Book Review: The Language of Towns & Cities

The Language of Towns & Cities: A Visual Dictionary by Dhiru A. Thadani
Rizzoli, 2010
Hardcover, 804 pages



A quick glance at the cover of Dhiru A. Thadani's massive "encyclodictionary" -- as L�on Krier calls it in his foreword -- is quite revealing: The roughly 800 pages inside deal with traditional aspects of towns and cities, the streets and streetscapes, the civic squares, the pedestrian zones. It addresses these via traditional means, the solid-void diagrams, aerials, street sections, and plans that architects and urban designers are familiar with. In other words what follows is a sourcebook for New Urbanism, a resource for designing traditional towns based on CNU's principles. Yet these are only twelve images among hundreds, so maybe a book can't be judged by its cover after all.

Thadani, who penned the majority of the entries but enlisted numerous contributors in this large undertaking, has created a book that is personal, even though calling it a dictionary may infer objectivity. For example, his experience with upper educational institutions comes across in the large number of pages devoted to campuses (10) and college towns (10), not to mention coverage of cities in India (Dharavi, Mumbai, New Dehli), where he is from. On the other hand the term "design" fits half a page, with a quote by Bruce Mau and a photo of floods in Mumbai. And Washington, DC is the only US city represented (where is Chicago? New York? San Francisco?); the latter just reinforces the personal nature of the book, since Thadani works in DC. Even though a number of NU projects are included as entries (Seaside, Poundbury, Kentlands), the overall feel of the book is that Thadani presents what he has experienced in places that have evolved over time, places that offer lessons for designers and others interested in shaping towns and cities.

It is a visual feast that certainly looks to the past for inspiration and emulation, but every now and then Thadani pulls out a modernist building to show how good urbanism embraces varying styles and ages. As Norman Weinstein rightly points out Thadani does not follow the party lines of other NU cohorts (some that contribute to the book), instead presenting and therefore accepting the messiness of urban life alongside the sanitized NU developments. The encyclodictionary entries can be lumped into a handful of broad categories: abstractions, concerns, elements, people, places, all tools for designers and clients. It is the mix of these categories that makes the book more than just a reiteration of NU principles. The book certainly embraces them, but they are found alongside entries that confuse such a one-sided reading. Like the towns and cities that are its subject, the book is varied; not quite messy but a very good attempt at finding and presenting some of the best urban influences today.

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Book Review: Four Monographs

A Landscape Manifesto by Diana Balmori
Yale University Press, 2010
Hardcover, 272 pages

Agenda: Can We Sustain Our Ability to Crisis? by JDS Architects
Actar, 2010
Paperback, 544 pages

small projects by Kevin Mark Low
ORO Editions, 2010
Hardcover, 398 pages

Thomas Phifer and Partners by Stephen Fox and Sarah Amelar
Skira Rizzoli, 2010
Hardcover, 350 pages

So in 2011, with Kindle, the iPad, and architecture blogs, among other game-changing pieces of computer technology spreading information, what is the state of the architectural monograph? Are they evolving in response to new ways of reading? Are they scaling down as people learn about architecture online? Are they providing content different from the traditional monograph? These four books from 2010 embody the diversity of the genre, featuring architects and landscape architects from the United States, Europe, and Asia. They also map different approaches to monographs, ones which are dependent upon the format being in print to varying degrees.




The Manifesto. Instead of a formal presentation of built and unrealized projects, as most architectural monographs are wont to do, Diana Balmori opts for a manifesto, 25 points toward "a new definition of landscape, bringing together ideas from biology, evolutionary theory, and ecology." These 25 statements veer from observations ("Emerging landscapes are becoming brand-new actors on the political stage.") to suggestions ("We must put the twenty-first-century city in nature rather than put nature in the city."). Some points are fairly obvious, and others don't seem to take a strong enough stance, but their sum total is what is important; they encapsulate a direction that thinking about landscape and the city needs to take in order to make attempts at sustainability more beneficial. How we relate to nature is at the core of the manifesto, and how that point of view affects the design of landscapes is the focus of Balmori's projects that are interspersed amongst the explications of the 25 points.

In design the book does not veer greatly from traditional monographs, except it is structured around the 25 points, rendered in large type on a gray background, like signposts along the journey through the book. The project illustrations basically float on the pages in between, making the captions extremely important, since ideas and themes set up the format, not the projects themselves.

Balmori:
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The Diary. Dane Julian de Smedt was one half of PLOT, with Bjarke Ingels, who went on to form BIG and presented his work in the form of an archicomic. This monograph on JDS Architects similarly veers from conventional monographs, but it is more in line with OMA/AMO's Content from 2004: both use lightweight, magazine-quality paper, are interspersed with the occasional advertisement bringing the cover price down a bit, and a bold graphic design that layers information. In this case a timeline -- the year in the life of JDS that starts with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 and structures the book -- runs along the top of most pages, intersecting with projects, interviews, essays, critiques, and other content below. As the book's title suggests, and the start of the timeline reiterates, responses to crisis permeate the book. Occasionally JDS asserts that the economic crisis passed without any structural change or taking advantage of the opportunity, but two years later, regardless of optimistic assertions, the crisis has hardly passed. And the potential for change arising from these difficulties has not passed.

A project that occupies the greatest real estate on these pages is the Holmenkollen Ski Jump, which recently opened in Oslo, Norway for the FIS Nordic World Ski Championship. (There is even an app for the ski jump!) It is one of the few post-PLOT projects to be realized, and its scale and design are impressive. It's one of those projects that has the potential to make the designer known, just like his old partner at PLOT.

JDS Architects:
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The Sole Practitioner. Kevin Mark Low's smallprojects was featured on this blog back in 2008, showing Low's adeptness at tackling everything from a house to the kitchen sink...or at least the dish rack above the sink. Needless to say the Malaysia-based architect's rigor and sense of craft are impressive, making for a consistent body of work, even as he makes the jump in scale to office buildings. Low is reminiscent of Australia's Glenn Murcutt, who works alone yet has built on a larger scale with an associate architect, and Kansas' Dan Rockhill, another sole practitioner who actually does fabricate the kitchen sink, as well as the gutters and just about everything else on his residential commissions. Low's sense of craft and control extends to this monograph, which he also designed and set, dealing with everything from fonts to page size and layout.  Additionally the majority of the photographs are by the architect. It is an extension of a sole practitioner, an expression of his design sense, not just a presentation of his architecture. In addition to the extremely thorough documentation of 25 projects, a few essays by Low are included and appendices with academic and professional work before starting smallprojects. The text accompanying the projects is as thorough as the photos, drawings, and sketches, including the captions, which tell a story in and of themselves.

The tactile quality of this monograph should be noted. From its gray linen cover to the matte, lightly texture pages, the experience of moving from page to page is well considered. The paper type does mean that the images have strong blacks and whites with a fairly flat zone in between, but this hardly detracts from the photos; instead it fits with Low's designs that embrace the myriad textures of life.

small projects:
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The Art Book. Equally well considered and crafted as smallprojects, this monograph on New York City-based Thomas Phifer and Partners is also the opposite in many ways: glossy instead of matte, minimal in layout, reduced in terms of information given. After a title page and photo of the office, the projects start; no introduction, no filler. This minimalism extends to the rest of the book: no captions, no page numbers, a couple essays interspersed among the projects and photos. Flipping through the pages is like looking at an art book, where each photograph (most by Scott Frances, never more than one per page, and in a couple instances actually stretching over three pages in pullouts) becomes the focus, in some cases over the architecture. This is no more true than in the photos of the recently completed North Carolina Museum of Art, because the people in some of Frances' photos look Photoshopped. While they're probably not post-production effects, while their saturation and blend of crisp and blurry figures is most likely a technical feat worth appreciating, and while I've lamented the lack of people in architectural photography in the past (please take my word on that, as I can't find that blog post right now), the surreal, rendering-like quality detracts from the architectural design.

To aid in understanding the buildings and projects (most are completed, but a few in-progress designs are included) some plans and sections are included in the rear of the book, equally minimal (no labels, no scale, etc.) and at a safe remove from the photos that make up the bulk of the book. But like Low's monograph, the presentation suits Phifer's buildings to a T. His light and crisp Modernism requires an ascetic life as much a presentation (photos, book, even his web page) free of clutter. Maybe this is why the people in the North Carolina Museum of Art photos are so unsettling.

Thomas Phifer:
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Book Review: Architecture Depends

Architecture Depends by Jeremy Till
MIT Press, 2009
Hardcover, 232 pages



The economic crisis's considerable impact on architectural jobs and billings in the United States illuminates the fragility of a profession responsible for less than 5% of buildings in this country. Long relying on the Vitruvian triad of firmness, commodity and delight for guidance, architects here and elsewhere are hoping for an effective way forward in the recent green building trend, pushing primarily technological solutions to that other crisis. Dean of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Westminster, Jeremy Till eschews the traditional concerns of aesthetics and tectonics and the newfound embrace of sustainability, calling for a reorientation of the profession towards an ethical stance rooted in the social and political. He believes a preoccupation with form and technique isolates architects from their fellow citizens, discounting Henri Lefebvre's aphorism that "(social) space is a (social) product."

Influenced primarily by the social theories of Zygmunt Bauman, contingency is the prevailing term in Till's convincing argument, the uncertain that architects � and modernism's project � remove from consideration by placing order above all else. Till embraces contingency and labors to reverse the long held orderings of abstraction over reality, space over time, client over use. He does so for most of the book, making one yearn for more solution and less argument, a deficit the author acknowledges at book's end. Before that, Till details a few key suggestions: seeing professional knowledge as a network with the architect as a "citizen sense-maker" weaving together normally divergent concerns; reinvigorating the architect's role in shaping the building program; and approaching sustainability as a social/ethical problem instead of a technical one.

Frustratingly for visually-minded architects, Till refuses to illustrate the book with examples of what fits his ethical architecture mold, merely naming a few who embody his principles. Nonetheless this jibes with an open argument bent on moving beyond appearances and into architecture's potential social and political embodiments. Till's anti-aesthetic views will surely receive their fair share of resistance from practicing architects, though as more professionals are pushed into unemployment lines his calls for an alternative future may look more promising and tenable.

Note: The above review was written in early 2009 for a print magazine...but it was never published. So I'm posting my unedited first draft here.

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Book Review: Marina City

Marina City: Bertrand Goldberg's Urban Vision by Igor Marjanovic and Katerina R�edi Ray
Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
Paperback, 176 pages



Last week I reviewed a book on Frank Lloyd Wright's SC Johnson Tower in Racine, Wisconsin. Fifteen stories tall, it is constructed like a tree, with floors cantilevering from a concrete core. In theory Betrand Goldberg's Marina City towers in Chicago are akin to Wright's earlier design, as Goldberg intended the "corn cobs" to built in the same manner. Even though the pair were built with exterior columns, they are so well integrated into the scalloped balconies that their expression between the residences and the parking garage below is what gives them away, as ones eyes move from the top of the towers to their bases and the rest of the project.

But let me backtrack, as I think I'm getting into too much detail too soon. Yet it's hard, because there is so much to talk about with Marina City, be it the towers, the project as a whole, or the individual pieces (towers, theater, office slab, commercial podium). Associations are myriad, be they architectural, as above, or even personal: my parents met at the bowling alley in the base of the office slab; I bowled in a league at the same alley; I attended a concert with my future wife in the theater (it was a Dance Hall Crashers show). Igor Marjanovic and Katerina R�edi Ray have put together a comprehensive account of one of the most beloved buildings in Chicago, a book that may not be as accessible to a general audience as the one Wright's tower, but for those seriously interested in how Marina City was developed, built, and used the media to become what it is today, this is a must-have.

After a fictional account of the building in its early days, the authors give background on Goldberg's education, work experience, and travels; they then delve into the different parts of the project in detail, everything from the tower floor plans and interiors to the commercial podium with its sunken skating rink (gone, now an ugly chophouse at odds with the rest of the project); after that is detail on the structure of the project as it evolved throughout the project; following is perhaps the book's most important chapter, "the deal," or how it happened via the intersection of public and private interests and labor unions; chapter five illustrates how the architect and other players used the media to "construct" the building; finally the duo discuss the building's reception, after completion and decades later. Thorough, yes, but understandably so. Marina City is a project that deserves a well-researched, academic case study, and this heavily illustrated one does it beautifully.

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Book Review: Frank Lloyd Wright's SC Johnson Research Tower

Frank Lloyd Wright's SC Johnson Research Tower by Mark Hertzberg
Pomegranate, 2010
Hardcover, 80 pages



Frank Lloyd Wright designed hundreds of buildings that were realized (hundreds more than weren't) and just about any of them could be the subject of a book, but none has a story like the Research Tower he added to the Johnson Wax Administration Building for S.C. Johnson & Son in Racine, Wisconsin. Three decades after the tower's 1950 opening it closed, and remains so to this day. Tours are given of the famous Administration Building with its mushroom-cap columns but they do not include the tower, above its second floor at least. This situation is due to a number of safety and functional matters (narrow stairs, small floor plates, leaky windows), all ultimately returning to the great architect and his ability to execute an amazing design that the client never wanted or could use but was grateful for anyways.

In his third book on Frank Lloyd Wright for Pomegranate, photojournalist Mark Hertzberg presents in words and photographs (both original ones by the author alongside numerous archival photos) the story of the 15-story tower in the prairie. He goes into detail on the building's design -- from its cantilevered construction and deep core foundation to the leaky pyrex-tube windows and interior casework (what was leaked upon) -- but for the most part Frank Lloyd Wright's perspective is played down in favor of the client and the builder. Given Hertzberg's job as a journalist this isn't a surprise, as he can interview client H. F. Johnson, Jr.'s descendents, the contractor's son, and employees past and present, not Wright. Throughout are descriptions of the tower's inadequacies but also a certain pride to have worked in the building and recognize its role in the development of many of S.C. Johnson's important products; in essence the design's innovation and uniqueness did more for the company and its employees than a functional but plain one could have. The tower's current symbolic role is enough to keep it mummified, forever without adequate exiting and other requirements that would mar the design while bringing it up to code.

The importance of architecture in S.C. Johnson's working environments and public image continued after the 1950 Research Tower. In the 1960s H. A. Maaskant designed a dramatic and expressive headquarters for the company in Mijdrecht, Netherlands. And most recently for the Racine campus Norman Foster contributed his design skills for Project Honor, which includes Fortaleza Hall (containing the plane flown to Brazil by elder Johnsons) and the Community Building. These are certainly extensions of the Administration Building and Research Tower, two related but one-of-a-kind designs infused with idea and innovation, the qualities S. C. Johnson wants to foster in their work and their products.

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Magazine Review: MONU #13

Magazine on Urbanism #13: Most Valuable Urbanism
MONU, 2010
Paperback, 128 pages



In my inbox this morning was an email with a link to the results of the MAS Survey on Livability, which asked New Yorkers to respond to questions about their happiness with living in the city and with its different qualities (cleanliness, schools, police, shopping, etc.). This survey is one among what must be hundreds of similar ones that range from examining a city in particular to comparing cities on national and international scales; Forbes has a list of America's Most Livable Cities, Mercer leads an international survey, as does The Economist. Each survey has its own reason for being and corresponding criteria to make judgments, but the overall impression of the quantification of subjective personal experieces is that cities should strive to for being number one, that those on top are safer, cleaner, prettier, better places to live than the rest.

In the 13th issue of the Rotterdam-based Magazine on Urbanism (MONU) those livability surveys, or more generally indicators of quality of life in cities, are the focus. For the most part the results of them are contested. Who is to say that the scale of livability used by a survey corresponds with residents' own experiences? An interview with Raleigh Purcell by the magazine's editor Bernd Upmeyer reveals The Economist's survey linked above to be geared towards expat relocation, existing to help businesses determine how much employees living overseas should be compensated for any hardships of their new city. So the criteria follow from their stakeholders' concerns and therefore could hardly be thought of as comprehensive, even though those cities at the top of the list may tout the results as such. What about Houston? It's not found on Mercer's top 50, but Matthew Johnson argues that its qualities (diversity arising from its famous lack of zoning, the city as a non-hierarchical field that emphasizes the qualities of specific places over a broader urban plan, etc.) just aren't found in the surveys. But those qualities equal a fast pace of growth and a general happiness of residents ("bad place to visit, but a great place to live"), two signs of livability. Other essays in these pages run counter to the indices generated by the well known surveys. Some are especially creative, such as Melissa Dittmer and Amy Bos's Cosmo-esque quiz for "post industrial's most valuable urbanism," Bobby Shen's assemblage of tweets about the Mercer survey, and John Southern's pointed stab at the gentrification and homogenization that these lists secondarily promote.

Overall I was impressed with how the contributions followed the theme, and how they did so in some quite diverse ways. It's far too easy to establish a theme but then veer from it to include big names that might sell issues. Here the various essays tackle the topic from all sides, not aiming for consensus but for a presentation of what's missing in the lists. The surveys may have as much influence on our daily lives as sunspots -- they happen, yet we're not aware of them -- but they certainly play a part in today's hyper-competitive global urban marketplace of business, tourism, and everything else; the surveys therefore impact the policies that do affect us. It's a topic ripe for attack, so I'm glad MONU has set its sights on the marketing of livability. Next up for them is "Editing Urbanism" or a shift from new buildings and quarters to "processes of selecting, correcting, condensating, organizing, or modifying the exitisting urban material." The call for submissions is open until December 31, 2010.

Book Review: CCA on Paper

Books on books are a strange breed, tailor made for people that actually read books but unnecessary at the same time; after all do people who read want to read about something they've read or the act of reading itself? Of course the reasons for books on books vary, such as critical analyses of texts, explorations of the act of reading through books, or documents of books as artifacts. The strangely cover-less book that arrived in my mailbox today, CCA on Paper, falls into the last category. It is "a guide to all of the publications of the Canadian Centre for Architecture since it opened to the public twenty years ago."


[image source | animation by archidose]


The book -- available also as a PDF and online -- chronologically documents CCA's output, companions to their exhibitions but not catalogs of them. As Phyllis Lambert states in an interview with Peter Sealy and Mirko Zardini here, they "do books because they are long-term references," focusing on "the problematic that we're dealing with" rather than just a list of exhibition plates. Therefore the books that CCA publishes -- on their own initially and now with various outside publishers -- have expanded upon the exhibition themes, making them valuable references for scholarly research. I was surprised to see that I only have two CCA books in my library, Carlo Scarpa Architect and Herzog & de Meuron: Natural History. The latter, published with Lars M�ller Publishers, is an atypical monograph, an almost scientific presentation of the duo's working process. It's a great book, and seeing it alongside other CCA titles here, I wish I had more than two.

Exhibition and Book Review: Small Scale, Big Change

Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement
October 3, 2010 - January 3, 2011
The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York NY
Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor


Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement by Andres Lepik
The Museum of Modern Art, 2010
Paperback, 140 pages



MoMA's current architecture exhibition, Small Scale, Big Change, presents "eleven building projects on five continents that bring innovative architecture to underserved communities." It follows on the heels of Rising Currents, which tackled global climate change via five projects for New York Harbor. We'll have to wait until next summer, after Barry Bergdoll raids the collection once again, to see if this trend of environmental and social awareness continues. Yet if MoMA Director Glenn D. Lowry's sometimes defensive foreword to the book accompanying curator Andres Lepik's exhibition is any indication, that awareness has been ever-present, but clearly not something that drives the museum's programming.

In terms of architecture this engagement is a reflection of the belief in modernism as a movement geared towards social betterment, true for a fraction of its practitioners, most overtly in its earlier phases. Certainly some architects did focus on social and environmental concerns as postmodernism asserted architecture's formal dominance over what were seen as irrelevant issues (or at least issues that couldn't be solved with architecture), but the 21st century's rapid urbanization and climate change are the other side of the contemporary architecture coin with starchitect-driven formalism. In other words architects see themselves as socially and environmentally responsible again, and MoMA is reflecting that in its exhibitions.



Instead of being housed in the architecture department's usual digs, the exhibition is in the 1964 east wing designed by Philip Johnson. (One side of the exhibition space looks onto 53rd Street through that building's distinctive windows, and the opposite side overlooks the sculpture garden through the glass wall of Yoshio Taniguchi's 2004 expansion/renovation.) The main access to the space is via a long corridor with a map opposite the glass wall's veiled view to the sculpture garden (above). This hyper-stylized map locates the eleven projects in a zone that wraps the equator, from 34 degrees to -23 degrees latitude; visually this appears to coincide with architect Teddy Cruz's Political Equator. Stats are presented for each project, but unfortunately they are not comparative; the number of "untrained laborers [who] built the [Meti-Handmade School] with the assistance of 4 water buffalo" doesn't equate with what the 93 families paid for house and land in Chile's Quinta Monroy Housing. Certainly this situation arises from the variety of locales, project types, and sizes of the architecture chosen for the exhibition, as well as from today's emphasis on individuality over just about anything else.



Inside the exhibition each project is presented with a large-scale photograph or rendering alongside a description, some sketches and other design documentation, and models. Typically the accompanying book expands upon the text and photographs, but unfortunately model photos aren't included in its pages. Watching the fairly large crowd (for a weekday) move about the exhibition -- laid out simply and openly with blue walls and tables on sawhorses -- the models were the most studied and photographed. They ranged from site models to large-scale sectional models, while some integrated 3d and 2d media to create more interactive pieces (Elemental, photo below).

Of the eleven projects, all but three are realized to some degree, though I wish they all were. I think the theme of "big change" isn't limited to intentions, it should include on-the-ground results via the admittedly dry documentation/evaluation of a project's success. Featuring projects in-progress allows Teddy Cruz to be included; an exhibition on social change in architecture would probably be seen as incomplete without him. Other widely disseminated contributors and projects include Elemental's housing in Chile, Alabama's Rural Studio, the Primary School in Burkina Faso, Meti-Handmade School in Bangladesh, and Red Location Museum in South Africa. (The last three were featured on my weekly page, I guess a barometer of sorts for their popularity.) Some critiques (collected here, midway down the list) point out that a dozen more projects were in the running for inclusion in the exhibition. It would be great to know what those are, but I can think of many more than twelve, not all as photogenic as the eleven that made the cut, as I noted here.

I tend to agree with critiques of the show's lack of cohesion/conclusion and still overriding aesthetics over ethics approach, yet I think the general audience that will be be the majority viewing the exhibition downplays such rigorous and nuanced takes. Nevertheless just how change is defined -- or rather isn't defined -- in the show may be its biggest weak point. At least, people will realize that there is more to contemporary architecture than Frank Gehry, the flashy buildings adjacent to the High Line, and that exists in places all over the globe, even though they might not be convinced that architecture can still solve today's major societal problems.

It should be noted that tucked away at the sculpture-garden end of the exhibition are computer kiosks presenting three networks, the "internet-based architecture communities" The 1%, Open Architecture Network, and urbaninform. Unfortunately the layout is an afterthought and their contribution to the exhibition is minimal at best, but in the online companion their inclusion should have a stronger "second life."



In essence Small Scale, Big Change is an exhibition in three parts: gallery space, web page, and book, from most to least ephemeral, if you will. The exhibition will come down in January, the web page will be online longer but is fleeting as digital bits and bytes are, and the book is a well done artifact that lengthens the text as it reduces the visual information provided. One is not a perfect mirror of the others, but each basically gets across the unique and important aspects of each project. In addition to the documentation of the eleven projects, the book includes essays by Barry Bergdoll and Andres Lepik. The latter discusses the different strategies (materiality, construction, etc.) found in the exhibited designs, but he extends the reach to include other related projects. Nevertheless there is an importance levied upon the eleven projects -- that these are the ultimate examples of architecture for social change --  that is a bit disconcerting. These projects are not standalone designs, like art hung on the walls, but parts of larger and more complex contexts that offer other examples of tackling social change via building, examples not even referenced. Enter the three networks and their ability to extend the conversation MoMA joins into with Small Scale, Big Change.

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Book Review: Two AVA Academia Titles by Lorraine Farrelly

Basics Architecture: construction + materiality by Lorraine Farrelly
AVA Academia, 2008
Paperback, 176 pages

The Fundamentals of Architecture by Lorraine Farrelly
AVA Academia, 2007
Paperback, 176 pages



AVA Academia -- "creative publishers for the applied visual arts" -- targets their books to students, with varying levels that range from Foundation and Introductory to Intermediate and Readers. Five titles are currently available for architecture, two falling into the Introductory category and the rest in Intermediate. Three of the architecture books are authored by Lorraine Farrelly, an architect in the UK who "co-ordinates degree courses in architecture and interior design at the University of Portsmouth."

The Fundamentals of Architecture obviously fits into the Introductory category. Across six chapters it gives students an understanding of how architects approach design, from site analysis and conceptual design to representation and realization. Along the way Farrelly briefly discusses architectural history and contemporary trends. Numerous considerations at each level of the design process are proffered, but abstractly enough that no single method prevails. In other words, the book tells the student what needs to be considered, not how to do everything; e.g. the history of a place can inform a design, but that doesn't mean it should or should be done a certain way. The last chapter follows a project from conception to completion, and while the example is specific, the presentation speaks generally about the process. Illustrations of numerous other projects throughout the book help explain the various concerns of architectural thinking and production. Ultimately the book pushes for understanding that fosters varied and personal responses from future architects.

Further along in their educational career, students may pick up Basics Architecture: construction + materiality, which "explores the origins, context and applications of building materials." Here specific materials structure the chapters: brick and stone, concrete, timber, glass and steel, composite materials, and a final chapter on innovation and sustainability pointing to future directions. Each chapter follows a structure of presenting a timeline of historical and contemporary buildings prevalently using the material, a background of the material in building and cultural contexts, discussions of how the material is applied in architecture, a feature on a "Grand Master" exploiting a material's potential (e.g. Tadao Ando in the chapter on concrete), and a couple recent case studies. Like Fundamentals the book features varying ranges of abstraction and specificity, enabling it to structure thinking about materials rather than directing exactly how to use them. It broadens potential applications by future designers by highlighting worthy case studies and by focusing on the various ways materials can be used in appropriate and innovative ways.

Each book is commended for intelligently and carefully presenting broad and complex topics in text and images to potential architects. Extra kudos should be given to the page layouts. Their consistent formats and colors help each book's readability for students, but they become good resources by enabling the information to be easy to find. The books may not replace primary texts on the subjects, but they certainly are worthwhile for structuring those and other pieces in architectural education.

Basics Architecture: construction + materiality:
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The Fundamentals of Architecture:
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Book Review: Mark No. 27

Mark No. 27
Mark Magazine, 2010
Paperback, 268 pages



Previously I've featured a couple reviews of issues of Mark Magazine, a Dutch publication that comes out six times a year. The latest, No. 27, follows the same basic format started with No. 17: A Notice Board with images and brief descriptions on new projects is followed by a Cross Section, where completed buildings receive longer copy, but not as much depth as the Long Section, the main beef of the issue with articles on buildings, exhibitions, designers, cities, etc.; Viewpoint focuses on individual architects or firms and the Service Area concludes each issue, with a potpourri of books, products and materials. The more issues of Mark that I see, the more I gravitate to the Long Section and Service Area.

Number 27's Long Section includes coverage of Peter Eisenman's in-progress City of Culture in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, where two buildings are complete; a piece on the house gracing the cover by Michael Maltzan; an interview with playwright and architect Moshe Safdie's son, Oren Safdie; a meta-narrative of sorts on Paolo Soleri's Arcosanti; and a by-the-numbers look at the Shanghai Expo, among other articles. The Service Area has an unguarded interview with Michael Sorkin and a couple technical pieces on slump glass in REX's Vakko Fashion Center and Byoung-soo Cho's concrete curtain. Like other issues, the focus is on experimentation, innovation, and eye-catching images. The inclusion of Eisenman, Sorkin and Soleri alongside much younger practitioners and thinkers gives the issue a good mix, even if women don't seem to be represented, at least overtly, in these pages. But what makes this and other issues of Mark worthwhile is the quality of the writing. With most of the projects found elsewhere, both online and in print, it's the interviews, commentaries, reviews -- and most importantly, the perspectives of each -- that publishers need to rely on for making their product worth buying.

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Book Review: Self Sufficient City

Self Sufficient City: Envisioning the habitat of the future edited by Vicente Guallart and Lucas Capelli
Actar, 2010
Paperback, 416 pages



The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia's (IaaC) 3rd Advanced Architecture Contest -- following the Self-Sufficient House and Self-Fab House -- asked entrants for proposals "with a view to enhancing the connected self-sufficiency of our cities." Nearly 2,500 participants registered, submitting over 700 proposals from 116 countries, most from the United States, Mexico, and Spain. The 107 first-round finalists are compiled in this small-format book that groups the entries into themed chapters: Living Landscapes, Urban Green, Bio Infrastructures, Energy Systems, Parametric Urbanism, Social & Collaborative, and Theories & Strategies. Given the competition's goals, the proposals overlap among these themes, making the groupings fairly subjective but necessary to give some order to the presentation of the finalists.

In my review of Self-Sufficient Housing, I was perturbed by the lack of context in the entries, houses on tabula rasa planes, detached from the surroundings that contribute to any level of self sufficiency. That detachment obviously can't occur when considering cities or parts thereof, but there are still numerous entries that proffer individual buildings as solutions. Many of these proposals, towers mainly, then populate cities with the buildings, as if a supposedly self-sufficient building repeated ad infinitum equals sustainable urbanism. Are self-sufficient cities the sum of their parts? Or actually the careful coordination of systems that decreases carbon production, reuses waste, decreases energy demand, and promotes walkability, among other things? I think it's the latter, so the entries I found most appealing followed these broad principles, and didn't just replicate a thesis project for a green skyscraper.

It appears that the jury worked the same way, as the 28 second-round finalists--highlighted in the book with ribbons--are clearly the best at addressing the competition's goals. The front and back covers feature the two winners: Water Fuel on the front and HURBS (Hybrid Human Urban Re-adaptive Bidirectionally-Relational System) on the back. They respectively "transform salt water into energy" and have "citizens and experts work together to develop cities through solutions that optimize urban resources." Water Fuel addresses one piece of infrastructure and HURBS deals with the means of participation influencing urban morphology. Neither designs a building but both are architectural. While promising in the ideas they promote, and striking in representation, I'd recommend a different way of presenting the winners and finalists for the 4th iteration: Highlight fewer entries that strongly address the competition's goals, giving more space and attention to what makes the cut. Of course that makes me wonder, where does IaaC go from here, after the move from house to cities? The Self-Sufficient Region?

US: CA: UK: