By Michiel van Raaij. nai010 Publishers, May 2014, 240 pages, $25. For more than a century, ornament in architecture was anathema in the Calvinist Netherlands—and elsewhere too. In his book Building as Ornament: Iconography in Contemporary Architecture, Michiel van Raaij, who is the editor in chief of the online architecture platform Architectenweb, interviews 10 well-known architects and architectural historians to reveal how this attitude has changed since the 1990s. The moralism of modernism, though, has not yet completely disappeared: “A successful ornament,” writes van Raaij, “represents a virtue and explains the function, status, structure and context of the building.” An
There's something funny about architectural theory. It takes the building—one of the heaviest and most solid artifacts of human production—and evacuates it of any relation to the physical world.
By Michael Agaard Andersen. Princeton Architectural Press, December 2013, 312 pages, $60. This handsome book on Jørn Utzon, the well-known but little-understood 20th-century architect, delves into his work in a way few monographs do. Utzon, who was Danish, is best known for his Sydney Opera House, a brilliant project but one that took many years to build and encountered numerous budgetary and technical problems. The author, Michael Agaard Andersen, concentrates on Utzon's work rather than his life. Andersen provides little biographical information, though some seeps into the text as he discusses the various building types that the architect explored, along
By Vladimir Belogolovsky. Rizzoli, April 2014, 300 pages, $75. Australia via Austria This exemplary new monograph on one of Australia's most prominent Modern architects tells Harry Seidler's story from the points of view of various people who knew or worked with him. The author, Vladimir Belogolovsky, a Russian-born American architect who directs the International Curatorial Project, provides an insightful introductory essay, along with commentaries by Kenneth Frampton, Norman Foster, critic Chris Abel, and the late Oscar Niemeyer. Abel's comments are particularly helpful, since he began his career in Britain but was based for a number of years in Australia, so
By Timothy M. Rohan. Yale University Press, July 2014, 300 pages, $65. A Shakespearean Tale Told in Buildings When Paul Rudolph's Art & Architecture Building at Yale opened in 1963, architectural historian Vincent Scully wrote that the design “puts demands upon the individual user which not every psyche will be able to meet.” The building was gutted by a suspicious fire in 1969, and, though the cause was never determined, the incident has been interpreted, in whispers and in print, as a rejection of the difficult-to-parse architecture and the difficult-to-pigeonhole architect. Much as the mystery or grandiosity or wit of
By Clare Jacobson. Princeton Architectural Press, November 2013, 256 pages, $50. Cultural Revolution For the past decade, China has been on a museum-constructing binge, tossing out new buildings for art and culture the way a sailor on leave tosses back beers. From 2000 to the end of 2011, the People's Republic of China added 1,198 museums, nearly doubling the number it had at the start of the millennium. Some were commissioned by ambitious politicians hoping to advance their careers. Some were put up by developers as ill-conceived amenities for enormous housing projects. Many remain empty much of the time, their
Edited by Michael Juul Holm and Mette Marie Kallehauge, with essays by Mette Marie Kallehauge, Poul Erik T'jner, William J.R. Curtis, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, September 2014, 245 pages, (in Danish and English), $40. It isn't much of a surprise that a book on Arab contemporary architecture is written by non-Arabs. Due to cultural and social norms that persuade Arabs to be modest about their creativity, natives to the region are more apt to accept ideas and designs created by foreigners. Sometimes, Arabs need outsiders to tell them how inviting their lives and buildings really are. Arab
By Camilo José Vergara. University of Chicago Press, December 2013, 364 pages, $55. The City Observed The sociologist, photographer, and MacArthur Fellow Camilo José Vergara, known for his website Invincible Cities and his heartfelt documentation of devastated urban neighborhoods, says in this, his ninth, book that there are many Harlems he has been photographing since 1970. While that could mean the various populations he mentions—the early Jewish and Italian immigrant Harlemites, the big wave of African-Americans, the nearly as big influx of Latin Americans, the recent Senegalese and Malians—the pictures are primarily of built Harlem, its street life (concentrating on
By Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn. Images Publishing, April 2014, 224 pages, $78. Smart Skins Despite its title, Kinetic Architecture is not a book about buildings with components that literally move. Instead, its authors, Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn (both former editors at Architectural Record), investigate projects with envelopes that dynamically respond—in ways both visible and invisible—to their surroundings in order to modulate the interior environment, conserve energy, and enhance the comfort of occupants. Linn, an architect and director of communications for the University of Kansas School of Architecture, and Fortmeyer, an electrical engineer and sustainable-technology specialist at
By Detlef Mertins. Phaidon Press, March 2014, 542 pages, $150. The Enduring Legacy of a Modern Master The newest and—according to its publisher, Phaidon—“most definitive” monograph on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe weighs 6½ pounds, has 542 pages, and 600 illustrations, and, at a size of 12 by 9 3/8 inches, will fit only horizontally into most bookshelves. It is a monument to the architect's enduring legacy and appeal, but also a fitting tribute to its author Detlef Mertins, eminent Mies scholar, former chair and professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, who sadly passed away
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