Showing posts with label book-moment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book-moment. Show all posts

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Thursday 11 June 2015

Book of the Moment: Six Canonical Projects by Rem Koolhaas

Ingrid Böck's Six Canonical Projects by Rem Koolhaas: Essays on the History of Ideas will be released by Jovis on July 28.



Per the publisher's website:
Rem Koolhaas has been part of the international avant-garde since the nineteen-seventies and has been named the Pritzker Architecture Prize for the year 2000. This book, which builds on six canonical Koolhaas projects [Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture; Ville Nouvelle Melun-Sénart; Maison à Bordeaux; Dutch Embassy; Seattle Public Library; and CCTV], traces the discursive practice behind the design methods used by Koolhaas and his office OMA. It uncovers recurring key themes—such as wall, void, montage, trajectory, infrastructure, and shape—that have structured this design discourse over the span of Koolhaas's oeuvre. The book moves beyond the six core pieces, as well: It explores how these identified thematic design principles manifest in other works by Koolhaas as both practical re-applications and further elaborations.

In addition to Koolhaas's individual genius, these textual and material layers are accounted for shaping the very context of his work's relevance. By comparing the design principles with relevant concepts from the architectural Zeitgeist in which Koolhaas has operated, the study moves beyond its specific subject—Rem Koolhaas—and provides novel insight into the broader history of architectural ideas.




Tuesday 31 March 2015

Book of the Moment: Herman Hertzberger

If any architect deserves a monumental survey of their work it is the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger. Heck, the 82-year-old architect deserves the Pritzker Architecture Prize, too. Although nothing can be done about the latter, at least for another year, April sees the release of Robert McCarter's Herman Hertzberger from nai010 publishers, a 524-page monograph with 600 full-color illustrations. For those in The Netherlands, a book launch is taking place in Amsterdam on Saturday, April 11; details are below.


[Cover and spreads courtesy of nai010 publishers]

Description from the publisher:
Herman Hertzberger (b.1932) is one of the most important and critically influential figures in international architecture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A constant champion of fundamentally humanist modern architecture, Hertzberger is rightly regarded as the world’s foremost designer of schools, a building type he has almost single-handedly redefined.

Hertzberger believes that architecture is above all else a shared, collective discipline. His world famous lessons in architecture involve ethics and edification, engagement of the built legacy of those who lived before us, and the fundamentally optimistic and constructive intention to make the world a better place for the people who live in it. With a foreword by Kenneth Frampton, this monograph by acclaimed international author Robert McCarter examines Hertzberger’s most important architectural works through analysis of the design process and guiding ideas, particularly as these reflect Hertzberger’s engagement with the Modernist tradition, architectural history, urban space and the way we experience it.


Book Launch:
Saturday, 11 April 2015, 15:00-17:00
De Amsterdamse Montessori School
Willem Witsenstraat 14, Amsterdam
Please register via rsvp@nai010.com

Program:
– Welcome by Eelco van Welie , director nai010 publishers
– Architect and researcher Hans Teerds interviews author Robert McCarter about his research into the oeuvre of Herman Hertzberger
– Nanne de Ru, director of The Berlage and co-founder of Powerhouse Company, will discuss the influence of Hertzberger on architectural education and the new generation of architects
– Presentation of the first copy to Herman Hertzberger
Book sales and book signing afterwards
Special discount price € 49.50 (regular price € 69.50)
The language of this afternoon is English

Thursday 18 December 2014

Graphic Novel of the Moment

Walking past Greenlight Bookstore at lunchtime today a certain book called out to me:



Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City is a graphic novel by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez, published by Nobrow. Here's a description of the book from the publisher, though I'd argue with the statement that Moses is "the architect who designed it all":
A new graphic biography by Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez recounts the achievements of one man who changed the the face of an entire city. Robert Moses: the mastermind of New York.

From the subway to the skyscraper, from Manhattan’s Financial District to the Long Island suburbs, every inch of New York tells the story of one man’s mind: Robert Moses, the architect who designed it all. Now, in Christin and Balez’s graphic biography, the rest of Robert’s story will be told.

[Photos inside book from Nobrow]







Available at Buy from Amazon.com

Friday 26 September 2014

Long-Awaited DVD of the Moment

Finally! Thom Andersen's brilliant, nearly three-hour documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray on October 14, eleven years after it was completed.



At its most basic, the video essay (as it's been called) is an analysis of Los Angeles through movies. On a deeper level, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum calls it, in addition to "a masterpiece," "an essay that qualifies as social history, as film theory, as personal reverie, as architectural history and criticism, as a bittersweet meditation on automotive transport, as a critical history of mass transit in southern California, as a wisecracking compilation of local folklore, as “a city symphony in reverse,” and as a song of nostalgia for lost neighborhoods such as Bunker Hill and unchronicled lifestyles such as locals who walk or take buses." (my emphasis) Rosenbaum's description of the film as part architectural history and criticism is spot on, just one aspect that makes it a stimulating and enjoyable experience for every one of its 169 minutes.



So, you may be asking, why has it taken eleven years for a DVD release? The main reason is that the film was made without studio backing and distribution, and since it's completely made up of clips from other films (with Andersen's highly opinionated narration on top), the rights to use the hundreds of clips was too much for the filmmaker or any distributor wishing to take on the task.



Enter The Cinema Guild, which announced in July that it would be releasing Los Angeles Plays Itself and three more Andersen titles: Red Hollywood, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer, and Reconversão. As other documentaries have invoked "fair use" protections in recent years, such as This Film Is Not Yet Rated, so is Andersen. As he said last year last year on the film's 10th anniversary: "I was, am, and will be able to use [the clips] under fair use. No copyright owners were harmed in the making of this film."

For a taste of the joys of Andersen's film, here is a 6:40 clip on the use of modern houses in films:


Available at Buy from Amazon.com (but cheaper to buy direct from Cinema Guild on DVD and Blu-Ray.)

Thursday 1 May 2014

Thursday 27 March 2014

Book of the Moment: War of Streets and Houses

Not many graphic novels treat buildings and cities as an integral part of their stories, so I'm intrigued by War of Streets and Houses, a new graphic memoir from cartoonist and author Sophie Yanow.


[All images via Uncivilized Books]

Text from the publisher:
The War of Streets and Houses is named after General Thomas Bugeaud's 19th century essay; the first manual for the preparation and conduct of urban warfare. The text greatly influenced Baron Haussmann’s famous re-development of Paris, and the planning of modern cities. In 2012 the author participated in the massive Montreal student strikes. In the midst of protesting crowds and police kettles, the military origins of urban planning suddenly became an undeniable reality. Sophie Yanow’s most ambitious work to date deftly melds the history of urban planning, theories of control with personal experiences of political activism.






(via Atlantic Cities)

Available at Buy from Amazon.com

Sunday 23 March 2014

Book of the Moment: Collage and Architecture

Over spring break I gave my first-year students an assignment to make a collage as part of a precedent study. If I had known about Jennifer A.E. Shields's Collage and Architecture, published in paperback last month by Routledge, I certainly would have used it to give them a little bit more guidance. Half the book, after all, is devoted to "collage methodologies in architectural analysis and design." The second half, in case you're wondering, includes six case studies, from Le Corbusier to Weiss/Manfredi, of "architecture as collage."



Text from the publisher:
Collage and Architecture is the first book to cover collage as a tool for design in architecture, making it a valuable resource for students and practitioners. Author Jennifer Shields uses the artworks and built projects of leading artists and architects, such as Le Corbusier, Daniel Libeskind, and Teddy Cruz to illustrate the diversity of collage techniques. The six case study projects from Mexico, Argentina, Sweden, Norway, the United States, and Spain give you a global perspective of architecture as collage. Collage is an important instrument for analysis and design, and Shields’s presentation of this versatile medium draws on decades of relevance in art and architecture, to be adapted and transformed in your own work.
Or maybe I'm just a sucker for a timeline chart (from the introduction, best viewed large):


Available at Buy from Amazon.com