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By Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove. Monacelli Press, 2013, 1,072 pages, $95. Utopia by Design When Paradise Planned arrived at my home—all 1,072 extra-thick high-gloss pages—my first instinct was to set the volume down on its own half-acre lot, give it a peaked roof, and simply move in. Instead, I rushed to the gym and spent a few days building up the biceps needed to lift the thing. Then, awed by the sheer cumulative industry of writing triumvirate Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove, I lowered their exhaustive survey of the garden suburb onto my

American architects have been busy in India during the past decade, but now face an economic slowdown and political uncertainty there. Photo © Michal Ronnen Safdie Khalsa Heritage Center, Punjab; Safdie Architects. Located on a 75-acre site in the holy town of Anandpur Sahib, not far from Chandigarh, this project serves as a museum of the Sikh people and includes a 400-seat auditorium and a library. Safdie’s design, with its swooping galleries and exterior walls clad in sand-colored stone, evoke the fortress architecture of the region. A series of dams in a ravine create a water garden, crossed by a

Architecture schools are applying innovative educational models that foster new ways of thinking and challenge the role of the profession. Photo courtesy UCLA Architecture and Urban Design Thom Mayne and graduate students visit an artists’ collective in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as part of a yearlong studio course at the university’s Now Institute. Toyo Ito’s Tokyo office hosted students in 2012, who worked on tsunami relief projects. Related Links:America's Top Architecture Schools 2014Interview with James P. Cramer View the 2012 Rankings View the 2011 Rankings View the 2010 Rankings Architecture School isn't what it used to be. While core fundamentals, including tectonics

By Rowan Moore. Harper Design, August 2013, 400 pages, $30. The View From Across the Pond As he indicates in the title of his new book, British architecture critic Rowan Moore sets out to joust with Big Questions. What is the relationship between political and economic power and architectural patronage? How does active human desire translate into the latent desires embedded in architectural space? What is the relationship between the longing for home and the urge to wander? In addressing these concerns, Moore revels in ambiguities, selecting examples to support widely differing interpretations. Drawing mostly from the 20th century, he

By Ben Katchor, Pantheon, 2013, 160 pages, $30. Out of Whack: A Cartoonist's Vision Picture a bizzaro realm where building, construction, architecture, and just plain city living are slightly off-kilter—the stuff that dreams are made of. Welcome to graphic novelist Ben Katchor's world. If you're willing to immerse yourself in it, you may find yourself lying awake at night, worrying about your cellar and bearing walls. The characters in Katchor’s new book inhabit a built environment that’s familiar but distorted by their own personality quirks and hang-ups. If you haven't crossed paths with Katchor before, Hand-Drying in America: And Other

For the new campus of a business school in Vienna, six international architects design a series of innovative buildings. Photo © Iwan Baan Angled at 35 degrees, Zaha Hadid’s 300,000-square-foot library and Learning Center asserts itself on the central square. The campus sits between the rectangular buildings of the Messe Exhibition Center and Prater park The challenge was daunting: plan, design, and build an entirely new campus for the Vienna University of Economics and Business in just five years. With 25,000 students, the school had outgrown its 30-year-old home in the city’s Ninth District and decided to move to a

Baku, Azerbaijan Zaha Hadid Architects November 2013 Photography by Iwan Baan The unbridled swooping forms and blinding brightness of the glass-fiber-reinforced plastic exterior carry through to the building’s interiors, where floors merge into walls, stairs, and ceilings. Shooting this project, I wanted to capture how it connects each visitor to the landscape. The cultural center peers up from the earth and wraps around the gardens before disappearing back into the ground again. When visitors aren't resting against the sloping sides, you'll find them inquisitively making their way around the structure, trying to figure out where the building starts and the