By James S. Russell, Island Press, 312 pages, 2011, $35 James Russell argues in this well-researched and persuasive book that cities will need to become agile: to adapt to the climate changes already in progress and to reduce the potential for a global environmental catastrophe as the world races towards a population of more than 10 billion. Transitioning to energy-efficient buildings is one form of agility open to all cities. Adopting planning measures that preserve more of the natural environment, supported by diverse forms of transportation and not just highways, is another strategy within the control of state and local
An island nation where the cool and the ordinary flourish together. Flexibility has long been a guiding principle of Japanese architecture. Consider Japan’s ongoing use of sliding doors or screens to shape fluid interiorspace. These four very different books about Japanese architecture since the 1980s reveal new twists in that heritage of design, many brought about by surprising fusions of vernacular materials and new technology. All of them balance accounts of quintessential Japanese architectural developments—a house with a Shintoshrine at its heart, for example—with an array of ideas applicable globally. Click the image above for details about each book mentioned
By Jonathan Coulson, Paul Roberts, and Isabelle Taylor. Routledge, 2010, 264 pages, $125 This ambitious history chronicles campus design from the founding of the first European universities in the 11th century until last year. Although buildings for higher education are often among the most significant ones we build, surprisingly few good studies of them exist. There are numerous books on individual campuses, some good ones on architects who design college buildings (such as Robert A. M. Stern on Campus), and plenty of guides for facilities managers (even this one has a chapter on how to plan a campus). But only
November 2011 Five Los Angeles cultural institutions shed new light on mid-20th-century design efforts. Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980—a collaboration among 60 cultural institutions across Southern California—is a grand bazaar, as eclectic, wide-ranging, and uneven as the period of art it celebrates. Initiated by the Getty Foundation, which provided $10 million in grants, this effort engages venues of radically different scales and aspirations to focus on the evolution of the Los Angeles art scene in the decades after World War II. With nearly every institution in on the act—from major museums to university galleries—art takes on a fluid
November 2011 Getting an architecture degree is expensive. Is it worth it in a recession? If bookshelves are to be believed, it has become fashionable to knock the way schools teach architecture. The latest this fall is humorous—The Real Architect’s Handbook: Things I Didn’t Learn in Architecture School, from Guy Horton and Sherin Wing. It dispenses cheeky wisdom such as, “If you already have a B.Arch., consider further education in a different field. Your M.Arch. can’t make a real contribution to the field if you’re just showing off software skills.” Illustration: Dan Page These writers might be on to something.
December 2011 In a global market, efficiency and speed are not enough. The economic downturn of 2008 signaled the beginning of a dramatic period of global economic realignment in the future of architecture practice. Not only has China become the most vibrant market for architecture, but the demands placed on practitioners in various developing markets have also fundamentally begun to change the way architecture is designed and delivered at home and abroad. Images by Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong Above: DavidClovers' solid-surface wall and window prototype was exhibited in Los Angeles in 2010. Top: Andrew Bromberg of Aedas is designing the
Edited by Karla Britton, Yale University Press, 2011, 248 pages, $50 This inter-faith overview of contemporary religious architecture, distilled from a 2007 Yale University School of Architecture symposium, showcases 20 essays by architects, historians, and theologians. And the architects steal the show. Outstanding insights from the likes of Stanley Tigerman, Richard Meier, Steven Holl. Zaha Hadid, and Peter Eisenman make half of this book illuminating, alas, the latter half. Britton’s rambling but informative prologue traces the roots of 21st century religious architecture to Le Corbusier (from whom the book takes its title) and Louis Kahn, who introduced a sense of
Edited by Robert Twombly, W.W. Norton, 2010, 344 pages, $25. Generally speaking, the writings of designers are not as important to understanding their intentions as their actual work. Frederick Law Olmsted’s copious writings are an exception, for two reasons. He was a man of letters before he was a landscape architect. He wrote The Cotton Kingdom, an influential chronicle of his travels as a newspaper correspondent in the ante-bellum South, edited Putnam’s Magazine, an important literary journal, and co-founded The Nation. Moreover, because he was not formally trained in an art or design school, Olmsterd approached park and landscape design
By Anthony Vidler. The Monacelli Press, 2011, 368 pages, $50 Some first impressions about this new collection of old essays by Anthony Vidler are misleading. The title, for instance, The Scenes of the Street, and the city plan on the cover indicate a broad coverage of topics regarding the city. In fact, two thirds of the book is dedicated to Paris and most of that to Paris before the turn of the 20th century. Those essays that do not deal with Paris directly are mostly concerned with theories created by 19th century French male architects, authors, and humanists. Vidler’s texts
October 2011 A critical comparison of up-and-coming online design and decorating magazines. At the time when home ownership seemed as if it could only be a blessing, interior design magazines also grew fat and happy. Then the housing crisis shrunk shelter magazines and, abruptly, big fancy houses seemed there just to taunt us. Long-established print titles disappeared, replaced sometimes in name, or in content, by a bewildering variety of blogs. Today you can have a blog without a print magazine, but not a magazine without a blog'people like both, and advertisers do, too. So a new hybrid has stepped into
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