Here are two books visiting current discussions:

Just because architects use CAD does not mean, however that “architecture can be seen as a hollow shell of its former self.”

Of course architects have wonderful ideas, which CAD makes much easier to model and produce. I am reminded of various amazing tasks of construction and economy brought about because of CAD power! For example, the Olympic constructions in Beijing.

The A-Z of Modern Architecture

The book’s A to Z entries cover not only architects but also groups, movements, and styles from the 18th to the 21st centuries. It’s from Taschen in a bright red slipcase, and looks very impressive.

‘Architext’: A book series on architecture, design, history and discourse

This turns out to be the name of a series of Routledge books of which I was unaware. Coincidentally the blog rather easily organizes some of the major architecture pubishers thus:

• Rizzoli and Taschen are art publishers
• MIT Press and University of Minnesota Press are academic publishers
• University of Texas Press is a local publisher

Missing of course are Konemann, or Kodel, and TeNeues, Thames and Hudson and a host of other US publishers such as AVA, Loft, and Images (whose home is Australia).

Since the major Architectural trend for sustainability has developed, the Routledge upcoming book on that subject is mentioned:

Reinterpreting Sustainable Architecture: Theories, Discourses, Practices

By Simon Guy, Graham Farmer (Series: Architext of course)

The author makes some interesting observations:

Architext’s owners (ultimately controlled by the Thompson family of Toronto) holds the copyright on most of Chambers’ material. Beginning with Jaskot’s Architecture of Oppression, the books have maintained an interest in the operation and expression of power within architecture. This thematic has been developed over many years in the work of Tom Markus in particular. Elsewhere, the politics of building and the management of construction projects are a thinly spread mortar indeed. http://www.spaceandculture.org/2008/01/30/

“The key second-world countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia are more than just “emerging markets.” If you include China, they hold a majority of the world’s foreign-exchange reserves and savings, and their spending power is making them the global economy’s most important new consumer markets and thus engines of global growth”

His telling comments on America’s fall from power include this observation:

“Despite the “mirage of immortality” that afflicts global empires, the only reliable rule of history is its cycles of imperial rise and decline, and as Toynbee also pithily noted, the only direction to go from the apogee of power is down.

The web of globalization now has three spiders. What makes America unique in this seemingly value-free contest is not its liberal democratic ideals — which Europe may now represent better than America does — but rather its geography. America is isolated, while Europe and China occupy two ends of the great Eurasian landmass that is the perennial center of gravity of geopolitics.”

Where does this leave the building industry? A very interesting comment:

“Given our deficits and political gridlock, the only solution is to channel global, particularly Asian, liquidity into our own public infrastructure, creating jobs and technology platforms that can keep American innovation ahead of the pack. Globalization apologizes to no one; we must stay on top of it or become its victim.”

Where is the book connection? Aha “Parag Khanna is a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation. This essay is adapted from his book, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order,” to be published by Random House in March.” I recommend it, on the basis of this article.

“Currently studying Architecture in Curtin University, Western Australia. Calvin loves web designing and photography, occasionally he blogs about his thoughts and opinions.

Every morning he refill himself with weird energy-inducing substances known as coffee and tea and then off saving the world, I mean studying and blogging of course.”

Calvin’s post “Recycling Paper into Concrete” is eye-opening.