Episode 141 - Architecture Non-Fiction

Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast

This episode we’re talking about Architecture Non-Fiction! We discuss statement architecture vs everyday architecture, subway stations, terrible people, and a big book of fun facts!

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In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

• Tadao Ando: Houses by Philip Jodidio
• The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live by Sarah Susanka and Kira Obolensky
• The Man in the Glass House: Philip Johnson, Architect of the Modern Century by Mark Lamster
• Soviet Metro Stations by Christopher Herwig and Owen Hatherley
  • There, unfortunately, isn’t another book, Matthew just misunderstood what the essay was called.
  • Matthew’s photos of Soviet metro stations
• The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design by Roman Mars and Kurt Kohlstedt
  • Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you've never noticed (YouTube)
• Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval

Other Media We Mentioned

• 99% Invisible
• The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination by Sarah Schulman
• The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape by James Howard Kunstler
• Landscape Architecture: A Very Short Introduction by Ian H. Thompson
• @brutal_zen (Instagram)
• @sosbrutalism (Instagram)
• Soviet Bus Stops by Christopher Herwig
• Soviet Bus Stops, vol. 2 by Christopher Herwig
• Mini Metro
• Corridors: Passages of Modernity by Roger Luckhurst
• Icebergs, Zombies, and the Ultra Thin: Architecture and Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century by Matthew Soules
• Anime Architecture: Imagined Worlds and Endless Megacities by Stefan Riekele

Links, Articles, and Things

• Nonfiction Is Cool, and Our Kids Know It (article RJ mentioned about the five different types of non-fiction)
• Matthew’s Lego version of Vancouver

12 Architecture books/publications by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• My Life as An Architect in Tokyo by Kengo Kuma
• Zaha Hadid: The Complete Work by Zaha Hadid
• The Surreal Visions of Hernán Díaz Alonso/HDA-X by Hernán Díaz Alonso
• Architecture by Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White by William Sturkey
• The Black Skyscraper: Architecture and the Perception of Race by Adrienne Brown
• Black Built: History and Architecture in the Black Community by Paul Wellington
• Race and Modern Architecture: A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present edited by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, & Mabel O. Wilson
• In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
• Indigenous architecture through indigenous knowledge : dim sagalts’apkw nisiḿ [together we will build a village] by Patrick Robert Reid Stewart (thesis)
• The First Nations Longhouse : our home away from home by Verna J. Kirkness and Jo-ann Archibald (WorldCat)
• Voices of the Land: Indigenous Design and Planning from the Prairies edited by Reanna Merasty, Naomi Ratte, Desiree Theriault, and Danielle Desjarlais

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Join us again on Tuesday, January 18th we’ll be discussing how (and why) 2022 is the Year of Book 2!

Then on Tuesday, February 1st we’ll be talking about Amish Romance!