New Organic Architecture: The Breaking Wave
The very term "organic architecture" may sound like some  faddish throwback to the earth-shoe era, or even something completely  new, when it fact it's neither. As explained in the first part of this  vibrant softcover assembled by Pearson--director of the green-friendly  architectural consulting firm Gaia Environments and author ofThe  Gaia Natural House Book--it's been around for millennia, whenever  people built things that worked in harmony with their natural  surroundings, made use of local materials, or reflected the laws of  science and patterns of nature in their construction. (In other words,  everything from Stonehenge and Gothic cathedrals, which seized on the  natural rules of physics rather than iron and concrete to reach to the  heavens, to the Prairie homes of Frank Lloyd Wright and the sinuous,  assymetrical lines of Antonio Gaudi and Art Nouveau, inspired by  viewing nature both with the naked eye and under a microscope.)The second part of the book is a completely delightful, instructive  look at recent "new organic" architecture from 30 cutting-edge  architects in all corners of the globe (truly), made up of beautiful  full-color photographs and usually smart commentary from the architects  themselves. The sheer beauty and innovation of most of the works shown  here--from the way they insinuate themselves into their natural terrain  to the ingenious ways they use regional materials to how they turn the  whole notion of interior design on its head--is an embarrassment of  eco-sensitive riches; unlike most other design anthologies, there's not  a clunker in the bunch here. Fabrizio Carola's Kaedi hospital in  Mauritania is a warmly glowing interconnected complex of fired-brick  pods and passageway. Balkrishna Doshi's Hussain-Doshi Gufa in  Ahmedabad, an undulating sequence of caves, makes the cyber-desert  structures of the lastStar Warsmovie look banal. Renzo Piano's  impossible-to-describe cultural center for the Kanak civilization in  New Caledonia reinterprets the very nature and purpose of such a site  in a jaw-droppingly original idiom. And if you don't long to live for  at least a night in one of the upside-down, inside-out, backside-front  homes designed by Bart Prince, Eugene Tsui, Javier Senosiain, or Eisaku  Ushido and Kathryn Findlay, your senses truly must be made of something  not found in nature.--Timothy Murphy