"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with two- or three-sentence first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews, but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than can find their way into reviews on this blog.

Architecture Is All Over edited by Esther Choi, Marrikka Trotter | Columbia Books on Architecture and the City | 2017 | Amazon
Depending on how one reads this book's title, it's either full of pessimism ("architecture is all over") or promise ("architecture is all over"). The apparent coexistence of "architecture?s simultaneous diminishment and ubiquity" extends to the book's graphic design, which imprints photos from one page in reverse and in orange on the preceding or following page. It makes for an apparently dense and layered book that is thankfully reflected in its scholarly contributions. One highlight: Patty Heyda's "Erasure Urbanism" on the demolition of two neighborhoods astride Lambert International Airport in St. Louis.
Intelligent Infrastructure: Zip Cars, Invisible Networks, and Urban Transformation edited by T. F. Tierney | University of Virginia Press | 2017 | Amazon
"Intelligent infrastructure" refers to a the ubiquitous but often invisible systems reshaping cities today: cell networks, cloud computing, smartphones, networked traffic signals, and...