Architecture Books – Week 25/2023
This week on A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books:
Eight books — more than my usual four or six — are in the latest installment of “Book Briefs”:
Concrete in Switzerland: Histories from the Recent Past
Urban Design in the 20th Century: A History
Modern Architecture in Japan
Pliable Plane: The Wall as Surface in Sculpture and Architecture, 1945–75
Foundations of Urban Design
Spatial Infrastructure: Essays on Architectural Thinking as a Form of Knowledge
Em obras: história do vazio em Belo Horizonte (Under Construction: History of the Void in Belo Horizonte)
Lina Bo Bardi: Material Ideologies
Architecture Book News:
Hugh Pearman’s About Architecture: An Essential Guide in 55 Buildings is being released in the US this week. Stephen Bayley’s review of the book for the British magazine The Spectator in January describes it as “arbitrary, and on the whole enjoyable,” but he also thinks “books like this will soon be written by AI.”(I hope not.)
The editors at Curbed round up “The 8 Best New Design, Architecture, and Urbanism Books Out This Summer” … which has me thinking: Is there such a thing as a Summer Architecture Book? I’ve made lists of summer reads in the past, but I have to admit there’s a disconnect between architecture and the typical fare that passes for summer reading. Hmmm…perhaps this is fodder for a future blog post…
Stanislaus von Moos, Swiss art historian and author of books on Le Corbusier, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Herzog & de Meuron and others, won a Prix Meret Oppenheim 2023.
#archidosereads
Bonus Insta, to which I say, “Maybe you’re not reading the right architecture books, Wolf!”:
A few recently received books:
See these and more recently published and forthcoming architecture books on my blog and on my Bookshop.org page.
Thank you for subscribing to A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books Newsletter. If you have any comments or questions, or want to see your book on my blog, please respond to this email, or comment below if you’re reading this online. (Note: Purchases made via links here or on my blog may earn me affiliate commissions.)
— John Hill