New Books in Architecture

It may only be a slight exaggeration to say that one of David Dillon's career accomplishments was to put the words "Dallas" and "architecture" in the same sentence again. After a screed in 1980 entitled "Why Is Dallas Architecture So Bad?" launched his career as an architecture critic, Dillon took to the pages of the Dallas Morning News to praise, lament, explain, beg, scold, suggest, cajole, and influence how Dallas and its metropolitan region took shape throughout three revolutionary decades of development. To follow his career as a critic from the early 1980s, when downtown was dormant and street life an afterthought, to his retirement--when a new mindset for urban planning had largely set in, but still had far to go--is to listen to a larger story about how thinking about the built environment in North American cities has changed over the last generation, the new questions that have been raised, and the old ones that persist.Some of Dillon's most memorable and enduring columns were recently published by University of Texas Press in a collection called The Open-Ended City: David Dillon on Texas Architecture, part of a series furnished by the Roger Fullington Endowment in Architecture. The book is edited and introduced by Kathryn Holliday, associate professor of architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she is also the founding director of the David Dillon Center for Texas Architecture.Holliday is the author of Leopold Eidlitz: Architecture and Idealism in the Gilded Age (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008) and Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century (Rizzoli, 2012).David Dillon was the nationally acclaimed architecture critic of the Dallas Morning News, where his work received awards from the Associated Press, the Dallas Press Club, and the Texas Society of Architects.Nathan Bierma is a writer, instructional designer, and voiceover talent in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, weaving together art, philosophy, history, and literature, this book investigates the landscapes and buildings of Swedish architect Erik Gunnar Asplund. Through critical essays and beautiful illustrations focusing on four projects, the Woodland Cemetery, the Stockholm Public Library, the Stockholm Exhibition and Asplund’s own house at Stennäs, it addresses the topic of buildings accompanied by landscapes.It proposes that themes related to landscape are central to Asplund’s distinctive work, with these particular sites forming a collection that documents an evolution in his design thinking from 1915 to 1940. The architect himself wrote comparatively little about his design intentions. However, through close reading and analysis of the selected projects as landscapes with architecture, Malcolm Woollen argues that reflections of the history of Swedish landscape architecture and the intellectual climate in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are evident in his work and help to explain the architect’s intentions.Erik Gunnar Asplund: Landscapes and Buildings (Routledge, 2018) is a must-have for academics, advanced students and researchers in landscape architecture and design who are interested in Nordic Classicism and the works of Erik Gunnar Asplund. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

From the pyramids of Giza, to quasicrystals, to the proportions of the human face, the golden ratio has an infinite capacity to generate shapes with exquisite properties. This book invites you to take a new look at this timeless topic, with a compilation of research and information worthy of a text book, accompanied by over 200 beautiful color illustrations that transform this into the ultimate coffee table book.In The Golden Ratio: The Divine Beauty of Mathematics (Race Point Press, 2018), Gary Meisner shares the results of his twenty-year investigation and collaboration with thousands of people across the globe in dozens of professions and walks of life. The evidence will close the gaps of understanding related to many claims of the golden ratio’s appearances and applications, and present new findings to take our knowledge further yet.Whoever you are, and whatever you may know about this topic, you’ll find something new, interesting, and informative in this book, and may find yourself challenged to see, apply, and share this unique number of mathematics and science in new ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Dewey Thorbeck's new book Agricultural Landscapes: Seeing Rural Through Design (Routledge, 2019) follows on from the author’s previous books, Rural Design and Architecture and Agriculture, to encourage using design thinking to provide greater meaning and understanding of places where humans live and work with the rural landscape. Rural areas around the world are often viewed as special places with cultural, historical and natural significance for people. Dewey Thorbeck emphasizes the importance of these rural sites and their connections to urban areas through full-color case studies of these places with particular emphasis on Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), as identified by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, to document and explore personal experiences, lessons learned, and implications for the future.Thorbeck's Bachelor of Architecture is from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Architecture from Yale University. He then won a Rome Prize Fellowship and studied in Italy for two years. The recipient of a number of architectural design awards, he is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and past president of AIA Minnesota. Because of his rural design expertise, he was selected to serve as Vice Director of the organizing committee for the creation of the first World Rural Development Committee that will be managed by the World Green Design Organization established in 2010 by China and the European Union. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Beyond Mobility: Planning Cities for People and Places (Island Press, 2017) by Robert Cervero, Erick Guerra and Stefan Al is about prioritizing the needs and aspirations of people and the creation of great places. This is as important, if not more important, than expediting movement. A stronger focus on accessibility and place creates better communities, environments, and economies. Rethinking how projects are planned and designed in cities and suburbs needs to occur at multiple geographic scales, from micro-designs (such as parklets), corridors (such as road-diets), and city-regions (such as an urban growth boundary). It can involve both software (a shift in policy) and hardware (a physical transformation). Moving beyond mobility must also be socially inclusive, a significant challenge in light of the price increases that typically result from creating higher quality urban spaces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Today I talked to Eddie Chau about his new book Random Imaginations: A Collection of Illustrated Musings (ORO Editions, 2018). The book is a reproduction of thousands of graphic images from a single sketchbook, drawn over the course of 27 years. As a way to challenge the approach of drawing what is in front of the artist, these freehand drawings are a collection of images from imagination and memory. What started as an exercise to break out of a design block, these images began on a single sheet and then became a visual journey and exploration of landscapes, everyday items, architecture, abstracts, and compositions. Like the original sketchbook, Random Imaginations is a visual catalog of countless subjects and visions, to be used as discovery, inspiration, or just casual viewing.Eddie Chau is the owner and Landscape Architect of ECLA Studio in San Francisco, CA. In addition to being a practicing landscape architect, he has taught at U.C. Davis and U.C. Berkeley Extension, where he is the Program Director of the Landscape Architecture Program. He also draws and paints and is a big fan of the University of California Golden Bears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Today I talked to Thaisa Way about her new books The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design (University of Washington Press, 2019). Haag is best known for his rehabilitation of Gas Works Park in Seattle and for a series of remarkable gardens at the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. He reshaped the field of landscape architecture as a designer, teacher, and activist. In 1964, Haag founded the landscape architecture department at the University of Washington, and his innovative work contributed to the increasingly significant design approach known as urban ecological design, which encourages thinking beyond the boundaries of gardens and parks to consider the broader roles that landscapes play within urban ecosystems, such as storm water drainage and wildlife habitat.Thaisa Way is an urban landscape historian teaching and researching history, theory, and design in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle. She is currently the Chair of the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Planning and Budgets at the University of Washington. Currently she is the Program Director for Garden and Landscape Studies, Harvard University/ Dumbarton Oaks Research Center. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, and they are all well written (and, I should say, thoroughly vetted thanks to the peer review system), but the greatest contribution of UPs is to provide a base of fundamental research to the public. And they do a great job of it.How do they do it? Today I talked to Kathryn Conrad, the president of the Association of University Presses, about the work of UPs, the challenges they face, and some terrific new directions they are going. We also talked about why, if you have a scholarly book in progress, you should talk to UP editors early and often. And she explains how! Listen in.Marshall Poe is the editor of the New Books Network. He can be reached at marshallpoe@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

Today I talked to Marc Treib about his new book Doing Almost Nothing: The Landscapes of Georges Descombes (ORO Editions, 2019).Until now, writings about the architect/landscape architect Georges Descombes have been relatively limited, appearing primarily in publications in Switzerland and abroad as conversations, interviews, and conference proceedings; most of them have appeared only in French. However, during his forty years of practice, Descombes has developed and applied a method unique to landscape architecture, one in which an extremely broad vision, both scientifically and culturally, shapes his thinking and projects. Descombes enters each project by attempting to understand the existing conditions on site and how, using minimal means and interventions, those conditions can be modified to meet the requirements of the program and those appropriate to the natural or urban environment. To some critics it would appear that Descombes has always done too little on and to the site, and in some instances have condemned him for “doing almost nothing.” Although simplicity usually demands greater concentration and study, it often yields greater rewards that result from just that restraint. Perhaps how we approach the world is more important that how we shape the world. Descombes’s landscapes are instructive in this regard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how to turn it to effective pedagogy. It’s a sharp, slim, and entertaining volume that can make better teachers of us all.Stephen Pimpare is Senior Lecturer in the Politics & Society Program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire. He is the author of The New Victorians (New Press, 2004), A Peoples History of Poverty in America (New Press, 2008), winner of the Michael Harrington Award, and Ghettos, Tramps and Welfare Queens: Down and Out on the Silver Screen (Oxford, 2017). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture