Call for Papers: AXIS volume 12 - Prototyping

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100 books - the architect's version

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC came up with some silly list that most people have read a small number of 100 books listed.

I think that is total bollocks since I've spent much of my adult life reading architecture books.

So I made a new list and I'm seeking the help of my friends to carry it to 100. Instructions: I've added a few seminal texts... suggest some others and let's give the BBC a real show.

1. City of Bits - William Mitchell
2. Event Cities (1, 2 & 3) - Bernard Tschumi
3. The Curves of Time - Oscar Niemeyer
4. SMLXL - Rem Koolhaas/Bruce Mau
5. Towards a New Architecture - Le Corbusier
6. Architecture After Modernism - Diane Ghiardo
7. The Architecture of Happiness - Alain de Botton
8. Design Like you Give a Damn - Architecture for Humanity
10. Architecture and Utopia - Manfredo Tafuri
11. The Space of Encounter - Daniel Libeskind
12. Thinking Architecture - Peter Zumthor
13. Experiencing Architecture - Steen Eiler Rasmussen
14. 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School - Matthew Frederick
15. For an Architecture of Reality - Michael Benedikt
16. The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard
17. Discrimination by Design - Leslie Weisman
18. The Temple in the House - Anthony Lawlor
19. Athens Charter - CIAM (Le Corbusier)
20. Delirious New York - Rem Koolhaas
21. Manhattan Transcripts - Bernard Tschumi
22. Radiant City - Le Corbusier
23. An Essay on Architecture - Marc-Antoine Laugier
24. The Ten Books on Architecture - Vitruvius
25. On the Art of Building in Ten Books - Leon Battista Alberti
26. Essential Texts - Louis Kahn
27. City Planning According to Artistic Principles - Camillo Sitte
28. Team 10 Primer - Alison Smithson (ed.)
29. The Architecture of the City - Aldo Rossi
30. Learning from Las Vegas - Robert Venturi, et. al.
31. Collage City - Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter
32. Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings - Louis Sullivan
33. Space, Time and Architecture - Sigfried Giedion
34. The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
35. The Four Books of Architecture - Andrea Palladio
36. Design with Nature - Ian McHarg
37. The Seven Lamps of Architecture - John Ruskin
38. Scope of Total Architecture - Walter Gropius
39. Building with Nature - Richard Neutra
40. Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays - Adolf Loos
41. The Living City - Frank Lloyd Wright
42. A Pattern Language - Christopher Alexander
43. Eyes Of The Skin - Juhani Pallasmaa
44. Mask of Medusa - John Hejduk
45. Architecture Of Disjunction - Bernard Tschumi
46. Topology Of A Phantom City - Alain Robbe-Grillet
47. Education Of An Architect - Elizabeth Diller, John Hejduk, etc
48. Architecture Theory Since 1968 - K. Michael Hays
49. Teach Your Chicken To Fly - Trevor Weekes
50. Palace of the Peacock - Wilson Harris
51. Why Buildings Stand Up - Mario Salvadori
52. The Place of Houses - Charles Moore et al
53. How Designers think - Bryan Lawson
54. Chambers for a Memory Palace - Charles Moore et al
55. The Design Studio - Donald Schon
56. city of slums mike davis
57. the Sphere and the Labyrinth - Manfredo Tafuri
58. Programs and Manifestoes of 20th century architecture - Ulrich Conrads
59. Inside Architecture - Vittorio Gregotti
60. Critical History of Modern Architecture - Kenneth Frampton
61. Architecture of Four Ecologies - Reyner Banham, Anthony Vidler
62. The Image of the City - Kevin Lynch
63. House for Mr. Biswas - VS Naipaul
64. Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture - Steven Holl, etc
65. The World of Perception - Maurice Merleau Ponty
66. Phenomenology of Perception - Maurice Merleau Ponty
67. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge - Perez-Gomez & Pelletier
68. The Troubadour of Knowledge - Michael Serres
69. 13 Ways - Richard Harbison
70. Kaz Antiye Jan Moun Ka Rete: Caribbean Popular Dwelling - Jack Berthelot
71. Cities: X Lines: Approaches to City and Open Territory Design - Joan Busquets
72. The Landscape Urbanism Reader - Charles Waldheim
73. Recovering Landscape - Essays in Contemporary Landscape Theory - ed James Corner
74. File under Architecture - Herbert Muschamp
75. Labour Work and Architecture - Kenneth Frampton
76. Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in 19 & 20th c Architecture - Kenneth Frampton
77. Emergency, Deadline, Duration - Marc Jalet
78. The Honeywood File: An Adventure in Building - H.B. Creswell
79. The Social Logic of Space - Hillier and Hanson
80. Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zone - Fry and Drew
81. Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures - Andrea Deplazes
82. Constructing Landscape: Materials, Techniques, Structural Components - Astrid Zimmeman
83. Plusminus 20/40 Latitude: Sustainable Building Design in Tropical and Subtropical Regions - Dirk Hindrichs
84. Typographie - Otl Aicher
85. The World as Design - Otl Aicher
86. Analogous Digital - Otl Aicher
87. Intermediate Natures - the Landscapes of Michael Desvigne
88. The Architect in Practice - Chappell & Willis
89. Intermediate Natures: The Landscapes of Michel Desvigne - Elizabeth Zugler
90. Die Küche zum Kochen: Das Ende Einer Architekturdoktrin - Otl Aicher
91. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies - Rafael Moneo
92. The Public Chance: New Urban Landscapes - Aurora Fernandez Per & Javier Arpa
93. Roberto Burle Marx: Landscapes Reflected - Rossana Vaccarino (ed)
94. Latin America Architecture 1929 to 1960 - Brillenbourg & Riley
95. ANY series (Anything, Anyone, Anywhere, Anyway, Anyplace, Anywise, Anybody, Anyhow, Anytime, and Anymore) - Cynthia Davidson (ed.)
96. Sites of Memory: Perspectives on Architecture and Race - Craig Evan Barton
97. Agenda: Can we sustain our ability to crisis - JDS architects
98. Architecture NOW! (series) - Philip Jodidio
99. Space & Place - Yi-Fu Tuan
100.Analysing Architecture - Simon Unwin


Special thanks to Architects Mark Raymond, Jacquiann Lawton, Donna Sink, Ken Koense, Phillip Crosby, Rohan Bailey, Barry Lehrman, Ana María León, Daren Moncrieffe and students Vanessa Hartley, Dwayne Webb, Stein Carrington & Sheena Marston for their contributions 

harrowingly engaging and voyeuristic

Agenda: Can We Sustain Our Ability to Crisis?
Julian de Smedt Architects
Actar Publishers (2010)
Rating: 5 stars

Written on the cusp of the global financial downfall, AGENDA prompts the question, what can architecture learn from crisis? What threads and strategies lie within this modality that can sustain a new means of architectural practice? At 544 pages, this book is ample; comprised of a running dialogue of interviews, images of project progress and deadlines, providing voyeuristic insight into JDS architects. The narrative of projects, a format likely borrowed from de Smedt's mentor Rem Koolhaas (Content, 2004) is harrowingly engaging. Teetering on the ambitious, AGENDA never glibly offers solutions making this stellar read, a smart new generation of monograph.

variety & context...

Dwelling Accordia
Paul Drew & Ivor Richards
Black Dog Publishing (2009)
rating: 3.5 stars

Accordia is a housing estate in Cambridge by a group of architects each designing a different aspect of the project. Dwelling - Accordia mimics an exhibition catalogue, capturing what is on show whilst making scholarly contribution by means of descriptive texts, case study and images. The writing however is heavy-handed in its commendation of the scheme and denies the reader any objective engagement with the topic. Notwithstanding Accordia is praiseworthy deserving of the Stirling Prize for excellence in architecture; demonstrating “a coherent architectural language of subtlety and variety” sensitively maintaining the context in the balance of the urban and suburban.

The Accordia housing development is a 380 unit, 9.5 hectare housing estate completed in April 2006 completed by Architects Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios with contributions by MacCreanor Lavington, Alison Brooks Architects and Grant associates.

blossuming...

David Adjaye: Houses; Recycling, Reconfiguring, Rebuilding
Peter Allison & David Adjaye
Thames & Hudson (2005)
Rating: 5 stars

David Adjaye Houses: recycling, reconfiguring, rebuilding exhibits the overt of a blossuming architecture practice. The book is prefaced by "Negotiating Architecture" an original work written by post-colonial writer Stuart Hall as an integral presentation to this monograph of houses. The houses, nearly all in London, are mostly about their interiors, shown in a play of materials. The publishers, Thames & Hudson, took Adjaye's use of material a step further mimicking the look and feel of the facade of the Elektra house on the book's jacket. The dozen or so works in the book are punctuated by drawings and writings by Deyan Sudjic and Caroline Roux, as well as details that seek to capture the ethos of the relationship between space & form, information versus drama.

illustrate & exclaim...

The Curves of Time - Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer
Oscar Niemeyer
Phaidon Press (2007)
Rating: 4 stars

An unceremonious autobiography that aims to capture the enthusiasm for life, the Brazilian landscape, many loves and friendships of master architect Oscar Niemeyer. More than a chronological documentation of his life, it reads as an emotional reflection of the social and political influences that shaped his thoughts and his works. Reissued on the centenary of his birth, it paints a personal and moreover a historical glimpse of his contribution to modern architecture. The informality of the book aside - original sketches by the architect adorn the pages, seeking to illustrate and exclaim where the story or perhaps his memory falls short.

Archivos de Arquitectura Antillana is a bi-lingual (Spanish/English) topical magazine focusing on the architecture, urban design, history and culture of the Greater Caribbean. AAA is published and edited in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic by Gustavo Luis Moré.

a+t

The Public Chance – New Urban Landscapes

This compendium of contemporary urban landscapes is a monograph and a commentary of modern regenerative sites. The selection of works, mostly European, exhibit a generation of architects concerned with the spaces of public gathering and activity as well as using these spaces as critical constructs responding to our changing climate. The standardized visual analysis becomes an integral tool for understanding that allows a comparative reading, despite the difference in scale, of the programs that make up the varied urban spaces. The beauty of Chance is the richness of the projects spoken through descriptive illustrations of detailed drawings and vibrant photographs.

the Public Chance is a visual analysis of 30 Urban Landscapes of opportunity. The projects selected are grouped according to scene of origin; industrial areas, peripherial voids, infrastructures and waterfronts. Each intervention undergoes a layer analysis of water, vegetation, buildings, routes, rooms and activities.

This is the first book by a+t architecture publishers in the In common series, which came about in the 2005 in the pages of a+t magazine to express our concern for the good use and design of common spaces and was developed over two years, in four issues.

The Public Chance offers a renewed vision of some of these projects, now finished, and incorporates new interventions, all of them under thematic analysis, characteristic of a+t publications.

more images

Roberto Burle Marx: Landscapes Reflected, Landscape Views 3
Rossana Vaccarino
Princeton Architectural Press (2000)
Rating: 4 stars

Roberto Burle Marx is the questionably the most seminal figure in contemporary landscape design. His use of tropical foliage and vegetation was of such artistry as to redefine the genre.

This amazingly small publication, is actually a fair account of his work. The photographs are mostly b&w and not that impressive, however the collection of sketches enclosed are brilliant. The book is also blessed with some of his lesser known projects outside of the city.

No matter how you look at it this book is a bargain, and an excellent complement to a library on landscape design. Don't however let it be your only insight into the talent of Burle Marx.

X-Urbanism

Mario Gandelonas considers that the Eurocentric literature on cities and architecture is often patronising and does not understand Americanness: i.e. the American X-Urban City which has overtaken the vast American Suburban City and the Cities of Skyscrapers invented in America. Even the European modernist city, based on the 'tabula rasa' concept (e.g. Le Corbusier's City of To-morrow) - a reaction against the baroque city could only be realised in America.

Whilst I don't think it entirely an American phenomena this book is perhaps the only critique of colonial concepts of city/urban planning; and therefore an excellent reader along side the other crap you are forced to read in school (Calvino, Duany, et al)- architechnophilia

X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American City. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999