Architecture Books – Week 40/2023
This week on A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books:
Blue Dream is a house designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro for Julia "Julie" Reyes Taubman and her husband Robert "Bobby" Taubman. The house, located in East Hampton, on the South Fork of Long Island, was completed in 2017, nearly 30 years after the architects were commissioned to design their first house on Long Island, the Slow House. A book devoted to Blue Dream, written by Paul Goldberger, was released last month by DelMonico Books.
Also This Week:
Over at World-Architects I wrote about The Book in the Age of …, an exhibition on display at Harvard University Graduate School of Design's Frances Loeb Library until October 15. The exhibition came out of a research seminar at the GSD taught by Rem Koolhaas, Irma Boom, Phillip Denny. World-Architects went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to see the exhibition.
Architecture Book News:
Oliver Franklin-Wallis, in his new book Wasteland: The Dirty Truth About What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters, argues for, among other things, “an architecture of waste” and “designing gorgeous buildings [where people go] to recycle.”
London of the Future, a new book by The London Society, a membership organization centered around planning in England’s capital, features 18 essays about, well, London in the future, in the year 2123.
“Tan Yamanouchi Turns A Book Vault Wall In Studio And Residence Into A Cozy Space For Cats In Japan” — you can keep the cats, but I’ll take those full sets of 25 years of GA Document on the shelves in this Escher-like house.
#archidosereads
I missed the @grolierclub exhibition Selling the Dwelling: The Books That Built America’s House, 1775–2000 back in late 2013/early 2014, but recently I came across the companion book by Richard Creek, the show’s curator, at @brattlebookshop. The book has 749 illustrations (!), but I gravitated to those in the last couple of chapters, which feature books and other artifacts from the mid-1930s to the end of the 20th century:
A few recently received books:
See these and more recently published and forthcoming architecture books on my blog and on my Bookshop.org page.
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— John Hill
Thanks , it was head of grad program. Really appreciate your response and defense of her and her work. That is “old school” where critics defended their Group. And people disagreed about this. Most of her (after the Brasserie) work did not live up to the world class opportunities they got. Keep up the good work I just found your substack and am amazed by your knowledge and love of books.
Thanks for the reply. Blue dream owes more to student blob projects and Zaha than Kiesler. Formally awful, suburban and lumpy .....not worthy of publication other than a vanity publication. Sorry for being personal but Diller slept her way to stardom while we fellow students watched her become a Professor immediately at Cooper and then Dean at Princeton . She didn’t even produce a Thesis. These corruptions need airing when these cheaters rise to international prominence because of Identity.