New Books in 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 memo...

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, teac...

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 hi...

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. H...

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 id...

In her book Captured Landscape: Architecture and the Enclosed Garden (Routledge, 2018; 2nd edition), Kate Baker discusses the continuing relevance of the typology of the enclosed garden to contemporary architects by exploring influential historical examples and the concepts they generate, alongside some of the best of contemporary designs – brought to life with vivid photography and detailed drawi...

In this episode, we talk with Stephen Hamnett about Planning Singapore: The Experimental City(Routledge, 2019), a book he edited with Belinda Yuen. Two hundred years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles established the modern settlement of Singapore with the intent of seeing it become ‘a great commercial emporium and fulcrum’. But by the time independence was achieved in 1965, the city faced daunting problem...

O’Neil Ford on Architecture (University of Texas Press, 2019) brings together Ford’s major professional writings and speeches for the first time. Revealing the intellectual and theoretical underpinnings of his distinctive modernism, they illuminate his fascination with architectural history, his pioneering uses of new technologies and construction systems, his deep concerns for the landscape and e...

Paul McClean grew up in Irelands where he studied architecture before moving to Southern California and establishing McClean Design. Over the past 18 years it has grown into one of the leading contemporary residential design firms in Los Angles committed to excellence. Today we're taking about his book McClean Design: Creating the Contemporary House (Rizzoli, 2019) Design is not just a job for Pau...

Written as an advocacy of melancholy’s value as part of landscape, experience, Melancholy and the Landscape: Locating Sadness, Memory, and Reflection in the Landscape(Routledge, 2018) situates the concept with landscape’s aesthetic traditions, and reveals how it is a critical part of ethics and empathy. With a history that extends back to ancient times, melancholy has hovered at the edges of the a...

In The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Nature and Justice (Routledge, 2019), Kenneth Olwig presents explorations in landscape geography and architecture from an environmental humanities perspective. With influence from art, literature, theatre staging, architecture, and garden design, landscape has now come to be viewed as a form of spatial scenery, but this reading captures only a...

In her book, The Caesar of Paris:  Napoleon Bonaparte, Rome, and the Artistic Obsession That Shaped An Empire (Pegasus Books, 2018), Susan Jaques offers up a richly detailed and researched account of Napoleon’s fascination with ancient Rome, and how this obsession shaped not only France in the early part of the nineteenth century, but also the city of Paris we know today.  In this interview, she t...

The book today is Cultural Landscapes of South Asia : Studies in Heritage Conservation, and Management (Routledge, 2017) edited by Kapila D. Silva and Amita Sinha. It's the Winner of the Environmental Design Research Association's 2018 Achievement Award. South Asian architecture and landscapes are not as well known in the western design schools. This book adds to our body of knowledge about “how t...

Chris Reed and Nina-Marie Lister's book  Projective Ecologies (Harvard Graduate School of Design 2014) is about how landscape architecture can move forward in the design field beyond garden landscapes to delve into the serious issues of climate change and land use master planing affecting our global landscapes today. Projective ecologies is a “how to get started” guide to understanding what we can...

In Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830 (Cornell University Press, 2019), Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey, Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University, explores the transformation of burial practices in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Public health concerns under the Old Regime prompted reforms in how the French buried their dead, wit...

In this segment of New Books in History, Jana Byars talks with Elizabeth “Libby” Otto, Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Studies and Executive Director of the Humanities Institute at the University of Buffalo about her forthcoming work, Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics (MIT Press, 2019). The MIT press release appropriately no...

Nadia Amoroso's last book Representing Landscapes: Analogue (Routledge, 2019) focuses the art of hand drawings and why they are still relevant and important in our digital age. Nadia takes us on a journey through the diverse Landscape Architecture University programs showcasing the best in student work. Simple hand drawings can tell powerful stories if we know “how to “ do them. Each chapter illus...

Stefan Al, PhD, is a native of the Netherlands, a low-lying county that would not exist without flood protection, is an architect, urban designer, and infrastructure expert at global design at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York. He has served as a TED resident, advisor to the United Nations High Level Political Forum on sustainable development and Professor of urban design at the University of Pennsylv...

Vacant lots, so often seen as neighborhood blight, have the potential to be a key element of community revitalization. As manufacturing cities reinvent themselves after decades of lost jobs and population, abundant vacant land resources and interest in green infrastructure are expanding opportunities for community and environmental resilience. Vacant to Vibrant: Creating Successful Green Infrastru...

Today’s guest hails to us from England. Mr. Edward Hutchison’s new book is Drawing for Landscape Architecture: Sketch to Screen to Site (Thames & Hudson, 2019). Can you draw? The answer is yes and we must. As designers, understanding the landscape beings with the basics. Like learning your musical scales, so is drawing to design. It’s the fundamental skill to understand a place’s the culture, spac...

If there’s one thing that conjures up the – rightly contested – idea of a ‘civilisation’, it is grand palatial or religious buildings, and many such structures are foremost in how China is imagined throughout the world. But as Nancy S. Steinhardt notes in Chinese Architecture: A History (Princeton University Press, 2019), many iconic edifices such Beijing’s Forbidden City or Shanxi’s temples share...

Raymond Jungles is the founder of the Miami based Landscape Architecture firm Raymond Jungles Inc. He graduate from the University of Florida with honors in 1981. And, was elected as a Fellow in 2006 in the American Society of Landscape Architects. Raymond’s work has earned 2 national awards and 40 state awards. He has lectured internationally at a diverse number of institutions and universities....

Downtowns are more than economic engines: they are repositories of knowledge and culture and generators of new ideas, technology, and ventures. They are the heart of the city that drives its future. If we are to have healthy downtowns, we need to understand what downtown is all about; how and why some American downtowns never stopped thriving (such as San Jose and Houston), some have been in decli...

Jason Dewees is the staff horticulturist at Flora Grubb Gardens and East West Trees in San Francisco. Responsible for the Tree Canopy Succession Plan for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, he serves on the Horticultural Advisory Committee for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and on The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers Advisory Council. Five years in the making, Jason's beautiful, award-wi...

Bradley Cantrell and Adam Mekies' new book Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture(Routledge, 2018) Bradley Cantrell and Adam Mekies, "Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture" (Routledge, 2018) Landscape architecture has a long history of innovation in the areas of computation and media, particularly in how the discipline represents, anal...