Category Archives: Books

Newly Drawn

Nine up and coming Finnish Architecture practises have a book publication out called Newly Drawn – Emerging Finnish Architects (website).
The firms involved are; Hollmén Reuter Sandman, Verstas, NOW, Anttinen Oiva Architects, Lassila Hirvilammi, Avanto, ALA, AFKS and K2S. The link to buy the book is here.

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This Gaming Life by Jim Rossignol

Its always good to start a book with a bang and This Gaming Life does just that.
In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a video game. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.
From here the stage is set [...]

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The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
Amazon.com | uk
Compare a bacteria with a human, with a city, with the planet. Weave in two personal stories and the clash of ideas and of the inherrant messiness of progress, and you may get the outline of this book. The Ghost Map is at once a real map, but [...]

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White Death by Robert Edwards

White Death by Robert Edwards
Amazon uk | usa
As a British citizen I was brought up with the popular blockbuster WWII films and jingoistic historical notion of  WWII being a kind of good versus evil battle. The idea is still somewhat preserved now with the Third Reich being the last word in totalitarian regimes, in the [...]

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Antikythera Mechanism

Decoding the Heavens is a book about the Antikythera mechanism a 2000 year old device that could conceivably be called the worlds first computer. There is a nice short video of the man responsible for rebuilding it describing what it does.

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21st Century Atlas of World Architecture

The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture is out for Christmas (isn’t it about 92years early?). The Times does a nice little review of this coffee table bound volume. I particularly like the bit about the Nordics, although Sweden is conspicuously absent.
Norway, Finland and Denmark: for consistent quality, these three are always in the top [...]

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Skateboarding, Space and the City

Skateboarding, Space and the City
by Iain Borden
amazon.com|.uk
Iain Borden effectively tells the history of the rise of skateboarding, board and boardpark history and the evolution of skateboarding itself. Lefebvre’s The Production of Space is the main jumping off point for this book but necessarily reinterpreted through the attitude of skateboarders to the city. Actually its better [...]

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Nightlands

Nightlands Nordic building by Christian Norberg-Schulz.
Amazon (uk|us)
A tip off from a reader of this blog sent me to this book for which I will be eternally grateful. First I should start with a warning you that this is not a coffee table publication, the pictures are sparse and in black and white. However if you [...]

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Living on Purpose

My Dad has a new book out on 24th April 2008, called Living on purpose. I was back over at my parents a few weeks ago and Dad was kind enough to give me a copy which I have read already. It’s really excellent and if you are interested at all in life’s bigger questions, [...]

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Page 123

John Hill of A Daily Dose of Architecture Tagged me with this meme;
1. Pick up the nearset book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book on page 123.
3. Find the Fifth Sentance.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Due to my daughters age and strong hands, all books which I used to [...]

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Reading List 2008

Archinect has a great reading list for 2008, and dysturb has a good post on 010’s upcoming publications of 2008. 010 really has been one of the great Architectural Publishing houses over the last few years, and it looks like 2008 will be no exception.

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Junichiro Tanizaki In Praise of Shadows

Junichiro Tanizaki – In Praise of Shadows
In the West we chase light, air and openness, as naturally as a flower turns towards the sun. However Junichiro Tanizaki writes about a Japanese sensibility for shadows, or the interior in its widest sense. He writes with the touch of the great writer he was and with the [...]

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The Eyes of the Skin

The Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa
Rarely is a book about Architecture able to transcend its subject and become a poetic trip that re-evaluates human experience. Rarely as you read, particularly an architecture book, can the ideas as well as prose peel away a fog from your mind. Only a precious few books [...]

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Northern Shores by Alan Palmer

Northern Shores by Alan Palmer, A history of the Baltic Sea and its Peoples.
This book covers a potentially fascinating topic. The Northern Sea of Europe the Baltic compared to the more famous and glamorous Southern Sister the Mediterranean gets overlooked. But Its a worthy topic for a book to try to redress this balance a [...]

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Planet of Slums by Mike Davis

The scale and velocity of world population increase over the last fifty years has been unprecedented in human history. Urbanisation, with over a billion people living in cities has become the key signature of this growth, with the urban population for the first time greater than in the country. These facts are startling, if common [...]

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The City of Falling Angels

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt takes place in Venice, Berendt arriving just after the fire in the Fenice Opera House. The story of the burning down of the Fenice provides the backbone of the book, but other stories are intertwined, and much like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is [...]

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