Holiday Gift Books

'Tis the season for spending, giving, receiving, eating, and reading. To get in the mood, I've made a list of some interesting books out just in time for the holiday season, in alphabetical order.





Camera Obscura by Albelardo Morell

Photographs of photography. Black and white images of rooms used as box cameras, upside-down images of New York through a pinhole.





Images: A Picture Book of Architecture by Ilka Ruby, Andreas Ruby, Philip Ursprung

An exploration of 2d images in contemporary architecture.





Great Glass Buildings - 50 Modern Classics by Jenny & Peter Hyatt

An impressive array of projects are presented, each using glass in unique ways.





New York: The Photo Atlas by getmapping

Another New York photography book, this time from above.





Scents of the City by Isabelle N�gele und Ruedi Baur

Obsessive photographs of the ubiquitous clutter of cities around the world, from signage to postal boxes and from London to Tokyo.





Skins for Buildings edited by Piet Vollaard and Els Zijlstra

A visual encyclopedia of 200 different finishes, each in close-up and in context.





Space: Japanese Design Solutions by Michael Freeman

A book on the beauty of small.





Suitcase House by Gary Chang

The architect's contribution to the Commune by the Great Wall, a 40m long rectangular box with pneumatic panels for flexibility.





Tadao Ando: Complete Works by Philip Jodidio

A large, large format monograph on the greatest living Japanese architect.





Zaha Hadid: Complete Works edited by Gordana Fontana Giusti

A unique boxed set covering the career of the Pritzker Prize-winning architect. Different sized books focus on different aspects of her work, such as sketches, plans, models, and the finished building.

Monday, Monday

This week's update:





Primary School in Gando, Burkina Faso by Francis K�r�.



The updated book feature is Between Spaces, by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Aga Khan Award for Architecture

Seven winners in the Ninth Award Cycle, recognizing "architectural excellence that encompass contemporary design, social housing, community improvement and development, restoration, re-use, and area conservation, as well as landscaping and environmental issues...that successfully address the needs and aspirations of societies in which Muslims have a significant presence." This week's dose is one winner, as is the Bibliotheca Alexandrina by SN�HETTA.



New York Changing

Douglas Levere's book, which revisits Berenice Abbott's famous photographs of New York, is released tomorrow, just in time for Xmas. Slide show.



The Great Chicago Fire Sale

The City of Chicago is selling a bunch of artifacts on eBay to benefit the Chicago Cultural Center, Cultural Grants and Gallery 37. Notable items include a Millennium Cow, a private CAF bus tour for 50 people (DMB refuse not included), City of Chicago manhole covers and de-commissioned parking meters, "For the Birds" dwellings, a facade ornament from Louis Sullivan's Stock Exchange Building, sketches by Frank Gehry for Millennium Park's Pritzker Pavilion and BP Bridge, a Chicago Theater sign, dinner with Bill Kurtis, and many, many more. Bidding starts December 2 on the items.

In the Dark

Today's New York Times Magazine focuses on "The Thoroughly Designed American Childhood". Included in the online version, though not related to this interesting cover topic, is a collection of black and white photographs taken at night in New York institutions. "After Hours" gives us a glimpse of New York that is otherwise inaccessible.





The American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space

Regular? Super? Irregular?

Chicago continues its love affair obsession with Mies next week with the screening of Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe. The 52-minute documentary was made by Montreal's 4x4 Films and received the Award for Best Canadian Work at the 22nd International Festival of Films on Art.







The screening at The Harold Washington Library on November 30 at 6pm is hosted by the Mies van der Rohe Society. Reservations are required with each ticket costing $40. This rather steep price though does get you cocktails beforehand and a panel discussion afterwards, the latter with Stanley Tigerman, former IIT dean Gene Summers, Fred Camper and Edward Lifson from WBEZ.



The film includes observations by Tigerman and Summers, as well as Elizabeth Diller, Dirk Lohan, Rem Koolhaas, Phyllis Lambert, Peter Pran, and others.

Opening Friday: 10 Visions

From the Art Institute of Chicago's web page:

Throughout history, Chicago architects have played an active and far-reaching role in bringing innovation to the city'?s built environment. They are often the pioneers who debate and propose new ideas for tackling pressing needs of the city. Chicago Architecture: Ten Visions celebrates this role by asking ten architects to define an issue important for the future of the city and create a "spatial commentary" on that theme.

Stanley Tigerman and Henry Cobb worked with Art Institute curators to pick the ten architects, which includes the usual suspects (Jeanne Gang, Douglas Garofalo, Ralph Johnson, Ronald Krueck, Margaret McCurry, Eva Maddox, Joe Valerio) with some newer and lesser-known names (Katerina Reudi, Elva Rubio, Xavier Vendrell). Each architect was given a roughly 20-foot square space at the museum as a "mini-exhibition" within the larger, Tigerman-designed layout. The exhibition's open-ended nature guarantees a wide variety of ideas explored and types of presentations.



A panel discussion will be held on December 2 at the museum. Tickets cost $10 for Architecture & Design Society members, $15 for the general public, with reservations recommended.

New Layout

As you can probably see the layout of this blog has changed (slightly). This is to accomplish a couple things:

1. Create permanent links on separate pages for each post

2. Integrate comments with the individual posts

The first appears to work for all new posts, starting with this one, although the second is not perfect...yet. It turns out that integrated comments with Blogger enable one to post either anonymously or as themselves, though the latter requires a Blogger account in order to work. I definitely don't want to require this, nor do I want "non Bloggers" to only post anonymously. So, because of this and the desire to keep my old comments, I'm offering the option of the Blogger comments and the old Haloscan comments which pop up in a new window. Hopefully this is a temporary fix as I try to figure all this out.



Otherwise, everything else is pretty much the same.



Enjoy,

john

Monday, Monday

This week's update:





School of Botany expansion at the University of Melbourne Lyons Architects.



The updated book feature is Anything, edited by Cynthia C. Davidson.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

Alinari

The Italian photography company contributes to "Tuscany: Images from the Alinari Archives", on display until December 15 at Chicago's Instituto Italiano di Cultura at 500 North Michigan Avenue, Suite 1450.



slowLab

slowLab serves as a laboratory for 'slow design', a holistic approach to design thinking, process and outcomes; it "describes the designer's elevated state of awareness in the process of creation, the quality of its tangible outcomes and a richer experience for the end-user." See also Slow Food.



Guide to Danish Architecture

" A dynamic guide, which will be further developed and enlarged on an ongoing basis so as to encompass after a number of years guided tours, photos and factual information about the most essential architecture in some of the country's major cities."

Book of the Moment

Architecture for Art: American Art Museums, 1938-2008, edited by Scott Tilden.







Surveying 39 U.S. art museums, this photograph-saturated book features well known designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, Santiago Calatrava, Louis Kahn, and so forth, responding to the "exciting new buildings currently under way in New York, Denver, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Boston."

No Surprises Here

As reported on this page eons ago, the Chicago Architecture Foundation recently created its very own architecture prize, Patron of the Year. Announced last night, the winners in the Commercial, Institutional and Governmental categories, respectively, are:

CMK Development Corp. for the Contemporaine by Perkins & Will,



Illinois Institute of Technology for the McCormick Tribune Campus Center and State Street Village,



and the City of Chicago for Millennium Park.

Since it's the first year for the awards, the appearance that they are rewarding buildings more than patrons is excusable. Basically the list contains the most notable designs in the last year (minus Soldier Field). But that is also excusable in Chicago's still rather conservative architectural climate.



I think eventually the award should recognize prolonged service by clients towards good design rather than singular buildings, much like RIBA's Client of the Year award, which it bestowed on Lord's Cricket in 1999 - not for one but a group of buildings over time. But all this begs the question, how could the City of Chicago ever not win the award in the Governmental category?



(via Chicagoist)

Olympic (Bid) Festivities

The five finalists for the 2012 Summer Olympics (London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris) submitted their bids this week, each posting for the public their respective 600-page, 3-volume books in PDF form.



The books cover everything from a concept for the Games in each locale to economics, legal concerns, customs, environment, venues, Olympic village, medical, transport, security, and on and on.







Well, at least the four non-winning countries will have something for their bookshelves.



(Links via Archinect)

Somebody's Watching

Kegz.net posts a link to open-loop.org, a Chicago Surveillance Camera Mapping Project.

Open-Loop.org is a collective that documents the video surveillance in Chicago?s downtown area, commonly known as the Loop. Our efforts reveal that an enormous percentage of public space in downtown Chicago is continuously monitored by surveillance devices. Whether operated by government or private entities, these devices establish a constant watch on the activities taking place in much of the Loop.

This site reminds me of a graphic I clipped from The New York Times many years ago that showed security cameras in a section of midtown Manhattan. What separates the NYT graphic from open-loop's is that the former showed a "cone of surveillance" for each camera. Looking at it, one realized that unwatched ground was less than watched ground, a fact open-loop is corroborating, but with less visual success, as their text-based maps only locate the cameras and indicate what type (private, traffic/police, city, government). What open-loop lacks in 2d illustration it makes up for with photographs of the cameras themselves - in street and close-up views - and in it's slightly humorous "meet the cameras" section.



Update 11.19: Here's a page with many relevant links at Archinect, including coverage of Chicago's emergency center covering an estimate 2,000 cameras eventually.

Wallpaper* 12.04

Flipping through the December edition of Wallpaper* on the way to work this morning, I came across these quite interesting buildings and structures:





UN Studio's La Defense offices in Almere, Netherlands, incorporating specially-designed panels by 3m.





Nieto Sobejano Architects' Auditorium and Conference Center in Merida, Spain, whose facade is a stone relief pattern of the city's old Roman walls.





Kuramure, a ryokan (traditional inn) on the island of Hokkaido, designed by Makoto Nakayama. Each suite has its own hot spring bath, living room, bedroom, and private garden or terrace. Very tranquil.





Norman Foster's Millau Viaduct nearing completion in southern France, a 2.6km roadway linking Paris and Barcelona.





Klaus Stattmann's Kinsky House near Vienna, a house addition that sits precariously on two steel columns.

Parachute Pavilion

The Van Alen Institute has just announced their latest competition, The Parachute Pavilion, an open design competition for Coney Island.







The program involves inserting a restaurant, store, multi-purpose exhibition/event space, and office space, in a site adjacent to the Parachute Jump, out of operation since 1968. Visit the competition web page for detailed information. Sounds like a fun competition.



Early registration deadline is December 15.



Update 11.18: Although Van Alen's web page indicates an early registration deadline of December 1, the actual deadline has been extended until December 15. Registration before that date is discounted to $30 for everybody. After that date, students still pay $30 but professionals pay $60.

Reminder

Fellow Chicagoans, tonight the Chicago Architectural Club hosts A Critical Voice: Implications of Media and Architecture in Chicago at 6:30pm at I-Space Gallery, 230 W. Superior, 2nd floor. See ya there!

Monday, Monday

This week's update:





Cognito Films Office in Culver City, California by Randall Stout Architects.



The updated book feature is Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide by Matthew Strecher.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

2004 AIA/LA Awards

The annual round-up of award-winning architecture, interiors and "what's next".



Architectural Photography

About.com's companion to Starting Architectural Photography, a guide for those who want to venture into that realm.



An Architecture for Our Time

Another essay from the reactionary network INTBAU, this one by Charles Siegel, director of The Preservation Institute.

Sunday Jaunt

On the way into work this fine Sunday I snapped some photos of recent residential buildings between the train stop and the office.





Small - 7-story residential/retail in River North, architect unknown.





Medium - The Contemporaine by Perkins and Will





Large - The Sterling by Solomon Cordwell Buenz





X-Large - Grand Plaza by OWP&P



These projects indicate that Chicago's residential architecture is improving, but it still has a way to go before it abandons the developer-driven, painted concrete shame and its indelible mark on the skyline.

Fugly? Or Just Plain Bad?

Sometimes critic of architecture Transfer continues his posts of architectural hate, this time with 3 Park Avenue, the Norman Thomas High School for Commercial Education.







Interestingly, according to Transfer, this is the last building by the architecture firm that authored the Empire State Building, Shreve, Lamb & Harmon.





Here's an image from New York Architecture in Images.



It appears that the architects wanted the building to stand out, specifically because the building turns its tower mass 45 degrees from Manhattan's grid. This is a maneuver that is anti-contextual in its urbanism and is coupled by the anti-contextualism of solid brick walls on its lower third.



(via Curbed)

Design Bloggers Unite

Icon Magazine spotlights some of my favorite design blogs in an article on their expediency and value to print media. Not only does the article mention reluct.com, dezain.net, MoCo Loco, Archinect, City of Sound and Design Observer (among others), but many of these site's creators contribute quotes that let us see why these blogs exist and what they hope to accomplish. We see that many people run blogs without any realistic chance of making money off them, most with full-time jobs. So to me these bloggers are doing it because they love the subject they cover (architecture, design, industrial design, a combination of design fields, etc) and are exploring the internet as a tool for strengthening the design community by keeping informed, informing others and creating discussion.

.ekwc

The European Ceramic Work Centre will be starting two new projects in 2005 with the intent of "infusing new life into the relationship between ceramics and architecture." Brick "will focus on 'tangible' results", while Combined Residencies will "demonstrate that cooperation between architects, visual artists and designers at as early a stage as possible, benefits the interactive, creative process." According to .ekwc's site, "Every architect, designer or visual artist with an academic education or an equivalent proven professional experience can send in his/her work plan [for these projects]."







Visit .ekwc for application forms and more information on these unique project opportunities. Deadline for application is January 15.

Shine Vs. SOM

Archinect posts some images comparing a student skyscraper design and SOM's Freedom Tower. From the Associated Press:

A former architectural student sued the designers of the World Trade Center site's planned Freedom Tower on Monday, saying designs for the skyscraper mirror those he created at Yale University...Thomas Shine, of Brookline, Mass., is seeking unspecified damages in federal court in Manhattan for what he said was the theft of his designs...The lawsuit alleged that the Freedom Tower was "strikingly similar" to Shine's designs for a Manhattan building for the proposed 2012 Olympic Games in New York...Childs saw the designs when he served in 1999 on a panel of jurists invited by the Yale School of Architecture to evaluate the students' work.

See for yourself.







Coincidentally I know someone who considered bringing a lawsuit against the same people for the same reason, perhaps an indication that SOM borrows heavily from student work or that high-rise architecture, by necessity, creates repetition in design, even by different parties. Because of the latter (the first may be true but would be difficult to prove) and the limitations of architectural copyright, this case probably won't have a chance. But looking at those images, one hopes SOM acknowledges their fault and provides some retribution, if the charges are well-founded.

Taniguchi the Magician

In John Updike's "Critic At Large" review in The New Yorker on the MOMA expansion by Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi (one of two featured in the magazine before the museum's November 20 reopening), comes this second-hand quote by the architect:

Raise a lot of money for me, I?ll give you good architecture. Raise even more money, I?ll make the architecture disappear.

After experiencing Taniguchi's Gallery of Horyuji Treasures in Tokyo I realize this is not much of an overstatement. While Updike is referring to "floating" wall effect achieved via a dark band at the top of bottom of each interior wall, at Horyuji Treasures he melds the architecture with the display of objects so seamlessly that they are one and the same. The main gallery includes two square columns in flawless concrete that set up a grid of 26 wood and glass display cases, the same square dimension as the columns. The columns ground the encased sculptures, which would otherwise be floating in the rectangular room.





Gallery of Horyuji Treasures, inside and outside



Granted that the curatorial differences between Horyuji and MOMA are different - the former a set, permanent exhibition, the latter a mix of permanent and temporary exhibits - Taniguchi's expert minimalism seems appropriate for both. In the case of MOMA, as Paul Goldberger attests in the second review, his architecture extends the existing "Modernism" of its multi-expanded mid-Manhattan home but also knows what needs to change, specifically its urban relationship.



Each article praises the non-linear arrangement of the galleries, the grand atrium space, and the entry that now links 53rd and 54th Streets. Of course, each has their criticisms but reading them it's the differences in writing style that come across. Goldberger, a seasoned architectural critic, is as thoughtful, clear and insightful as always, though compared to John "Rabbit" Updike, Goldberger is a bit dry and too...straightforward. But that's inevitable when one's compared to a literary figure like Updike. Ultimately Updike offers a unique history of MOMA (esp. vs. the Met) and a unique take on its present and future. Recommended reading.



Update 11.15: Nicolai Ouroussof weighs in on the expansion in The New York Times. Includes an audio slide show.



Update 11.16: Curbed posts some reactions to MOMA's expansion, both from the usual news sources and the blogsphere, including images from the opening by eugonline.

Mark Your Calendars

"Panel Discussion with Lee Bey, former Sun-Times architecture critic, deputy mayor and current Director of Media and Government Affairs for SOM; Annette Ferrara of TENbyTEN, and Lynn Becker, freelance writer for the Chicago Reader. Recent discussions at the Chicago Architectural Club suggest the club operate as a 'think tank', that can assist community groups, city governments and other public entities with difficult civic problems through architectural design competitions and events. In what way can CAC enlist print, web and broadcast media in pursuing this goal?"



Thanks to Don G. for the head's up and the cool image above.

Monday, Monday

This week's update:





Minotaur in Northumberland, England by Nick Coombe with Shona Kitchen.



The updated book feature is Intertwining by Steven Holl.



Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

NYC Housing Authority Collection

"The 1,600-box collection contains correspondence, reports, news clips, testimony and surveys of neighborhoods and tenant populations. It also has 3,700 photographs, including many rare images of neighborhoods before they were razed to build projects."



[daily dose of imagery]

Exactly what it says. From Toronto, Canada.



citying

A (mostly) photo website from New York City.

Witz-y

My friend Kurt posted the image below to the Seaton Court Dispatch earlier in the week. I like the humor and simplicity of it so much I'm posting it here.





(Real) weather balloon attached to house front. Meeker between N. Henry and Humboldt, Brooklyn, N.Y. 2004. By Dan Witz

Rejected!

Looks like Election Day wasn't just a blow for democracy and common sense, but also for architecture. Deerfield voters turned down a library referendum requesting the authority to issue $25 million in bonds for a new library, possibly designed by Frank Gehry. Almost 7,000 people voted "no" versus about 3,100 voting "yes".



Perhaps residents in our ailing economy aren't too thrilled about donating another $312 a year to their local government. Nevertheless, it's a shame that thriftiness would take precedence over providing a quality library, regardless the architect.



Previously on this page.



(via Archinect)

Omotesando In Transition

MoCo Tokyo posts images of Tod's on Omotesando, a flagship store for the Italian shoes and leather goods brand. Designed by Toyo Ito, the store is yet another piece in what is the most fashionable street in Tokyo, for architecture as well as clothes.





Tod's soon-to-be-open flagship store



This is definitely following a trend that perhaps began with Tadao Ando's Collezione (1989) and has moved west past Aoyama Dori towards Harajuku Station. Witness, from west to east in a stretch of less than a mile:

1. Collezione by Tadao Ando

2. Prada by Herzog & De Meuron

3. One Omotesando by Kengo Kuma

4. Louis Vuitton by Jun Aoki

5. Dior by Kazuyo Sejima

And, in addition to these wonderful pieces of architecture, is the Jingumae 4-chome Project, developed by Mori (Tokyo's version of Trump) with Ando as the architect. The huge, mixed-use project is currently under construction and includes replacements for the demolished Dojunkai Aoyama Apartments, shops and restaurants. The project continues Mori's tactic of buying up smaller, adjoining properties over time to create one large development (see Roppongi Hills). In the hands of Ando, at least the results may be worthwhile, though that remains to be seen as it's difficult to tell from the available renderings.





The new face of Omotesando