Winter - Australian Institute of Architects

Reviews provided by Boffins BookshopBook Reviews806 Hay Street, Pertht: 08 9321 5755e: info@boffinsbookshop.com.auwww.boffinsbookshop.com.auLiving Streets: Strategies forCrafting Public Space62THE ARCHITECT 2012 ISSUE 002Norman Foster: A Life inArchitectureDeyan SudjicISBN 9780753828571Phoenix, 2012, softcover$35.00Norman Foster is a phenomenon – as anarchitect, but also as an individual. He isresponsible for a dozen or more of the mostrecognisable buildings of the last thirty years.Deyan Sudjic explores Foster’s impact onarchitecture and on the contemporary city.He traces his remarkable journey from thebackstreets of Manchester, the determinationwith which he has built a global architecturalpractice and his huge creative influence.Amongst many other buildings, Norman Fosteris responsible for the design of Beijing’s newairport, one of the world’s largest; for the Rossiyatower in Moscow; one of the towers at GroundZero; and a crop of new towers in London. Healso designed the Reichstag, the new Wembleystadium and the British Museum’s new court.Sudjic’s insightful and elegantly writtenbiography charts the remarkable life of one of theworld’s most influential architectural figures.Lesley Bain, Barbara Gray and Dave RodgersISBN 9780470903810Wiley, 2012, hardcover$105.00Today, society is moving toward a moresustainable way of life, with cities everywhereaspiring to become high quality places to live,work and play. Streets are fundamental to thisshift. They define our system of movement,create connections between places, and offeropportunities to reconnect to natural systems.Living Streets provides practical guidance onthe complete street approach to sustainableand community-minded street use and design.Written by an interdisciplinary team of authors,the book brings insights and experience fromurban planning, transportation planning andcivil engineering perspectives. It includesexamples from many completed street designprojects from around the world, an overviewof the design and policy tools that have beensuccessful, and guidance to help get past thepredictable obstacles to implementation: Whomakes decisions in the right-of-way? Who takesresponsibility? How can regulations be changedto allow better use of the right-of-way?If you’re an urban planner, designer,transportation engineer or civil engineer, LivingStreets is the ultimate guide for the creationof more humane streetscapes that connectneighbourhoods and inspire people.Houses of the Sundown Sea:The Architectural Vision ofHarry GesnerLisa Germany, new photography by Jergen NogaiISBN 9781419700491Abrams, 2012, hardcover$100.00Casual observers and architectural aficionadosalike have for decades strained to catch glimpsesof Harry Gesner’s spectacular houses. For morethan sixty years, maverick architect and Californianative Harry Gesner has been designing homesinspired by his lifelong muse, the mythicallandscape of Southern California – the land of thesundown sea.Houses of the Sundown Sea is the first book toexamine Gesner’s work, tracing his long life andcareer through fifteen of his most intriguing,highly unorthodox, and dramatic houses, whichwere built, for the most part, during the 1950sthrough the 1970s. Throughout his career, Gesnerwas drawn to unusual, challenging sites – thekind that most architects turned down asimpossible to develop – and tapped into a broadstreak of invention and innovation that coursesthrough both himself and his houses. Thoughimpossible to categorise, his eccentric housesdisplay signature style characteristics, such ascopious use of natural materials, especially woodand Santa Barbara fieldstone; soaring rooflines;circular rooms; and enormous beams that travelacross ceilings, plunge through glass walls, andreach out into the stratosphere.Gesner’s personal archive offered an abundanceof material – from his own elaborate and detailedrenderings, plans, blueprints and drawings tovintage photography of both his private life andmany of the featured houses.Juergen Nogai was specially commissioned tophotograph the houses for this book and hisspectacular images depict them in a new light.Lisa Germany’s text captures the essence ofGesner as both man and architect. He is stillinventing, still creating, still designing.