Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Ronald Rael
University of California Press, 2017
Flexicover, 200 pages

Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure by Ingrid Burrington
Melville House, 2016
Flexicover, 112 pages

What's So Great About the Eiffel Tower" 70 Questions That Will Change the Way You Think About Architecture by Jonathan Glancey
Laurence King, 2017
Flexicover, 176 pages

Recently I received a few books on a diversity of subjects that share one trait: they are small. Of course, small page size does not mean the ideas inside aren't grand. Even though their topics don't overlap in any obvious manner, I decided to review them together.
[Border Wall as Infrastructure, Rael San Fratello Architects]

The output of architect and educator Ronald Rael is varied, with three primary though apparently unrelated areas of research: earth architecture, the US-Mexico border wall, and 3d printing. Yet as he writes in the introduction to this book focused on the second subject, "buildings using mud and concrete ... we saw as conceptually parallel to the contrasts of poverty and wealth [in] Mexico and the United States." Extending the parallels further to 3d printing, which gives anybody with access to the technology the ability to create industrial objects and even building elements, there is an apparent interest in informal architectural production and the social aspects o...