AR December 2018/January 2019 on Books + AR Library

Through the ages, books have shaped architectural discourse and culture at least as much as buildings have. For this issue of the AR, we look at the reciprocal and multifarious relationships between books and buildings, from libraries and archives to the architecture of text itself. In this issue we also introduce the Book of Books, the first of a recurring insert filled with features inspired by books both new and old

ISSUE 1457
Dec 2018/Jan 2019

The Architectural Review

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Books

Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House has flooded in 1996, 1998 and 2008 despite being designed on 1.6m raised pilotis

Editorial: reading around it before reading inside it

Manon Mollard

The AR considers the reciprocal and multifarious relationships between books and buildings

Temples of ignorance: boundaries blur between book collections and the buildings that house them

Emma Letizia Jones and Maarten Delbeke

As building and as metaphor – from the civic space of the library to Giulio Camillo’s ‘theatre of memory’, architecture plays a crucial part in the str...

Podcast: magCulture meets the AR

AR Editors

A word without a world: between Earth and elsewhere

Honor Gavin

Design Earth: ‘a drawing is an argument about the world’

Max L Zarzycki

The writing on the wall: the language of buildings

Tom Wilkinson

Clorindo Testa (1923-2013)

Vanessa Bell

Spaces of encounter: the performative art of reading

Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes Nájera

Volumes of words: the architecture of the page

Hannah Gregory

Reading the city: Roland Barthes in Paris and Tokyo

Edwina Attlee

Interview with Irma Boom

Eleanor Beaumont

The bigger the better: Elements of Architecture coalesce

Anna Winston

003 oodihelsinki photo(c)tuomasuusheimo thirdfloorreadingroom

Light and enlightenment: libraries in Finnish cultural identity

Jeremy Melvin

MagCulture meets the AR

AR Editors

Hong Kong West Kowloon Station by Andrew Bromberg at Aedas

Jeremy Melvin

Interview with Lars Müller

Manon Mollard

Spreading the word: Victor Hugo's Tumblr account

Davide Tommaso Ferrando

Architecture brought to book: the monograph

André Tavares

Revisit: Biblioteca Vasconcelos

Lili Carr

Outrage: our libraries are not failing us, we are failing them

Shannon Mattern

Folio: an elevation from the Alhambra

AR Editors

AR Library Winner

Green square library and plaza view of library entry pavilion tom roe (photographer)

Square the circle: Green Square Library in Sydney, Australia by Stewart Hollenstein in association with Stewart Architecture

Andrew Mackenzie

AR Library Winner: unconventional but uncompromising, Stewart Hollenstein’s Green Square development offers far more than the typical library

Highly Commended

The open book: The Pinch, Shuanghe village, China by Olivier Ottevaere and John Lin / the University of Hong Kong

Matthew Priestman

AR Library Highly Commended: community needs, the role of the public domain and disaster relief all coalesce in The Pinch, an imaginative timber structure by Olivier...

All in the mound: Maya Somaiya Library in Kopargaon, India, by Sameep Padora + Associates

A Srivathsan

AR Library Highly Commended: in the Maya Somaiya Library, the constraints of the site paved the way for invention

Commended

Pierrelexcellent antoninidarmon ctles 16

Shelf life: CTLES extension, Bussy-Saint-Georges, France, by Antonini Darmon

Andrew Ayers

AR Library Commended: Antonini Darmon’s extension to the storage facility for Paris’s educational libraries both increases and futureproofs the space

Urban grain: NRW Landesarchiv in Duisburg, Germany, by O&O Baukunst

Eleanor Beaumont

AR Library Commended: rising from the carapace of an old granary, NRW Landesarchiv is both a tombstone for the Ruhr’s industrial age and a monument to our need to r...

Recalled and shortlisted

Jinyu community library photographed by shen zhonghai tc 052

Reading between the lines: Changsha library, Hunan Province, China, by Neri&Hu

Austin Williams

AR Library recalled: while Neri&Hu’s proposal for the Jinyu Community Library in Changsha, China, was initially shortlisted by the judges, Austin Will...

AR Library shortlist

AR Editors

A shortlist of 15 exciting and creative libraries and other buildings for books from across the world has been selected by our panel of judges including Clare Wright, Giancarl...