'Egyptian Places: An Illustrated Travelogue' is a rich and multi-faceted account of an architect’s visits to 12 of Ancient Egypt’s most spectacular sites, a journey that transports the reader from the urban metropolis of Cairo and the Great Pyramid of Giza to the remote desert setting of the rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel, with visits to other monumental temples and towering pyramids which line the Nile River.
Pavilions. Shelters. Backyard studios. Outdoor toilets. Playgrounds and play structures. Treehouses. Phone booths. Chapels. Meditation spaces. Cabins. Bus stops. Information stations. Mountain huts. Installations. Pods for private sleeping in public spaces. Mobile offices in trailers. Food trucks. Enclosures for reading in libraries. Floating rooms set adrift in lakes. Stage sets. Pedestrian footbridges. Shading canopies. Viewing platforms.
Architecture map publisher, Blue Crow Media has just released its latest publication, a celebration of the unique architecture of Pyongyang, North Korea. With travel curtailed due to the pandemic, a peak inside the Hermit Kingdom could be just what we all need.
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.
Modern Architecture and Climate explores how leading architects of the twentieth century incorporated climate-mediating strategies into their designs, and shows how regional approaches to climate adaptability were essential to the development of modern architecture.
Triangle Modern Architecture documents the rich history and unique cultural significance of the Triangle region in North Carolina, which is one of the most important on the national map of modern design.
Nature doesn’t necessarily mean creativity, yet its diversity and beauty are stunning. We call the mechanism behind this unintended creativity of nature “BI” – Biological Intelligence.
SKOLNICK Architecture + Design Partnership: Public/Private is the first monograph from the award-winning New York–based architectural firm. Covering nearly 40 years of work, the book—presented in a unique double-sided, two-cover format—exhibits projects in both the public and private sectors. Included in the PUBLIC section is an innovative center for entrepreneurial education, a science center built in a former turbine hall, a light-filled synagogue, two colorful and bright public libraries, and a children’s museum inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. The PRIVATE side features a serenely spatial six-story townhouse, a sublimely linear beach house, a residence and matching studios for two painters, and luxurious twin villas in Anguilla.
Description via Amazon. Good buildings require an understanding of the principles of structure, light, space, and material, but great buildings require an understanding of people. The most successful inspire through the interactions and connections made within them.
The book The Ďáblice Housing Estate: Architecture for the People is dedicated to one of the most successful housing estates in the Czech Republic, lying in the northern section of Prague near the hill of Ládví and the Ďáblice Forest.
Description via Amazon. Mediating Environments examines fundamental and radical environmental conditions in the Arctic and provides a spectrum of innovative design approaches and spatial outcomes. Climate organizes and sustains a broad range of activities in the Arctic, and it will dictate the future transformations in northern urban landscapes and their metabolic operations. As such, arctic urbanism must take into account the varied nuances of weather phenomena that are deeply engrained in everyday living practices and biophysical fabrics.
The Multi-Skilled Designer presents and analyzes different approaches to contemporary architectural design and interprets them through the theory of multiple intelligences. The book establishes a systematic framework that uses the lens of cognitive psychology and developments in psychometric and brain research to analyze the unique cognitive thought processes of architectural designers and compiles design projects that could serve as a pedagogical companion for the reader. The book is aimed at design practitioners and students interested in examining their own thinking styles as well as those involved in design cognition research.
Description via Amazon. In a series of fascinating tales, Gene Kohn explains how he helped build one of the most successful architecture firms in the world, offering inspiring lessons on business leadership and design innovation that can be applied to many fields.
Architectural legibility requires both visual clarities of a building’s appearance such that its formal, spatial, and material compositions can be comprehended, as well as a certain clarity of its social, cultural, and political histories. While the term legibility carries a connotation of conclusiveness or objective qualifications, legibility in architecture is most often inconclusive and unresolved. Such unresolved legibility is particularly visible in houses, which are the source of inquiry in this project. This project proposes new understandings and interpretations of American residential architecture by investigating and graphically illustrating the forms, spaces, and histories of ten residential types.
New Investigations in Collective Form presents a group of design experiments by the design-research office The Open Workshop, that test how architecture can empower the diverse voices that make up the public realm and the environments in which they exist.
Our project sets out to make the villages in the Spanish colonization program visible again through a review, under a contemporary gaze, of their current situation by means of photography which, as we have seen, represents a crucial means of diffusion and analysis of Architecture.
Two characters, Vernacular (V) and Modern (M) constructions, live in a fantastical universe in harmony. They find proximity next to each other, and a relationship occurs between them. Their physical (architectural components, or elements) and mental (genius loci, or spirit of the place) capacities intertwine. At a certain point, a will to power emerges and stirs the calmness that previously existed: M starts to over-embrace V and the latter suffocates. V starts, then, to look for a way out of the relationship. After several trials, a “heterotopic escape” succeeds. The relationship is broken, and V searches for a new adventure elsewhere, looking for beauty. Once the new journey ends, V comes back to M, with a new and twisted approach towards their relationship.
A celebration of outdoor swimming – looking at the history, design and social aspect of pools.
Sharing your shelf is, in a way, sharing yourself. Every element —from the titles you choose to the way you organize them— says something about your personality and your interests.
The most recent edition of The Cathedrals of England brings to a new generation the classic 1930s Batsford guide to England’s religious architecture. Concisely written and speaking to a broad readership, the book serves as a practical guide today as it did almost a century ago, acting as a reference catalogue for every Church of England cathedral in the country at the time.
Draw In Order to See is the first book to survey the history of architectural design using the latest research in neuroscience and embodied cognition.
Over the past few years, a series of exhibitions and monographs have prompted a rediscovery of socialist modernism, its powerful expression and exoticism stirring significant interest. The recently published photo book Concrete Siberia. Soviet Landscapes of the Far North by Zupagrafika casts a new light on this relatively unexplored chapter of architecture history by showcasing the Soviet architecture of Siberia's major cities while providing an insight into a little-known landscape. The book presents the architecture and urban environment of six Siberian cities: Novosibirsk, Omsk, Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk, Irkutsk and Yakutsk, through the lens of Russian photographer Alexander Veryovkin, bringing about a new-found perspective on post-war architecture.
A photographic insight into the Soviet-era architecture of one of the most extreme, little-known and vast territories on Earth.
From the Ural Mountains to the Arctic Circle, the book features the extensive micro rayon of Siberia’s urban centers, the brutal landscapes of industrial monotowns, cosmic circuses, concrete theatres and opera houses, as well as prefabricated panel blocks, or panelki, erected on permafrost.
Jonk travels the world looking for abandoned places. Today, he has visited more than one thousand and five hundred of them in almost fifty countries on four continents. To be touched by a place, he needs to see that only time passing had an impact on it, without any human intervention: cracked walls, peeling paints, rusted iron and nature taking over.
