Peter Mendelsund points to an interesting book by architect François Blanciak. From the MIT Press description,

What would happen, he asks, if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program, and budget? The result is a book that is saturated with forms, and as free of words as any architecture book the MIT Press has ever published.

The 1001 building forms in SITELESS include structural parasites, chain-link towers, ball-bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing — and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved. SITELESS presents an open-ended compendium of visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from.

Metropolis’s blog has more:

Taken together, the drawings are meant as a tonic, Blanciak writes, to architectural theory’s “sole focus on writing,” offering “a creative alternative to critical academic literature.”

I’ll be interested to pick this book up. There’s a bit of Harris Burdick in it — the kind of book that sets the reader’s imagination to work.

”I have throughout almost my entire life searched for means for flexible standardization. The objective is standardization that does not force life into any kind of pattern, but rather, on the contrary, increases its variety. […] The blossoms of an apple tree are standardized, yet they are all different. This is how we, too, should learn to build.” A thoroughly Shakeresque thought from designer Alvar Aalto, and the title of a new show dedicated to seven of his buildings at the Tartu University Library in Finland.

“I am a critical spirit and an architect at the same time, and I do not feel obligated to constantly validate my own theories in my specific work. There are contradictions, and the possibilities we have at our disposal today provoke such contradictions.” Rem Koolhaas interviewed in Der Spiegel (via DO).

Above, top to bottom: Ryan Quigley used Norman Foster’s new Hearst Tower as a modular grid for his series of letters. Debra Pitel modelled her letterforms after Jean Nouvel’s distinctive window voids used in his unfinished Landmark Lofts project.

Design a full alphabet (A–Z) in response to a well-known building. Prepare a 17”W x 11”H ring-bound presentation book that explains your solution step-by-step.

This assignment is from the class Typographic Research.

A great talk by architect David Adjaye from last November at the Walker Art Center. I am in love with Adjaye’s houses, and he did a great one for his friend, photographer Ed Reeve. Reeve in turn has photographed many of Adjaye’s projects, and they are thankfully available online at his website, along with photos from the construction of his own Adjaye house, Ed’s Shed.

“Typically, when I asked him about choosing between cinema and architecture, he replied that the two fields are more alike than they are different. ‘You are considering episodes, and you have to construct the episodes in a way that is interesting and makes sense or is mysterious,’ he said. ‘It’s about montage also—whether it’s making a book, a film or a building.’” From Arthur Lubow’s NYT Magazine article, “Rem Koolhaas Builds.”

“The absence of the printed word not only draws attention to the role text plays in the modern landscape but also simultaneously emphasizes alternative forms of communication such as symbols, colors, architecture and corporate branding.” From Matt Siber’s great photo series Untitled Project (via DO).

Designer Lesley Moore has outdone herself on the latest issue of Mark, a Dutch architecture magazine from the makers of Frame (via magCulture).

Having conquered our interiors, Ikea’s now building the boxes that enclose them. They’ve already built 3,500 BoKlok houses in Sweden, and this Guardian article describes how their next stop is the UK. The best part? “Each block […] also gets its own apple tree, something they can take care of together […] a conceptual bench, a place outdoors where neighbours can meet.” Maybe Ikea should be planning our cities, too.

I just spent an intense few minutes watching architect Joshua Prince-Ramus’s presentation from the 2006 TED Conference. The way he breaks down design problems and presents his work so simply and directly is admirable.