by Naomi Pollock. Foreword by Reiko Sudo. London and New York: Merrell Publishers, 2012, 240 pages, $49.95. The latest book from architect and journalist Naomi Pollock highlights 100 objects—from kitchen gadgets to furnishings—that illustrate why products that are “made in Japan” continue to be revered in the international design community. Renowned designers featured in the book include Naoto Fukasawa, Toyo Ito, and Nendo, a multidisciplinary firm founded by Oki Sato that has become a headliner at design shows like Milan’s annual Salone del Mobile. Made in Japan: 100 New Products, by Naomi Pollock. Foreword by Reiko Sudo. London and New
by Tracy Metz and Maartje van den Heuvel. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers (distributed in the U.S. by D.A.P.), 2012, 296 pages, $45. As cleanup from Hurricane Sandy segues to rebuilding, Sweet & Salt could have been ripped from newspaper headlines. The not-sounderlying theme is of the Dutch as canaries in the global-warming coal mine. Much of Holland’s most productive land is below sea level, so the Dutch are acutely aware of subtle changes in the rivers, seas, and weather that get lost in all the background noise masking the climate-change debate in America. After all, Holland has built its culture, social
What are some of the lessons that Sandy teaches us about the way we build? Almost two weeks after Sandy struck, my wife and I got our heat and hot water back; electric power had returned a few days earlier. Our apartment in Lower Manhattan relies on the Con Edison steam system, not a boiler; the utility's slow repair process was the source of the lag between the restoration of power and the return of heat. In both cases, though, we had relied on a centralized technology, rather than a distributed one, which raises fundamental questions about how we conceptualize
Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America, edited by Joan Ockman with Rebecca Williamson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012, 400 pages, $50. Academic Discourse Photo courtesy Associat ion of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Architecture students hard at work at drafting tables at MIT in 1898. Photo courtesy Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Architecture students hard at work at drafting tables at Kent State in 1967. What is the status of the “big book” today? The editors of Architecture School, along with the board of advisers of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture—which initiated the book
Report card: Zaha Hadid's MAXXI turns out to be a good place to see art. There's a giant, white, habitable sculpture sitting in the midst of Rome's nondescript Flaminio district just north of the city center. Its exterior juxtaposes sinuous curves and sharply angled planes, and its interior flows in smooth, serpentine capaciousness. It's Zaha Hadid's National Museum of XXI Century Arts (better known as MAXXI), and doubtless it's a work of art itself. But museums aren't supposed to be stand-alone masterpieces. They're supposed to display and enhance other works of art to visual and contextual advantage. The 228,000-square-foot MAXXI
Plans proceed apace at Harvard, Columbia, Penn, Yale, and Princeton. During the last 10 years or so, five leading American universities have produced large-scale plans to guide their expansion, all of which are currently in various stages of implementation. The realization of these proposals will add millions of square feet of academic and related space to the campuses and cost billions of dollars. At the same time, higher education online is increasing in popularity, paradoxically offering the possibility of reduced demand for teaching space as well as lower education costs for students. Because of new online capabilities, could the expansion
by Jonathan Barnett. Routledge, 2011, 248 pages, $54 (paperback). Jonathan Barnett is a believer (as am I) that architectural ideas have had a vital role in shaping cities. To bolster his assertion he lays out in City Design a rich history of the styles, movements, and ideas that have shaped cities from the Renaissance forward. He puts in context everything from “garden cities” to “megastructures” and places these movements in the broader arc of civic history. Particularly interesting is Barnett’s interweaving of landscape design and architecture, since few books have looked at the interdependence of the two fields and their
by Joseph Rosa and Robert Elwall. Edition Axel Menges, 2012, 108 pages, $68. This exquisite oversized book of Turner’s abstract black-and-white photographs spans 35 years (1974-2009), demonstrating how she has been able to expand a language developed for crisp geometric structures to a variety of modern buildings and enabling the reader to see them anew. Turner first became known for the book Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects (Rizzoli, 1980), which depicted the “white architecture” of the 1970s of Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, and Charles Gwathmey. Her photographs, like the buildings of those architects at that time,
by Shashi Caan. Laurence King Publishing, 2011, 192 pages, $30 (paperback). In the arc of an architecture or interior-design student’s education, she may encounter the image of Abbé Laugier’s “primitive hut” a dozen times. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but if you’ve ever sat in a darkened lecture hall and wondered, “Is that all there is?” then Shashi Caan’s Rethinking Design Interiors: Human Beings in the Built Environment is for you. Caan is the former chair of interior design at Parsons The New School for Design in New York and a founder and principal of the architecture, interiors,
by Tracy Metz and Maartje van den Heuvel. Rotterdam: NAi publishers, 2012, distributed in the U.S. by D.A.P), 296 pages, $45. You can open Sweet & Salt to a photo of torrential water ripping through the streets of a medieval town or a golden-hued painting of a peaceful ice-covered pond just after the chilly sun has set. Is this a history, a guidebook, a cautionary tale of climate change, a dike-designer’s handbook, or an art book? In the hands of Tracy Metz, a long-time contributor to Architectural Record, and art historian Maartje van den Heuvel, it is all of the
RSS