A minature Big Apple

Here's a man who knows his bricks and looking at these remarkable models Jonathan Lopes must have an in-depth awareness of hundreds and hundreds of individual LEGO bricks. This well-produced book is a celebration of New York's most memorable buildings from Manhattan skyscrapers to Junior's Restaurant in Brooklyn. The introduction says these models are not scale replicas but instead capture the feel of each building including the model-maker's little personal touches.

Some of the details are rather awe-inspiring, the Woolworth building, constructed in 2012 has about 120,000 pieces and stands 91 inches tall, the 2018 built Brooklyn Bridge is 199 inches wide with 20,000 bricks, the Chrysler Building from 2017 has 13,800 bricks and stands 64 inches high. This model is rather interesting because all the brick studs have been covered to create smooth walls except on the various roofs and nicely the corner gargoyles have been included.

The book has four chapters: Historic Skyline; Neighborhoods; Firehouses; New York City -- Inspired LEGO art. Historic skyline obviously has the city's more famous buildings but I enjoyed looking at the much smaller scale structures in the Neighbourhood chapter and it's possible to see how Lopes creates detail by using the underneath of LEGO bricks and plates. Firehouses have five stations, all with vibrant red doors and lots of small details like air-con units, plant pots, flags and (predictably) fire hydrants. The last chapter has really imaginative buildings inspired by LEGO, especially one called A Vanishing Brooklyn, with a contemporary straight-line structure bursting through an old brownstone whose bricks have been peeled back to reveal the newer one inside.

As well as the excellent photos (including close-ups) of the models there are lots of pages very much like those in the LEGO instruction booklets so you can, for example, have a go at building the spire of the Helmsley Building or one of the piers for the Manhattan Bridge or the four ornamental towers atop the Woolworth Building. A neat little extra is a mini poster stuck inside the back cover, folding out to 38.5 inches wide with Grand Central Terminal on one side and the Chrysler Building on the other.

US

The Art of LEGO Construction: New York... by Lopes, Jonathan (amazon.com)

　

A case of dismal digital housing

Other books about the CSH program

Wouldn't it be a grand idea if the software used by architects to create three- dimensional pictures of buildings was used to reveal what the thirty-six Case Study Houses looked like, especially the unbuilt ones, with elevations and bird's eye views of the inside rooms. This slim, landscape book has a go but fails miserably.

The first few pages describe the programme started in 1945 by Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza then just seven of the total get the three-dimensional treatment, each over two spreads. The first spread has a thumbnail photo of the house (which should have been much bigger considering all the empty page space) and a brief description of what the architect was trying to accomplish, a floor plan is on the right-hand page, turn over to find two elevation images and on the right a bird's eye view. None of these illustrations has any printed key. This fills up twenty-eight pages, the rest of the book has students impressions of what the houses would look like using Building Information Modelling and the last few pages have some technical details and pictures based around Pierre Koenig's wonderful Stahl House.

There are far better books about CSH and the short bibliography doesn't even mention the best one: Blueprints for modern living by Elizabeth Smith (MIT Press, 1998) though two of her Taschen books are included.