New Books in Architecture

Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) is a landscape architecture firm based in Seattle, Washington. GGN was founded in 1999 by Jennifer Guthrie, Shannon Nichol, and Kathryn Gustafson, and it is world-renowned for designing high-use landscapes in complex, urban contexts. Thaïsa Way's GGN: Landscapes 1999 to 2018 (Timber Press, 2018) is the first book devoted to their ground-breaking work. It surveys some of their most important achievements including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Campus in Seattle, Washington; the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC; the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park in Chicago, Illinois; and the Venice Biennale in Italy. Packed with practical design lessons and inspiration, this is a must-have resource for design students and professionals, and fans of beautifully designed public spaces.

Thaïsa Way is an Urban landscape historian teaching and researching history, theory, and design in the Dept. of Landscape Architecture at the College of Built Environments, University of Washington, Seattle. She is the current Chair at Dumbarton Oaks Research Center.

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In Heirloom Houses : the Architecture of Wade Weissmann (Gibbs Smith, 2018), Steven Stolman explains how the houses designed by Wade Weissmann and his firm tell the stories of the homeowners. Like beautiful music, a Wade Weissmann house is composed of notes and expressions, rhythm and syncopation, moving forward in time and space toward a resolution that separates ordinary from extraordinary architecture: harmony. Known for their shingle-style homes, they also design ranch houses and equestrian estates, romantic cottages, contemporary penthouses, and lake homes.

There is nothing ordinary about a WWA house; custom wood work, architectural details, and the finest materials set these residences apart from all others. Also featured are a couple of striking commercial designs.

Steven Stolman is a writer and designer with an observant eye on high society. He has a keen sense of the history of design in fashion, architecture and interiors. He is a brand consultant and sought-after speaker. He has authored four previous books, among them Scalamandre: Haute Décor.

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Who built Africa’s cities? Going beyond the colonial archive and the planner’s gaze, David Morton’s Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique (Ohio University Press, 2019) describes the incremental process through which Maputo’s suburbios – popular neighborhoods outside the formally planned city – were built and occupied. Through key episode’s in Mozambique’s urban history – from colonial responses to migrant labor to independence-era responses to flooding, he interprets the routine forms of house construction as critical political acts through which ordinary residents of the city have inserted themselves into the city and concretized urban belonging. The materiality of different building materials are central this story. The risks and obstacles of constructing permanent, concrete, housing in the face of politically enforced urban impermanence an d ambiguous legal status kept the popular suburbios in suspension.

David Morton talks to host Jacob Doherty about the ways that the built environment both reflects and shapes the changing aspirations and achievements of the city’s residents. Offering a critical contribution to the process of decolonization in African cities, Morton examines the racial and spatial effects of colonial Portugal’s officially race-blind ideology as well as the ambivalent anti-urban bias of the early FRELIMO regime.

David Morton is an assistant professor of African History at the University of British Colombia. He has written about architectural and planning histories, Portuguese colonialism, informal settlements, housing, and citizenship, and decolonization.

Jacob Doherty is a lecturer in the Anthropology of Development at the University of Edinburgh.

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Buses can and should be the cornerstone of urban transportation. They offer affordable mobility and can connect citizens with every aspect of their lives. But in the US, they have long been an afterthought in budgeting and planning. With a compelling narrative and actionable steps, Better Buses, Better Cities : How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit (Island Press, 2019) inspires us to fix the bus.

Transit expert Steven Higashide shows us what a successful bus system looks like with real-world stories of reform—such as Houston redrawing its bus network overnight, Boston making room on its streets to put buses first, and Indianapolis winning better bus service on Election Day. Higashide shows how to marshal the public in support of better buses and how new technologies can keep buses on time and make complex transit systems understandable.

Steven Higashide is one of America's leading experts on public transportation and the people who use it. As director of research for the national foundation TransitCenter, Higashide has authored groundbreaking reports that have redefined how decision makers and journalists understand transit. He has taken the bus in 30 cities around the US and the world.

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How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University, provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities and the future of criticism. The book is packed with interview material, coupled with accessible and easy to follow theoretical interventions, creating a text that will be of interest to social sciences, humanities, and general readers alike.

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Elements of Visual Design in the Landscape (Routledge, 2019) presents a vocabulary of visual design, structured in a logical and easy to follow sequence. It is profusely illustrated using both abstract and real examples taken from a wide range of international locations together with cross referencing between related principles and case studies demonstrating how the principles can be applied in practice.

The visual aspects of design have often been treated as 'cosmetic' and therefore not meriting attention or purely subjective and therefore open to personal preference. Few attempts have been made to explain how we see the landscape in any rational and structured way, and to demonstrate how visually creative design and management can be undertaken. This book aims to fill that gap.

Simon Bell is a forester and landscape architect. He is Chair Professor and Head of the Chair of Landscape Architecture at this Estonian University of Life Sciences and Associate Director of the OPENspace Research Centre at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

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Desert Paradises: Surveying the Landscapes of Dubai’s Urban Model (Routledge, 2019) explores how designed landscapes can play a vital role in constructing a city’s global image and legitimizing its socio-political hierarchy. Using the case study of Dubai, Julian Bolleter explores how Dubai’s rulers employ a paradisiacal image of greening the desert, in part, as a tool for political legitimization. Bolleter also evaluates the designed landscapes of Dubai against the principles of the United Nations and the International Federation of Landscape Architects and argues that what is happening in Dubai represents a significant discrepancy between theory and practice. This book offers a new perspective on landscape design that has until now been unexplored. It would be beneficial to academics and students of geography, landscape architecture, urban design and urban planning – particularly those with an interest in Dubai or the many cities in the region that are experiencing Dubaiification.

Julian Bolleter is the Deputy Director at the Australian Urban Design Research Centre (AUDRC) at the University of Western Australia. He is a Landscape Architect and Urban Designer.

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If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same sorts of things, an easy source of advice might not be there for you.

Thankfully, for anybody who wishes there was a guidebook that would just break all of this down, that book has now been written. Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers (Stylus Publishing, 2020) by Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas J. Tobin offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions on how to decide if you want to leave behind academia and how to start searching for a new career. If a lot of career advice is too vague or too ambiguous, this book corrects that by outlining not just how to figure out what you might want to do, but critically, how you might go about accomplishing that.

Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to [email protected].

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Much has been written about Millennials, but until now their growing presence in the field of architecture has not been examined in depth. In an era of significant challenges stemming from explosive population growth, climate change, and the density of cities, Darius Sollohub, Millennials in Architecture: Generations, Disruption, and the Legacy of a Profession (University of Texas Press, 2019) embraces the digitally savvy disruptors who are joining the field at a crucial time as it grapples with the best ways to respond to a changing physical world.

Taking a clear-eyed look at the new generation in the context of the design professions, Sollohub begins by situating Millennials in a line of generations stretching back to early Modernism, exploring how each generation negotiates the ones before and after. He then considers the present moment, closely evaluating the significance of Millennial behaviors and characteristics (from civic-mindedness to collaboration, and time management in a 24/7 culture), all underpinned by fluency in the digital world. The book concludes with an assessment of the profound changes and opportunities that Millennial disruption will bring to education, licensure, and firm management. Encouraging new alliances, Millennials in Architecture is an essential resource for the architectural community and its stakeholders.

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What is creativity? What is the relationship between work life and personal life? How is it possible to live truthfully in a world of contradiction and compromise? These deep and deeply personal questions spring to the fore in Thomas Yarrow's vivid exploration of the life of architects. Yarrow takes us inside the world of architects, showing us the anxiety, exhilaration, hope, idealism, friendship, conflict, and the personal commitments that feed these acts of creativity.

Architects: Portraits of a Practice (Cornell University Press, 2019) rethinks "creativity," demonstrating how it happens in everyday practice. It highlights how the pursuit of good architecture, relates to the pursuit of a good life in intimate and individually specific ways. And it reveals the surprising and routine social negotiations through which designs and buildings are actually made.

Prue Chiles is Professor of Architectural Design Research at Newcastle University

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