A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

The Secrets of LEGO House:  Design, Play, and Wonder in the Home of the Brick by Jesús Díaz Chronicle Books , August 2021 Hardcover | 11 x 9 inches | 160 pages | English | ISBN: 9781452182292 | $40.00 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : This guide takes you on a tour of the "home of the brick," the official LEGO® House, so you can experience it for yourself at home!  With photos, interviews, essays, and art from the LEGO archives, The Secrets of LEGO House explores the visual wonders and the themed "zones"—yellow for emotions, blue for problem solving, green for social interaction, and red for creativity—within the iconic LEGO House in Billund, Denmark.  The Secrets of LEGO House offers an insider's look at the creative philosophy behind the iconic brand. On each page, discover the true "secret" hidden among the 25 million LEGO bricks—that everything in the house is purposefully designed around nine core principles of learning through play. A joy for ...

Raising a child means opening oneself up to the literature that caters to developing brains and bodies. There is a heck of a lot out there, especially if we take television, movies, and interactive education as well as books into account. Regardless, very little of this output touches directly upon the impact of design on the built environment. Amander Walter discovered  two dozen books fitting into that mold  (later  expanded by three times )—two of which I've  reviewed   here —but that is a pretty dismal number when seen in the context of how many children's books are produced even in a given year. Architecture and related disciplines are ripe subjects for many more kid's books, especially in relation to the impact of building and cities on our futures. Here are but three books that might point the way forward. Draw Me a House: A Book of Colouring in, Ideas and Architectural Inspiration  by Thibaud Herem, published by Cicada Books, 2012. Pape...

Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air by Gregory Dicum, published by  Chronicle Books , 2004. Paperback, 176 pages. ( Amazon ) Although billed as the "perfect inflight companion", Window Seat is more than a guide to what you see out your airplane window as you cross North America. Using primarily satellite images , the accessible book helps explain geology and the history of human settlement, as well as ecology and - more importantly - the effects we have on the land. Split into geographic sections, rather than by states, each section illustrates the prevalent natural features of the region, in addition to highlighting special places. For example "The Great Plains" shows the agricultural grid ...