Van Alen Books

City College of New York Architecture Book Fair

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:35:00 -0400

Monday, 12pm

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Architecture Book Fair

City College of New York

Van Alen Books heads uptown on Monday, May 13 to present a selection of new and notable architecture and design books at City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture. Please join us on the ground floor of the main architecture library from 12-2 PM.

On Thursday, April 24, we were joined by Georges Teyssot and...

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:02:00 -0400

On Thursday, April 24, we were joined by Georges Teyssot and Cynthia Davidson at the bookstore for a conversation on the latest in the Writing Architecture series, A Topology of Everyday Constellations.

Launch Party: PLOT Volume 2

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:00:09 -0400

Thursday, 7pm

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PLOT Volume 2

Launch Party

The Graduate Landscape Architecture Program of the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York, is launching Volume 2 of its student-edited journal, PLOT. Featuring submissions by students, faculty, and friends of the Landscape Architecture program, Volume 2 explores the theme of PATCHWORK, developed by the second year MLA student editorial board in collaboration with faculty advisor Catherine Seavitt Nordenson and designer Isaac Gertman. Contributions to this issue explore ad-hoc and innovative assemblages, commensal species, and incongruous urban wilds. Come celebrate PLOT’s new issue and raise a toast to the 2013 graduating class of Master of Landscape Architecture students.

Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture joined us at the...

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:58:00 -0400

Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works Architecture joined us at the bookstore on April 11 for a discussion to celebrate his firm’s new book Allied Works Architecture | Clyfford Still Museum, a publication showcasing their design for the Denver institution.

Building Seagram

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:06:00 -0400

Thursday, 7pm

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Building Seagram

Phyllis Lambert, Cynthia Davidson

This comprehensive personal and scholarly history chronicles how at 27, Phyllis Lambert, daughter of Seagram founder Samuel Bronfman, took over the search for an architect to build a New York corporate headquarters and chose Mies van der Rohe, resulting in an iconic modern landmark. Designed with Philip Johnson, the 38-story tower also established Lambert as a leading architectural patron and played a substantial role in shaping landmark legislation and zoning laws in New York City. Lambert makes use of previously unpublished personal archives, company correspondence, and photographs to tell an insider’s view of the debates and dramas of the building’s construction, as well as its crucial role in the history of modern art and architectural culture. Phyllis Lambert, founding director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, will discuss this newly launched volume in conversation with Anyone Corporation director and editor Cynthia Davidson, exploring the Seagram’s history in the context of New York’s urban development and the forces that continue to shape the city’s streetscape and skyline.

Fabrico Próprio: The Design of Portuguese Semi-Industrial Confectionery

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:29:00 -0400

Friday, 7pm

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Fabrico Próprio: The Design of Portuguese Semi-Industrial Confectionery

Frederico Duarte, Pedro Ferreira, Rita João, Akiko Busch, Naz Sahin

No one takes cakes more seriously than the Portuguese: every morning, countless one-portion, sweet pastries fill the counters of cafés and stores across the country in a myriad of shapes, doughs, fillings, creams, jams and colors. These semi-industrial cakes are neither precious confections nor factory-made sweets—anonymously made, yet often displaying highly creative designs. Fabrico Próprio means “own production” or “made on premises,” and is a term used on shop signs, windows and packaging as a warrant of baking freshness and quality. This 332-page, hardcover book dedicated to Portuguese confectionery and its relation to design contains an encyclopedic record of sweets accompanied by written and photo essays by architecture and food critics, commissioned illustrations, and much more. Join design critic Akiko Busch in conversation with authors Rita João, Pedro Ferreira, and Frederico Duarte, as well as designer and food blogger behind FeastingNeverStops Naz Sahin, on the intersections between confectionery, culture, and design.

This is the kick-off event for Counter/Point: The 2013 D-Crit Conference.

On Thursday, April 4 at Van Alen Books, the editors of Project...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:33:00 -0400

On Thursday, April 4 at Van Alen Books, the editors of Project journal joined us for a live interview with designer Caroline O’Donnell of CODA.

Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:31:00 -0400

Thursday, 7pm

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Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb

June Williamson, Rob Lane, Kazys Varnelis, Jocelyn Wenk

Suburbs deserve a better, more resilient future—and June Williamson shows that they can be reinvigorated through inventive design. Drawing on award-winning design ideas for revitalizing Long Island, she offers valuable models not only for U.S. suburbs, but also those emerging elsewhere with global urbanization. Williamson argues that suburbia has historically been a site of great experimentation, and is not destined to remain filled with strip malls and excess parking lots. Providing a broad vision of suburban reform based on the best schemes submitted in Long Island’s highly successful “Build a Better Burb” competition, she presents designs that operate at a regional scale, tackling systems such as transit, aquifer protection, and power generation. Join June Williamson; Rob Lane, Senior Fellow at RPA; Kazys Varnelis, Director of the Network Architecture Lab at GSAPP; and Jocelyn Wenk of the Long Island Index as they discuss pragmatic yet visionary strategies to take the sprawl out of suburbia, creating a vibrant, new suburban form.

On March 7 at Van Alen Books, we celebrated Urgent Architecture:...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:14:00 -0400

On March 7 at Van Alen Books, we celebrated Urgent Architecture: 40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World, with author and Inhabitat Architecture Editor Bridgette Meinhold.

A Topology of Everyday Constellations

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:12:00 -0400

Wednesday, 7pm

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A Topology of Everyday Constellations

Georges Teyssot, Cynthia Davidson

Today, spaces no longer represent a bourgeois haven; nor are they the sites of a classical harmony between work and leisure, private and public, the local and the global. The house is not merely a home but a position for negotiations with multiple spheres—the technological as well as the physical and the psychological. In A Topology of Everyday Constellations, Georges Teyssot considers the intrusion of the public sphere into private space, and the blurring of notions of interior, privacy, and intimacy in our societies. Thresholds, he suggests, work both as markers of boundaries and as bridges to the exterior. If the threshold no longer separates public from private, and if we can no longer think of the house as a bastion of privacy, Teyssot asks, does the body still inhabit the house—or does the house, evolving into a series of microdevices, inhabit the body? Join author Georges Teyssot in conversation with Writing Architecture Series and Log editor Cynthia Davidson.

February 28 at the bookstore, we hosted a conversation on Civic...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:05:02 -0400

February 28 at the bookstore, we hosted a conversation on Civic Action, a publication generated from the art and urban-planning initiative of the Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park that engaged four artists to investigate new strategies for community development in the Long Island City neighborhood.

We were joined by Noguchi Museum director Jenny Dixon, Socrates Sculpture Park executive director John Hatfield, founding principal of WXY Architecture Claire Weisz, along with Wall Street Journal architecture columnist and “Civic Action” editor Julie Iovine.

Allied Works Architecture: Clyfford Still Museum

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:59:00 -0400

Thursday, 7pm

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Allied Works Architecture: Clyfford Still Museum

Brad Cloepfil

The Clyfford Still Museum in Denver is a single-artist institution devoted to the life and work of one of the 20th century’s most influential and enigmatic painters. Designed by Allied Works Architecture, the building is specifically crafted to present Still’s canvasses, and equally, to resonate with the light and landscape of the high prairie and the evolving urban district it inhabits. The firm’s second book, Allied Works Architecture / Clyfford Still Museum reveals the building’s essential character and evolution through a series of essays, models, drawings, details and photographs. On Thursday, April 11th, Allied Works’ founder and design principal Brad Cloepfil will lead a conversation about the ideas and inspiration that led to the museum’s design, and the firm’s efforts to realize a work of architecture that has been hailed as one of the finest art-viewing experiences anywhere.

On Wednesday, February 13 at Van Alen Books we explored Hong...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:54:35 -0400

On Wednesday, February 13 at Van Alen Books we explored Hong Kong’s dense pedestrian networks through the new publication Cities Without Ground by Jonathan D. Solomon and Adam Frampton, who were joined in conversation by special guest Grahame Shane.

Project: A Journal for Architecture

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:48:00 -0400

Thursday, 7pm

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Project: A Journal for Architecture

Alfie Koetter, Emmett Zeifman, Daniel Markiewicz, Caroline O’Donnell

While young architects once started their careers with commissions for houses or other small projects and gradually attained larger-scale work, the paths toward prominence in architecture today are more diverse. The internet allows architects to reach wider audiences than they ever have, while educational and cultural institutions increasingly offer architects new opportunities for producing work in the forms of temporary installations, exhibitions, and urban interventions. Join the editors of Project for a public conversation with Caroline O’Donnell—principal of CODA, founding editor of Pidgin, assistant professor at the Cornell University Department of Architecture, and winner of the 2013 MoMA/PS1 Young Architects Program—on her development and practice in the expanded field of contemporary architecture. The discussion will be featured in the upcoming issue of Project, a recently launched journal investigating critical agendas in architecture and ambitions for the discipline today.

Rietveld’s ChairMarijke Kuper & Lex ReitsmaRietveld’s...

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 16:56:00 -0500

Rietveld’s Chair
Marijke Kuper & Lex Reitsma
Rietveld’s Chair, the first in the Premsela Design Stores series on Dutch design history, provides a detailed look into the work of Dutch furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld, from his early training as a cabinetmaker to the legacy of the Red-Blue Chair as an icon of Dutch design and symbol of the De Stijl movement. Now available after the popular first edition sold out in 2011, this book by Marijke Kuper—the world’s leading expert on Rietveld’s work—includes text in both English and Dutch as well as an accompanying DVD documentary by the book’s designer, Lex Reitsma.

The book is dense with precise information on Rietveld’s construction techniques, an overview of all known examples of the chair, and additional facts on models, measurements, and colors. Yet the book and film together also frame Rietveld’s work within a larger context, exploring his relationship to the De Stijl movement, and the impact of mechanization and automation in his ideas about design. Kuper portrays Rietveld’s vision of a furniture object formed out of simple, distinct forms—a construction of lines, planes and voids that would together form a harmonious whole. The book and film show how Rietveld’s visionary work pushed the boundaries between sculpture and functional object, and how his chair eventually emerged as an iconic work of art in the contemporary context of art auctions and museums.

Urgent Architecture

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:28:00 -0500

Thursday, 7pm

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Urgent Architecture

Bridgette Meinhold

The last decade has seen a shocking increase of natural disasters around the world. We can hardly stop these disasters from occurring, but we can work to protect ourselves through stronger homes. Urgent Architecture: 40 Sustainable Housing Solutions for a Changing World is a collection of housing projects from around the world that address these disasters either through emergency shelters and temporary housing as part of relief efforts, or through prefabricated, affordable and adaptable houses built to withstand future catastrophes. At this launch event, join author Bridgette Meinhold, Architecture Editor of Inhabitat.com, and fellow Inhabitat staff for a conversation about the book and the growing importance of the role of architecture in natural disasters.

On Wednesday, February 6 at Van Alen Books we celebrated Travis...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:27:00 -0500

On Wednesday, February 6 at Van Alen Books we celebrated Travis Beck’s “Principles of Ecological Landscape Design,” a new book that digs into the science of designing high-performance, resilient landscapes.

Civic Action

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:26:00 -0500

Thursday, 7pm

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Civic Action

Claire Weisz, Julie Iovine, Jenny Dixon, John Hatfield

As urban planning and civic projects become more interdisciplinary, Civic Action reconsiders the role that artists and cultural institutions can play. The Noguchi Museum and Socrates Sculpture Park engaged four artists—Natalie Jeremijenko, Mary Miss, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and George Trakas—to lead teams to develop new strategies for community development in the surrounding neighborhood of Long Island City. These partnerships yielded an array of innovative and surprising approaches, and also an argument for new urban planning models. Join Julie Iovine, architecture columnist for The Wall Street Journal, in conversation with Noguchi Museum director Jenny Dixon, Socrates Sculpture Park executive director John Hatfield, and founding principal of WXY Architecture Claire Weisz.

We packed Van Alen Books to capacity last Thursday, January 31,...

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:17:00 -0500

We packed Van Alen Books to capacity last Thursday, January 31, to celebrate Mark Rakatansky’s “Tectonic Acts of Desire and Doubt,” the latest in the Architecture Words series.

Architecture Inserted

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:16:00 -0500

Friday, 7pm

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Architecture Inserted

Robert Stern, Nina Rappaport, Chris Perry, Eric Bunge, Mimi Hoang

Architecture Inserted features the advanced studios of Chris Perry, Eric Bunge and Mimi Hoang, and Liza Fior with Katherine Clarke—the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors at Yale. The research and projects grapple with the issues of how to insert new pieces of architecture both as infrastructural and individual cultural buildings, into sites where existing physical and social issues are at conflict. The design solutions in each case—CERN headquarters in Geneva, the Périphérique of Paris, and the London 2012 Olympic site—unify the urban design and piece together the sites as bits of urban acupuncture creating new amenities and resources for the future. The book includes interviews with the architects, essays about their themes, and the work of the students in the advanced studios at Yale.

Join Yale School of Architecture dean Robert Stern and publications editor Nina Rappaport, along with professors Chris Perry, Eric Bunge, and Mimi Hoang, to celebrate this new release.