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 want to really get a feel for Scandinavian Architecture, indeed to really get under the skin of the differences between Scandinavian Architecture and the rest of the world then this is the book to start with. Not only does it give a convincing picture of ‘northerness’ but it paints a credible narrative of not only the primordial origins of Scandinavian Architecture but the differences within the Scandinavian countries too. It’s theory but unlike much Architectural theory it strives to be to the point and understandable. It’s well written too with some great, almost poetic texts. If you like theory but may not be immediately interested in Scandinavian Architecture get it anyway as it is often able to eloquently speak of the universalities of Architecture, for example;

Architecture, in other words, is a form of understanding of the given environment. As such, it consists in explanation of the unity of life and place, in order that we may understand where we are, how we are, what we are. When successful, architecture becomes the art of building and thereby representation of an inhabited landscape.

This books grand conceit is the construction of a narrative of the different Architectures of the Scandinavian countries, and that it basically succeeds in its aim to show the unifying and differing gestalts in Scandinavia is a credit to the author.

One question that arises, that the book doesn’t cover, is what about in this post-modern age where Architects roam a lot more freely across national boundaries and Architectural internships are often served abroad how are national architectures affected? Finland for example seems very much inward looking still, with almost all of the emerging Architects offices having served out their apprenticeships for better or for worse in Finland. But what about Denmark for example which seems so influenced at the moment by Dutch Architecture with people like Bjarke Ingels having worked for Rem Koolhaas in the Netherlands? The sort of national architectural historical arc that Architects are described as being within in this book may already be about to be a thing of the past.

Although I don’t agree with everything in the book I think its major strength apart from the excellent quality of the writing, is that it offers an alternative perspective to the clash between organised religion (most of them plainly ridiculous in their base beliefs) and the scientific materialists view of this world as purely a giant machine with no purpose.

Its a life affirming and thought provoking book so order it now.

Buy your copy from floris or amazon |uk|com.

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 leave in (not so) neat piles around the house when not in their proper place on the bookshelf are precariously on the shelf in the living room, waiting only for an addition like S, M, L, XL to wrench the shelf off its brackets. The nearest three piles you see in the photo are all being read by me at the moment. They are The Winter Book by Tove Jansson , White Death by Robert Edwards, and Mart Stam’s Trousers by Crimson edited by Michael Speaks and Gerard Hadders published by 010.

So to keep to Architecture my usual blog topic the quote from Mart Stam’s Trousers follows;

Everybody knows what everybody else was doing. It was an extremely small community of architects contaminating one another. Eventually you get an outbreak like the 1927 Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart.

I’m not actually really reading this book at the moment but got it out because of the threat of demolition of the Smithsons seminal Robin Hood Gardens. There is an interview made for this book with Peter Smithson and I wanted to reread and see if he mentioned Robin Hood Gardens (he doesn’t). The quote interetingly is from that conversation and is actually Peter Smithson speaking about the birth of modernism, however, out of context it could serve as a description of the Architecture blogging community if you know what I mean.

Tagged by me are;

Jukka, darren, Sarno, Igor, Christoph

Junichiró Tanizaki - In Praise of Shadows

In the West we chase light, air and openness, as naturally as a flower turns towards the sun. However Junichiró 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 air of a mourner. Even when he wrote this book back in 1933 his delicate world was being hidden by the electric light bulb. This essay however, brings a poetry to life to the culture of shadows he describes that sets the mind and senses racing even in a person who has not experienced that which he writes about. A beautiful poetic book which is a must read on the subject of aesthetics.

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 can spark new lines of thought and ideas in such a fertile way. This book is simply breathtaking.

Vision and Knowledge

The book starts off its premise by showing how in Western Culture Vision and Knowledge are inextricably linked, and how that recently architects have become too reliant on purely visual readings of Architecture. Actually Architecture and space are appreciated in much deeper ways on many different levels. A plea is made for the other four senses in architecture so much left behind in the modern world by sight. All the other senses are dealt with but perhaps the body and haptic world are most pertinent to the Architectural project.

The Body in The Centre

I confront the city with my body; my legs measure the length of the arcade and the width of the square; my gaze unconsciously projects my body onto the facade of the cathedral, where it roams over the mouldings and contours, sensing the size of recesses and projections; my body weight meets the mass of the cathedral door, and my hand grasps the door pull as I enter the dark void behind. I experience myself in the city and the city exists through my embodied experience. The city and the body supplement and define each other. I dwell in the city and the city dwells in me.

The Task of Architecture

The task of Architecture is to design for the whole human experience, the body and the mind as a totality of senses and existance. Stirring, and beautiful stuff, and this book goes down as a must read.

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 little. This is the stage of the Northerly crusades, of the Hanseatic league, and a battleground for central Europe and Russia. And this Book covers it all, however I found it mainly really hard work. Up to the Second World War the story is told in an old fashioned plodding style of moves by Kings and Statesmen, of battles, dates and border changes. All great stuff for Insomniacs but where is the more strategic view, where is the story of the influence of the Hanseatic League of how it altered the wealth and culture of Europe. This part of the book is all to worthy and stale.

Only in the run up to the events of World War II and on to the present day you you get a feel for an editorial picture presented to you. Of a view of the War which is sufficiently different and insightful to be of really great interest. There is much to say about the Baltic Republics and indeed Finland and their position between the two tyrannies of USSR and the German Reich. For the last few chapters alone this is a worthwhile read but a more lively and insightful account of the Baltic Sea is still outstanding.

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 knowledge, however they are not much examined in the mainstream. Mike Davis’s book looks at this global phenomenon in detail, and shows clearly how the city has been turned into slums, and how poverty has been urbanised.

Slum mega cities have strange geographies, and densities that defy analysis and seeming logic. Here Peri urbanism where city and country are virtually indivisible is covered as is the continual subdivision of wealth and free space by mega slums that turn earthquake prone mountainsides into dense housing. These city slums are where the worlds problems will start, and where they must be solved.

But if you are looking for light reading this is not it, and although global capitalism is firmly blamed for this there are no fixes suggested in this book either. This story though is worth telling and the book is a powerfully argued proof that much of the world is suffering under impossible odds. bldgblog has a great two part interview with Mike Davis worth reading as a follow up.

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 part travelogue, part gossip, part history, with a bit of intrigue mixed in. I really liked this book not least because Berendt is a gifted writer, hard researched details and insights are included without distracting from the flow of the book. He dishes the dirt no doubt deservedly on a few people, and he gives a good feeling for the city at least for the casual visitor. How this book will stack up against the other ‘Venice books’ is hard to say is there a more romantic literary city both in spirit or actual fact than Venice? So this book might just fade under the weight of comparison against previous and future tales of Venice. Especially as the Fenice fire is essentially an unfinished outcome, there is plenty of smoke but the real fire behind still remains hidden.

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, is a beautiful novel about a grandaughter and grandmother living on an island in the Finnish Arpelago. This is one of Tove Janssons’ adult novels although she is much more famous as the creator of the moomins. This book however really deserves to be held up as a great novel. It has a sparse language and minimal action and a strange humour, but it is powerful and beguiling without having to resort to a weird or action packed plot. I always think the really best writers are the ones whose language remains simple while being able to communicate in a subtle way, and this Jansson really can do. Perhaps it sometimes crosses the line of being a little too minimal but its brevity and lightness of touch save it. You get pulled in quickly and completely. Definetly mostly autobiographical I would think, it also somehow conveys the summer cottage experience that finns love. I highly recommend this book.

1. The book that changed my life.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I was really ill working in Madras when I started reading this. When I finished I felt much better and somehow changed.

2. The book that I have read more than once.
There aren’t many of these, maybe about four or five in my entire life. Two stick out though Maybe Pride and Predudice by Jane Austin. I think we had to read it at school. I finished and read it again and then everything else by Jane Austin. A great book for the settings and the insight into human actions all wrapped up with a little romance.
The other one would be Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino a book of amazing prose beauty.

3. The book I would take on a desert island.
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. Because someone is always worse off than you and it reminds you of the awesome power of nature compared to a human and the feelings of being alone.

4. The book that made me silly.
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It must have had some lasting effects…..
5. The book that made me cry.
Cats Cradle (sometimes Ice 9) by Kurt Vonnegut a deeply powerful book. In the end we have only ourselves to blame.

6. The book I would like to see written.
The one that’s in your head now….go on write it!

7. The book I hoped would never be written…..but should be read.
OK This is the book I hoped would never be written- but should be read. The Cap or the Price of a Life by Roman Frister . A holocaust survival book like no other. One night in the camp, Frister is raped by a fellow prisoner, who then steals his cap. Anyone who lines up for morning roll-call without his cap was immediately shot. And so, to survive, Frister stole the cap of another prisoner–who was then shot dead in his place.

8. The book I am currently reading.
Northern Shores: A History of the Baltic Sea and Its Peoples (Paperback) by Alan Palmer. Did you know that Tallinn is named after the Danes?

9. The book I’ve been meaning to read.
For Architecture p0rn it would be KM3 the New Book from MVRDV Architects, ready to drool over the images, projects, videos etc…..otherwise perhaps Albert Camus ‘ L’Etranger.

10. I challenge the following bloggers;
Jon
Jukka
Darren
Igor
Christoph

Looking back at this list I’ve missed out so many essential books because they didn’t quite fit into a category or I am remembering once again, I only see mistakes or am temped into making lots of sub lists. All these great books can change your life a little bit I think.

The first thing to do perhaps is to say this definitely isn’t a thriller, and not some airport paperback either. Its a very well written police novel with some strong social and apparently autobiographical themes which deserve a deeper read. The characters are well written and translated and we get to see into most of their thoughts in a way that reminds me a little of Not Before Sundown however I like this book better. The theme of treatment of children within families while not the supposed main plot in the book is for me its key and best element.

The crime story drives the plot but not that fast and compared to the other strands in the book a little disappointingly. But it deals with difficult issues very well I think and it is quite pessimistic in parts (is this a Finnish preoccupation?) but the overall balance in the book saves it. If you want a straightforward Detective story this book may not be for you, there is never any mystery, but if you are prepared to read a more complex novel with some universal themes you may like it. I also found an Interview with Matti Joensu and his translator thats worth reading, with some insights into the author, the work of translating and the book itself.

I found this a hard book to review, as it has elements I both love and hate. It is an updating or retelling of the Finnish Troll legends, where a troll enters the life of a young gay photographer in Helsinki. The troll comes from a past/parallel Finland of uncivilised pure nature and we can read the troll as the beast in us or the possibility of nature someday reclaiming us!

I like are the structure which is both new and ambitious. Chapter headings are the names of the characters narrating first person, and the narration is broken up by other elements such as faux newspaper reports and poems and website references etc. This element of the book is its most successful and I think its quite a direct and interesting way to tell a story and include some background information, legend and suspense.

Unfortunately the excepts are the highlight and the telling and style of the main story I find quite weak and light compared to the subject matter. There is no sense of gathering doom or tension, just some events strung together. The main story doesn’t match up to the ambition of the subtext. It could have been alot better and the feeling I was left with was a missed chance.

Update: Georg blogged this entry and following a short conversation we are trying to do some joint reading, I’ve copied his starting list below which I pretty much agree with. Would anyone else like to give it a go?

* Johanna Sinisalo - Not Before Sundown

* Mikael Niemi - Popular Music from Vittula

* Leena Krohn - Tainaron, Dona Quixote and Other Writings

* Mikko Rimminen - Pussikaljaromaani

Alain de Botton
has a new book coming out very soon called the Architecture of Happiness also there are some video clips from the Documentary he made based on the book called The Perfect Home. Its not often that a major mainstream writer who is not an Architect devotes a book to the subject , he’s also an old favourite of mine, so I am looking forward a great deal to reading this.The Guardian has a

preview and the book is out on the 20th April. The title of the book is intriguing, how are good Architecture and Happiness related anyway?

update(21.04.06)- It came out yesterday and the first (not so good) review is out today.

Notes.
WIth modern books now there are many references that are to the web, they aren’t so much use in the back of a books as in html so I put a couple up;

• Catal Huyuk the first city, and it didn’t have roads at all!
• Quality of life survey; cities
• Early World Cities
• Berlins reconstruction planning website

Publisher: MFA From Wood to Architecture presents 17 projects from around Finland which use wood in different ways. Wood is perhaps the fundamental building material of Finnish architecture and recently has enjoyed a new life being used more and more again not only in traditional ways but also as this book shows in modern uses as a tecnical product, eg glulam beams, cladding or premade insulated panels, and the projects here show off almost all of these uses in recent Finnish Architecture. The exhibition, accompanying the book runs for only a few more days but the book adds four well written essays about wood more on which I will write another time. The book is excellent with the summer houses and the Kärsämäki wooden church in particular the pick of them. Note I can’t locate this book for sale at amazon.co.uk or .com. Go to mfa website to order, the text is both in english and finnish. photos of exhibition and press photos below (here for full size)