year, the folly departs from previous ones, such as 2014's SuralArk , in that it is functional: it is the venue for Socrates Sculpture Park’s Education Studio, which reportedly hosts over 10,000 students annually. According to the League , " Sticks utilizes preexisting park resources, including scrap materials stored on site, which will be incorporated into the structural grid of the walls and roof. The architects re-use existing resources to build Sticks is central to the sustainable mission of Socrates Sculpture Park." If you go visit Sticks , be sure to also check out Meg Webster's Concave Room for Bees , on display as part of Socrates Sculpture Park's 30th anniversary LANDMARK exhibition.

"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with two- or three-sentence first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than can find their way into reviews on my  daily  or  weekly  pages. Design/Build with Jersey Devil: A Handbook for Education and Practice  by Charlie Hailey | Princeton Architectural Press | 2016 |  Amazon On this blog I've reviewed books from Princeton Architectural Press's "Architecture Briefs" series numerous times, including a Book Brief devoted to four of the titles back in 2012. It's good to see the series still going, especially when other series (PAPress or otherwise) appear but then fade away just as quickly. Their Architecture Briefs are targeted primarily to students and young architects, so it makes sense to have one devoted to design/build. Instead of Rural Studio, which has...