Edited by Philipp Meuser, with essays by Ahn Chang-mo and Christian Postho. Berlin: DOM Publishers, 368 pages, two volumes in slipcase, $50. Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, is probably the most isolated city in the world, both physically and culturally. Since there are few ways to learn about the city, a veil of isolation stimulates curiosity. Few publications have addressed the city's built environment; most focus instead on economic, political, and social issues. Architectural Guide: Pyongyang feeds this curiosity to some extent, providing unique information about Pyongyang, including both its architecture and its urban planning history. In an odd
By Andrew Blum. New York: Harper Collins Ecco, May 2012, 309 pages, $26.99. There's a revelatory scene in Terry Zwigoff's film, Crumb, in which the titular artist demonstrates his signature technique for revealing the grittiness of the real— telephone poles, cables, all of the varied rooftop flora of our urban infrastructure—in his cityscapes. When we think of the Internet (and often when we write about it) we generally see it as an ethereal realm of boundary-erasing placelessness. But our data actually makes its way through tangled knots of wire and fiber-optic cable, pulled through subterranean (and suboceanic) depths by workers
In an episode of the television show Portlandia, a sketch comedy that lovingly skewers the lifestyle quirks of the young and creative, a woman (played by indie rock star Carrie Brownstein) arrives on her first day at the Portland, Oregon, offices of advertising powerhouse Wieden+Kennedy.
Collective memory was the driving force behind the latest incarnation of the annual, temporary Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and Chinese artist-activist Ai Weiwei. To build a kind of manufactured archaeological site based on the previous 11 pavilions, the team created a drawing that fused the foundations of those structures into a single digital rendering, and then carved this form out of the ground.
By David Adjaye. New York: Rizzoli, 2011, 568 pages, boxed set, $100. This handsome book is a culmination of a series of exhibitions held in Massachusetts; London; Bern, Switzerland; Lisbon; and Tokyo that showcased architect David Adjaye’s photographic survey of Africa’s urban environment. Architect David Adjaye’s new book, “African Metropolitan Architecture,” is a photographic survey of Africa’s urban environment. Click the image above for the slideshow. Six of the seven paperback volumes in this boxed set, edited by Peter Allison, consist of pictures of the diverse architectural forms that exist on the continent. The author, who was born in Tanzania
By Jean-Paul Bourdier and Trinh T. Minh-ha. London and New York: Routledge, 2011, 192 pages, $75. Jean-paul Bourdier, a professor of architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, has published several books on vernacular architecture, particularly in Africa. His latest, co-authored by Trinh T. Minh-ha, also a professor at UC Berkeley and a filmmaker, looks at dwellings designed by hundreds of ethnic groups in Africa, with the premise of helping to resolve the tension between Western architects who wish to step away from modernization and non-Western practitioners who need to square traditional building practices with the benefits of technology. Using
Architects tackle larger development considerations alongside building design in Africa. Image courtesy Perkins+Will Kenya Women’s and Children’s Wellness Centre. Click the image above to view slide show. When construction on the first phrase the 29,000-square-foot Village Health Works (VHW) medical campus wraps up this fall, the project will have involved architects, contractors, craftsmen, and one human waste-to-fuel specialist. If one of these things seems unlike the others, it is: Dr. Kartik Chandran, a professor of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University was contracted by New York-based architect and VHW designer Louise Braverman to consult on alternative energy solutions and
Adjaye Associates London- and New York'based architect David Adjaye is currently developing a number of projects in Africa, including at least two in Ghana. Elmina College, a private international boarding school on 116 acres, is modeled on a Maghreb military fortification, elevated and centered on a quad within its forested site. Image courtesy Adjaye Associates Elmina College. Click here to see more images of this project and Five-Star Resort.
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