PUBLIC MARKS with tags architecture & livre

There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there—even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet.

L’imprimerie. Qu’on ne s’y trompe pas, l’architecture est morte, morte sans retour, tuée par le livre imprimé, tuée parce qu’elle dure moins, tuée parce qu’elle coûte plus cher. Toute cathédrale est un milliard.

This desk is made of recycled books. These pictures don’t do justice to how lovely it looks : very tactile and appealing. TU Delft architecture bibliotheek

Stockholm Library Rendering by a team of students at the Architecture School of Paris La Seine. The rendering story on CGI society is written by Olivier Charles, one of the team members. Pretty interesting story and an amazing image. The path of architectural representation is going so highly technical, it's frightening yet awe inspiring.

The copying of books and magazines emerges from a different background, one of business and opportunism justified by so called ‘ideals’. One salesman put it to me like this: ‘In Europe, what happens to old, unsold magazines? They go back to the publisher, who destroys them. That’s the cheapest solution, but I wonder if it’s the right one. In China, we have them all – both old and new – and there’s no shortage.’

Open Library does not use data records at all, instead, every piece of data is typed with a URI. This architecture aligns with W3C web standards for the semantic web, and allows much more flexible searching and data mining than would be possible with a MARC record.

The house's transparent polycarbonate cladding, used to "expose the interactions" of the building elements, makes the house function like "a structural X-ray," we read in a recent issue of Mark Magazine.

Tight quarters, a tight budget and further restrictions—including a height limit and required setbacks—navigated the architects toward their design solution: a 54-square-meter trapezoid perched above the existing structure on steel stilts, topped by a roof deck with views in all directions.

Support Structure is an architectural interface. Support Structure aims to create a space which is continuously reinvented by its users in relation to its context. Support Structure houses artefacts as well as activities and aids reconsideration of existing spaces as an impulse for future change. Support Structure is an evolving collaborative project between architect Celine Condorelli and artist-curator Gavin Wade. Our aim is to design and create a universally adaptable support structure that approaches the specific rather than the generic. To achieve this we are putting Support Structure through a learning process.

Support Structures is a manual for what bears, sustains, props, and holds up. It is a manual for those things that encourage, give comfort, approval, and solace; that care for and provide consolation and the necessities of life. It is a manual for that which assists corroborates, advocates, articulates, substantiates, champions, and endorses; for what stands behind, underpins, frames, presents, maintains, and strengthens. Support Structures is a manual for those things that give, in short, support. While the work of supporting might traditionally appear as subsequent, unessential, and lacking value in itself, this manual is an attempt to restore attention to one of the neglected, yet crucial modes through which we apprehend and shape the world.

The Alphabet City series challenges us to rethink ideas central to our lives. In each volume writers and artists address single theme from many perspectives, revealing its processes and possibilities.

This book is the catalogue of 49 Cities,

an exhibition showing at Storefront

from 14 April to 30 May 2009

The exhibition takes its name from an essay by Walter Benjamin, who writes about the memories sparked by the act of unpacking his collection of books after having them stored in boxes for two years. While Benjamin speaks as a collector and looks at books as objects tied to their owner, these architects will be speaking about the ideas found in the books and the influence on their own work. As someone who reads voraciously, I'm most interested by the recommendations, something that also occurs at the Storefront for Art and Architecture's curated micro-bookshop. Hopefully MAS will provide more online content for the exhibition, such as these lists, as it should be interesting to see any overlap between architects (if any) and to discover some lesser-known gems.

The project, by Merkz Girod Architects, places "a two-story structure in black steel on one side, where the books are kept." This "combination of book complex and church interior [was] deemed particularly successful" by the competition jury.