img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Tech reads

Relaxing reading that's interesting too

Bridges spanning the world

Marcus Binney, Pimpernel Press, 256p HB £40

With Brexit impending, a wall going up on the Mexican border and a standoff on the Korean demilitarized zone, we need more bridges; thankfully Marcus Binney, founder of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, provides them – in spades. Based on his 1997 lecture to the Institution of Civil Engineers, the book contains more than 200 global examples: Inca rope bridges, Roman aqueducts, Venetian sighing ones, Persian ones, iconic East River ones, Norman Foster French valley-spanning ones. In fact, if Wiki-Bridges was a webpage, this would be the hard copy. While the explanatory text is quite minimal (there are a lot of bridges), this coffee table tome is packed with photos. Roughly chronological in order, themes become more random as we move into the 20th century. ‘Ingenious moving’, ‘Bewitching’, or ‘Eclectic’ anyone?


 

The Construction Process in Architecture

Stephen Lees, SPEL Publications, 278p PB £9.74

This book, for Lees’ lecture series for the Prince’s Foundation, is a sequel to the author’s Visions of Architecture book. Prepare yourselves: the Orders that the writer goes on to expound are based not on classical ones but rather more esoteric interpretations of the word in the construction process. They are Architecture, Religion, Engineering, Aesthetics, Economics, Psychology and Politics. Their overlaying has the author surmising that the Empire State building was due as much to Mayan Architecture as to the evolution of the steel frame, and that the St Pancras Hotel was motivated by fairies and the fear of death, though Anna Karenina might not agree with that last assertion. That said, the line drawings are quite lovely and homogenising; good for a distracting dip perhaps.

Buy it here


 

Loose-Fit Architecture: Designing Buildings for Change

Alex Lifschutz guest ed. Architectural Design, Wiley 144p HB £24.99

When it comes to the projects that they helped to design, architects rarely offer critical distance, but Alex Lifschutz does when talking about his involvement with Foster’s Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. His view is that the high tech movement appropriated Cedric Price’s dream of flexible space, only to formalise and concretise it in the process. It’s the core message in a book that’s all about how our architecture needs to be adaptive to accommodate the high rates of technological change occurring now. This highly illustrated and annotated book collates key thinking from office space guru Despina Katsikakis, sustainability honcho Simon Sturgis, critic Edwin Heathcote and architect Clare Wright among others. A fun and info-packed 144 pages. 

Latest

In an Olympic year and with a Commonwealth Games due to be staged in two years’ time, impress us with a bold, temporary sporting arena in Edinburgh or London for a chance to win a £2500 prize

Win up to £2500 in our design ideas competition

Guidance from Purcell stresses the need to use heritage-trained architects, spend time and effort on detailed design, and collaborate with council conservation officers

Purcell guidance advocates heritage-trained architects and collaboration with LPA conservation officers

Our role as architects encompasses much more than design alone, says Muyiwa Oki. Reassuring our clients is an essential part of the service

Reassuring our clients is an essential part of the service

Amin Taha’s Groupwork has thrown a light, nostalgic cloak over a central London office block in a playful upgrade and extension

Amin Taha’s playful upgrade and extension of a city block

Light industrial unit design in Sevenoaks, a daylighting contest for architecture students and a new home counties planning/design framework: these are some of the latest architecture contracts and competitions from across the industry

Latest: £2.6m commercial development, Kent