A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Building Brands: Corporations and Modern Architecture Grace Ong Yan Lund Humphries , April 2021 Hardcover | 7-3/4 x 9-3/4 inches | 240 pages | 123 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9781848224070 | $69.99 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : Between the Stock Market Crash and the Vietnam War, American corporations were responsible for the construction of thousands of headquarters across the United States. Over this time, the design of corporate headquarters evolved from Beaux-Arts façades to bold Modernist expressions. This book examines how clients and architects together crafted buildings to reflect their company’s brand, carefully considering consumers’ perception and their emotions towards the architecture and the messages they communicated. By focusing on four American corporate headquarters: the PSFS Building by George Howe and William Lescaze, the Johnson Wax Administration Building by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lever House by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and the Röhm & Haas Building ...

American Residential Architecture: Photographs of the Evolution of Indiana Houses Craig Kuhner, Alan Ward Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers , December 2018 Hardcover | 12 x 9 inches | 288 pages | English | ISBN: 9781946226266 | $65.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : In the early nineteenth century, Indiana was at the intersection of ideas from the East and the frontier - resulting in a unique opportunity to express creative adaptions of residential architectural styles in America. Industrialization later in the century created a new wealth to build extraordinary houses outside of cities; by the early twentieth century, Americans had created their own distinctive residential architecture with the Prairie Style. This 288 page compendium includes over ninety houses in Indiana which are representative of the finest American residential architecture, from the Federal and Classical Revival style to Modern. The fascinating story of the evolution of residential architecture elaborates on the char...

Modersohn and Freiesleben―Reality: Buildings and Projects 2000–2020 Antje Freiesleben, Johannes Modersohn (Editors) Park Books , February 2021 Hardcover | 6-3/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 216 pages | 320 illustrations | German/English | ISBN: 9783038602156 | $45.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : When Antje Freiesleben and Johannes Modersohn opened their own Berlin-based firm Modersohn & Freiesleben Architekten in 1994, the city, which had been divided until 1989, needed to be repaired and reunited. The Potsdamer Platz train station and the office block in the Beisheim Centre on Ebertstrasse are two significant projects that were designed by the firm in the prevalent spirit in those years of urban renewal.   After the millennium, the architects further honed their approach: whether in the city or the countryside, Modersohn & Freiesleben consistently develop the character of their projects in terms of the site, the materials, the construction, and the lives of their clients. Their deli...

Morphosis: Connected Isolation (Architectural Monographs No. 23) Thom Mayne Academy Editions, 1993 Paperback | 10 x 12 inches | 144 pages | English | ISBN: 9781854901514 | $30.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : International recognition and commissions world-wide have not altered the need of Morphosis to draw polemical strength from the complexity of Los Angeles. Each new work continues to reflect an evolving response to the contextual issues first encountered there. As Morphosis principal Thom Mayne has said, it is a city in which 'the question of diversity becomes even more confusing because any interest in an idiosyncratic event simply repeats the status quo. In the midst of isolation, true diversity occurs in a connective middle ground. The expression of conflict thus becomes the most optimistic statement of what we can be as a culture, and is the most challenging stance to take.' Such awareness of place and its global extensions are revealed in this Monograph as a continu...

Thom Mayne: SculpturalDrawings Kristin Feireiss, Esenija Bannan Tchoban Foundation, 2020 Hardcover | 6-1/2 x 9 inches | 124 pages | German/English | ISBN: 9783944899152 | 24.00 € PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The name Morphosis already describes the philosophy of the architectural practice: different elements are morphed together to form something new. With this idea in mind, Thom Mayne, its founding partner, has since its establishment in 1972 realised projects like the “Caltrans District 7 Headquarters” in Los Angeles, new academic building of the “41 Cooper Square” for The Cooper Union in New York, “Bill and Melinda Gates Hall” for Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and the “Hypo Alpe-Adria Center” in Klagenfurt, all of which are architectural icons. Mayne is also co-founder of the Southern California Institute of Architects (SCI-Arc) in Los Angeles, and in that city his dedication to academia and research continues at the Now Institute. He received the Pritzker Prize in 20...

The Olivetti Idiom 1952–1979 Caterina Toschi Quodlibet , May 2018 Paperback | 6-1/2 x 9-1/2 inches | 192 pages | English | ISBN: 9788822901989 | 24.00 € PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : The volume aims to reconstruct, through photographs and documents, the development of the Olivetti corporate identity from 1952 to 1979, as it was conveyed through various types of spaces for the exposition and description of its products: exhibitions, stores and its school. The display methods and the written, oral and visual forms of ‘storytelling’ that brought the instantly-recognizable Olivetti idiom international success come together here for the first time, from the little-known exposition Olivetti: Design in Industry , held from October to November 1952 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to the CISV, Centro Istruzione e Specializzazione Vendite (Center for Teaching Specializations of Olivetti Sales) (1954–1979), the first Italian school of marketing with a technical/humanistic focus, port...