PiP recommends three valuable books for everyday work, covering diversity in architecture, building a natural swimming pool and conceptual design in structures. Buy at ribabooks.com
Inclusion Emergency: Diversity in Architecture
Hannah Durham and Grace Choi eds. RIBA Publishing 228p PB £35
True diversity continues to elude the profession and best intentions can be lost in the day-to-day struggle of keeping a practice going. This book is perhaps a timely reminder that not addressing it in the profession could have serious implications for the built environment we create. These 23 essays are first-hand accounts from people in the profession on gender, sexuality, neurodiversity, disability, religion and exploitation. Your firm may not yet have an EDI policy in place; this book explains, with affecting simplicity, why it should.
How to Build a Natural Swimming Pool: The complete guide to healthy swimming at home
Wolfram Kircher and Andreas Thon. Filbert Press 328pp HB £35
Published in German before Covid, this is the book’s first translation into English, covering what might seem the unfathomable complexities of natural pool building. It takes you from first principles to maintenance via a step-by-step construction guide for the pool plus planting ideas. Chapter 8 is devoted to describing bugs you might want in it – or not! The last third is case studies, only three of which are in the UK; perhaps we’ll see more now wild swimming is off the UK menu!
Conceptual Design of Structures Connecting Engineering and Architecture
Pierluigi D’Acunto, Patrick Ole Ohlbrock, Roland Pawlitschko eds. Birkhäuser 220pp HB £56
A professor of structural design, an architect and critic, and a practising structural engineer group these symposium presentations on open-ended themes of ‘Challenging Gravity’, ‘Exposed or Concealed’, ‘Learning from the Past’ and ‘Common Responsibilities’. Nicely readable with fascinating global drawings and photos of early-applied engineering, alongside interviews and discussions. Sergio Musmeci’s gorgeous 1967 bridge in Potenza doesn’t make the cut, but you can’t have it all.