Archinect - News

MIT offers free access to 34 major architecture books

2021-04-13T16:31:00-04:00

MIT Press has launched an unprecedented digitization program for architecture and design publications, with 34 classic architecture and urbanism books now freely available on its platform. The “MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies” is dedicated to classic and out-of-print titles, providing open access to the public via the MIT Press Direct digital book platform.

Among the titles now available are Moshe Safdie’s “Beyond Habitat” from 1970, Donald Leslie Johnson’s “Frank Lloyd Wright versus America” from 1994, and Mark Jarzombek’s “On Leon Battista Alberti” from 1990. Other titles explore the works of famous architects such as Palladio, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier.

The collection is in response to years of requests received by MIT Press for e-book versions of historic, out-of-print publications. As many of these books were published before the internet age, digital versions were often impractical to produce due to the complex design and licensing costs. However, fund...

Pump Out the Volumes: 50,000 free books form 1 art installation

2015-07-08T18:58:00-04:00

Libraries tend to house their stacks indoors, which makes FLUX's art project Lacuna something of a first: a series of nook-friendly triangular wooden shelves, lightly canopied by pages suspended on wires, Lacuna was designed specifically for this year's Bay Area Book Festival. Better yet: the project had no late fees. The intent of the project was to encourage people to permanently take away 50,000 books donated by the Internet Archive while simultaneously creating a space conducive to reading. According to the Mercury News, FLUX art director Benjamin Anderson saw the project not only as a means of pumping out the volumes, but also of creating greater aesthetic engagement within the public realm. "We as a society often see art as strictly hands-off," he explained. "It's OK to look, but not touch. One of the benefits of doing big art is that we get an opportunity to push that innate hesitation."

FLUX is no stranger to specific behavior-inducing structures, having previously designed i...