Architecture Books

Book SynopsisThe German Architecture Annual, edited by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt am Main, has been documenting current architectural events in Germany for almost 40 years. Contributions by renowned authors present the shortlist of 26 buildings as selected by a jury for the 2020 DAM Prize for Architecture in Germany. Curators of the museum, architects, and architectural critics visited around 100 nominated buildings. The 2020 edition offers a detailed portrait of a smaller selection of finalists along with an in-depth appraisal of this year's winner.

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Book SynopsisThis guide offers an urban overview of three major Ecuadorian cities – Quito, Guayaquil and Cuenca – as well as a detailed description of their most representative architecture. A selection of 120 buildings has been compiled, dating from the earliest days of Spanish colonisation to the present day. Each project is accompanied by basic historical data, a formal description and images.This book not only allows the reader to get to know the most outstanding buildings and public spaces in the country, but also to understand the symbolism and spirit that lies within them, shaping the urban memory, culture and identity of Ecuador.

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Book SynopsisDuring the Covid-19 pandemic we have been forced to retreat into private shelters and to question the limits of residential typologies. The villa is an obvious example of such a shelter. It has re-emerged as an object of desire, because of the urge to escape the boundaries of our own four walls. Throughout history this typology has been rethought and reinvented by architectural greats who sought to break radically with the tradition of their times. But what does it mean to us to design a villa during a period of isolation and lockdown? The answer is not clear. The villa has always been both a dream home for clients and a means of expression for architects. It combines architecture’s most primitive function – to create a liveable shelter – with an architect’s endeavour to manifest their ideology in a single building. During an online design studio held at the Dessau School of Architecture, students from ten countries discussed the identities of the villa and their cultural context. The design of private shelters helped to overcome the paralysis of public life. This publication showcases some of the next generation’s most promising ideas. Moreover, it aims to explore new methods for online teaching, which could serve as a reference for institutions in a post-COVID world.

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Book SynopsisThe German Architecture Annual, edited by the German Architecture Museum (DAM), has been documenting contemporary architectural projects in Germany for almost 40 years. This year’s edition of the annual presents the shortlist of 25 buildings selected by the jury for the 2022 DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany. The building reviews, written by architectural critics, along with large-format photographs, provide a deep insight into those works.

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Book SynopsisA look at a period in the history of what is now one of the largest cities in Ukraine, the 1950s to 1980s, when the focus in Soviet policy shifted from industrialisation to welfare and from production to consumption.

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Book SynopsisAfter more than one year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, thousands of civilians have been killed, and thousands of buildings, heritage sites, and entire cities have been damaged. Along with millions of other Ukrainian women and children, architectural historian Ievgeniia Gubkina had to leave the country, moving further away from the Russian threat in search of safety. Her hometown Kharkiv still remains a target for the Russian army. The war has dramatically changed the geographies of nearly all Ukrainians and returned the work of an architectural critic to the traditional mainstream of journalism. This shift has taken Gubkina’s thoughts from the academic context and made them more akin to war reporting. This book contains papers presented, printed, or published online by various media in different parts of the world during the first eight months of the all-out war. Most of the texts were written in late spring and summer 2022 after Ievgeniia and her teenage daughter had evacuated to Paris. This title is part of the Histories of Ukrainian Architecture programme initiated by DOM publishers in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty on 24 February 2022.

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Book SynopsisWith over 8,000 years of history, Izmir is among the world’s ­oldest cities. Founded as Smyrna on the shores of the ­Aegean Sea, the city has been home to all manner of cultures over the centuries. Each one left behind its architectural traces, turning the city into a palimpsest of millennia of urban life. A cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic port city known as the ‘pearl of the ­Aegean‘ in the ­Ottoman Empire, Izmir is now one of Turkey’s largest metropolises. This book explores the diverse architectural ­heritage of the city. Through a selection of 265 buildings, among them the works of architects like Gustave Eiffel and ­Bruno Taut, it narrates the evolution of Izmir’s built environment from ancient times to the present. To help visitors understand the city‘s urban structure, it also explains the region’s characteristic ­architectural forms.

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Book SynopsisBasel based, Hungarian and Jurassien-rooted Atelier Neume (Balàzs Földvàry, Marie-Annick Staehelin, Melchior Fu?zesi) hits the spot with this first portfolio about their practice. Presented are ETANG, a weekend hideaway in the Alsace; DIRTY HARRY, an apartment house in bricks and TSCHANTRE, a conversion of a former industry plot into living spaces, both in Basel. The approach to the projects is radical, the implementation is both pragmatic and poetic.With texts by Harald Stu?hlinger and photographs by Daisuke Hirabayashi. The melody between the pages is progressive chic and the altogether is a unique and refreshing twentyfirst century book, including some never seen creative surprises.

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Book SynopsisRichard Meier's architecture in dialogue with the Ulm Munster, the most famous German Gothic cathedral.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. Not just a winner, but a major winner. And Fellbach won it by letting Zurich architect Ernst Gisel build its new town hall. And it is just the same as winning the lottery: it takes time for it to sink in and to be really pleased. Winning also means stress, especially if the player never really believed in his luck. But why be pleased about a town hall, about a collection of official rooms, intended only to make administering the individual citizen even smoother? Can a town hall be anything at all more than a home for all the official panoply of tit-for-tat responses? It can indeed, if you make it into a piece of the town, a good piece of the town . . . Ernst Gisel's town hall for Fellbach is one of the very few buildings that make one enthuse about the town. Like Stirling's Neue Staatsgalerie it invites you to linger -- even without a reason: in the Stuttgart museum you are attracted by terraces, ramps and an open rotunda, whereas in the Fellbach building there is a sense of a strong suction that will draw the public into the inner courtyard of the complex. "A bit Italian" -- that is what Gisel himself says about the atmosphere there, and he is right. The urban quality of the new town hall corresponds with the quality of the detailed architectural solutions and the care with which Gisel devoted himself to the architectural design in the interior. Art in the building? There is that too. Gisel himself designed the fountain for the market-place façade: architecture on a small scale, a game with volumes through which the water slowly runs. In the inner courtyard, in the town-hall square, is the sculpture Überlebenskopf (survival head) by Zurich artist Otto Müller -- a sober monument that corresponds precisely with the confident but modest character of the building. The new town hall is a fairly perfect piece of architecture and urban art: reticent as a whole, monumental in detail.

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Book SynopsisIt was in his home in Oak Park that Frank Lloyd Wright made his first contributions to the Modern movement. In 1889 he designed the first part of the house, in 1895 he added to it for his wife, Catherine, and their family, and in 1898 for his architectural practice. The entire building was a learning laboratory of modern architecture. While not a Prairie School house, it led to the development of the Prairie School. Wrights constant changes to this complex paralleled the evolution of his early architectural work and career. There, with his young assistants, he rethought the plan, spaces, materials, proportions, and lines of American residential architecture, creating a revolution on the Prairie. His home and studio provided the architectural environment in which to experiment with his ideas in three dimensions. The house featured contemporary art work, oriental tribal rugs, and Japanese decorative arts chosen by Wright and his wife. The studio was decorated with classical plaster sculpture, Teco ceramics and selections from Wrights large collection of Japanese prints. Wright completed the interiors, toned in natures hues, with furniture and built-in furnishings of his own design, harmonious to the whole. The colour photographs of Jon Miller of Hedrich-Blessing show a glimpse into Wrights first haven, where he challenged prevailing notions about the countrys architecture, and which he then left, to continue as one of Americas most significant architects. Included in the book is a portfolio of historic black and white photographs of the building, a number of them taken by Wright himself.

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Book SynopsisIn 1975, the European Year of Protection of Ancient Monuments, Alsfeld in Upper Hesse acquired model-town status, along with Berlin, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Xanten and Trier in Germany. In this way the Council of Europe was acknowledging the long tradition of monument protection in a place where an astonishingly large number of historic buildings have survived. There are numerous tightly-packed timber-frame buildings in the medieval ground plan of the town, some built as long ago as the 14th century. The market place, forming the centre of the town with town hall, Weinhaus (wine house) and Hochzeitshaus (wedding house), is one of the most important complexes of its kind in Germany. The town hall, built in a way that inspired many of its German successors, was to have been pulled down in 1878 by order of the town council. It was not until residents protested that preservation and restoration of what is now the symbol of the town were assured, providing the first example of Alsfeld's tradition in this field. Even today ensembles of unique unity are to be found in its main streets. There is almost nowhere else where one can form such a good impression of a small German medieval town than here.

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Book Synopsis"This book is an attempt at architectural criticism" that is how Robert Venturi opened the discussion on Post-Modernism in architecture in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecturea generation ago. And this was a typical beginning. Criticism of the Modern movement by architects like Le Corbusier Mies van der Rohe and to extent Frank Lloyd Wright as well that had preceded it was central to Post-Modernism. Soon the architectural historians joined in with the architects, particularly Charles Jencks in the English-speaking world and Heinrich Klotz in Germany. Here too Post-Modern-ism was the start, with three fundamental critical points about Modernism: fundamental emptiness of its architecture, its lack of relation to its surroundings and its overemphasis of functionalism against decoration. And so, even if one does not use pamphlets like Tom Wolfe's or Jencks' early work as a yardstick, the image of the buildings by what are still the best-known architects of our century is strongly overshadowed. The truth is that the International Style reflects the basic forces that architecture can express extraordinarily impressively and al-ways with decided interplay, and thus also with a pronounced unity of effect; and additionally it develops these formal values especially intensively from content. Traditionally such things are called classical. What followed this, the whole spectrum of styles from late Modernism via High-Tech and Deconstructivism to Post-Modernism is all a reaction to the unity of the International Style: either one point in terms of form or content is taken out, exaggerated and thus made into its opposite, or such a point is consciously negated. Until now this phenomenon has been known as Mannerism to art historians. What is characteristic of Baroque as the period after High Renaissance Classicism and Mannerism is less clear; in any case, entirely positive aspects of both found their way into Baroque, and undoubtedly the latter is closer to High Re-naissance Classicism in spirit than to Mannerism. Cannot similar things be seen in the last bare decade of architectural develop-ment? The foundations for this book were laid during a good year's re-search at the University of California in Berkeley. The author now holds a chair at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

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Book Synopsis2019 Edition "Primeval architecture is an architecture of necessity. Nothing is there to excess, no matter whether stone, clay, reeds or wood, animal skins or hair are used. It is minimal. It can be very beautiful even amidst poverty and is good in the ethical sense. Good architecture seems to be more important than beautiful architecture. Beautiful architecture is not necessarily good. Only buildings that are at the same time ethically good and aesthetically beautiful are worth preserving. We have too many buildings that have become useless and yet we still need new buildings, from pole to pole, in the cold and in the heat. Mans present areas of settlement are the new ecological system in which technology is indispensable, even in hot and cold areas. ... Our age requires buildings that are lighter, more energy-saving, more mobile and more adaptable, in brief more natural, without disregarding the need for safety and security. This logically leads to the further development of light constructions, to the building of tents, shells, awnings and air-supported membranes. It also leads to a new mobility and changeability. A new understanding of nature is forming under one aspect of high performance form (also called classical form), which unites aesthetic and ethical viewpoints. Tomorrows architecture will again be minimal architecture, an architecture of the self-education and self-optimization processes suggested by human beings." (Frei Otto and Bodo Rasch in their foreword of this book) In 1992 the Bavarian branch of the Deutscher Werkbund awarded its first prize to Frei Otto, undoubtedly the most successful and many-sided protagonist of modern light construction, and with it a request to nominate a meritorious person to whom the prize could be passed on, and to design a joint exhibition with that person. Frei Otto chose his pupil Bodo Rasch, who had realized Ottos theories particularly in other cultures. The publication produced on this occasion provides information about scientific fundamentals and the working methods the two architects developed from these, which are characterized by "finding" not by "making". This is supposed to produce buildings that could not be more beautiful and can scarcely be improved in terms of materials and loadbearing capacity.

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Book SynopsisHans Dieter Schaal is already something of a cultural institution in Germany. Trained as an architect, he always operates outside the "main stream", designing and realizing stage sets, sculptures, cemeteries, parks, squares, spatial installations or book projects, which are often trendsetting in their own field. In the last ten years Schaal has established a focal point that seems to be the sum of all his themes: exhibition architecture. He has provided expansive installations for the broadest possible range of exhibition subjects in such high-volume buildings as the Martin-Gropius-Bau or the Zeughaus in Berlin, the Haus der Geschichte in Bonn, the Kunstvereinsgebäude in Stuttgart, the Deutsches Postmuseum or the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. His work was never mere exhibition design in these cases. Instead of this he was always concerned to tell spatial stories about the exhibits or their historical background. Of course he was able to draw on his experience in stage-set design here. Admittedly Schaal would not be Schaal, if he were not to use the whole stock of ideas from his decades of lateral thinking or his insatiable search for archetypes and images. On occasions this has meant that Schaal's exhibitions were ad-mired simply of their spatial sensations. It was only the very few people who were prepared to analyse the extraordinarily extensive and complex work more profoundly who found a carefully established subliminal relationship network of selected motifs running through all his exhibition installations like a central theme. Sometimes they come from his own early work, sometimes from literary or cinematic finds, then again from psychological-philosophical footnotes or even private obsessions. Such image particles constitute a thought-edifice perhaps comparable only with Aby Warburg's legendary picture archive which breaks right through the bounds of traditional exhibition architecture. Frank R. Werner has been director of the Institut für Architektur-geschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal since 1993. He studied painting, architecture and architectural history at the Kunstakademie in Mainz, the Technische Hochschule in Hanover and Stuttgart University.

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Book SynopsisText in German & English. In Cologne's narrowest building, which is also one of the best known examples of modern architecture in the city, special installations have been staged during the International Furniture Fair for several years. Well-known designers are invited to implement a design on a particular topic in this unusual environment for the week's duration of the trade fair.

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Book SynopsisSince the end of the 20th century, an unprecedented number of remarkable museums have been built. None have had bigger worldwide implications than Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (199197). Until, that is, the new Musée des Confluences in Lyon was opened to the public, in late 2014. It was created by Wolf D. Prix of the Coop Himmelb(l)au team, which was founded in the 1970s. Many avant-garde groups from those wild years such as Archigram, Superstudio, Archizoom, Haus-Rucker-Co, and the Japanese Metabolists are now consigned to the past, but the Coop Himmelb(l)au architecture firm, whose special aspiration was always to bring into the world buildings that overcome the pull of the earth buildings 'to float on the horizon like clouds' is more in demand than ever. The finest demonstration of this endeavour to date can now be admired in Lyon. Functioning as a museum of human history, this impressive concrete, metal and glass colossus truly does appear to float above the peninsula at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône. Like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, this new building, so impossible to overlook, is an inspiration for the revita-lisation of disrupted urban areas and the valorisation of derelict industrial areas within the city precincts, but also far beyond Lyon. This Opus volume deals with the origins, construction, function and formal appearance of the Musée des Confluences, and also offers a preliminary theoretically based evaluation of the architecture of the building. Frank R. Werner was professor of history and architecture theory at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart from 1990 until 1994 and director of the Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal from 1993 until his retirement in 2012. He studied painting, architecture and history of architecture in Mainz, Hanover and Stuttgart. Christian Richters studied communication design at the Folkwang-schule in Essen. He is one of the most sought-after architecture photographers in Europe. To date he has been represented in the Opus series by 14 volumes, including ones about the embassies of the Nordic countries and the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Nieuwe Luxor Theater in Rotterdam and the BMW Welt in Munich. See also: Opus 66. Coop Himmelb(l)au, BMW Welt, München, Edition Axel Menges 2009.

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Book SynopsisA house is a representation of the idea of the world, of life, of existence. For the Cologne architect Oswald Mathias Ungers (19262007), owner of a famous collection of books on architecture, who also repeatedly addressed the theoretical aspects of building, the construction of his own house, in 1958/59, was more than a private adventure. For him it meant a chance to gain spatial experience and explore what was possible. It was a laboratory, a little universe, a piece of world. In the course of his life, Ungers built himself and his family no less than three houses, two in the Cologne suburb of Müngersdorf, one in the Eifel highlands. Even the first house, to which this richly illustrated volume is dedicated, caused an international sensation; it was considered to be an important example of so-called Brutalism. It showed "everything I knew how to do at the time", Ungers wrote regarding the building. He wanted a house that enveloped and sheltered, he wanted metamorphosis and transformation; architecture that was autonomous but at the same time respected the genius loci. At the time, architects preferred to build their private homes as freestanding bungalows in the countryside. Ungers, on the other hand, settled in a place where there were traces of the Roman past and purchased a plot of land adjacent to an already existing row of terraced houses. Three decades later, Ungers expanded the cataract of forms of his first home by adding a geometrically strict cube, intended to house his library. The shock aesthetics of the early work had evolved into the rigorous abstractness of his late work. This building too one of a kind, and in interplay with its predecessor became a manifesto. It corresponded to the idea of a house as a small town and the town as a large house, an idea that has run through European architectural history since Alberti. In spite of all their differences, the two contrasting formats make common cause. They show a world full of contradictions, illusions and realities that reflects the entire spectrum of the image of architecture, from the fiction to the reality of the function. Today the house and the library are the seat of the UAA, the Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft, and open to the public. The architectural historian Wolfgang Pehnt often visited Ungers. The author of an authoritative book about the architecture of Expressionism, he profited by Ungers' collection of material back in the years when Ungers was still interested in Expressionism. Thus he is familiar with the house in its details and has witnessed its modifications. As portrayed by him, the history of the origins of the house gives access to the impressive uvre of a great German architect.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. Three places mark the chequered history of the provost church of St Trinitatis Leipzig. Not far from the site of the present new building was the historic church built in 1847 that was largely destroyed in World War Two. It took almost three decades for this church finally to be replaced in 1982. At the insistence of the East-German authorities, however, this building had to be erected in a suburb. Because of its inconvenient location and also because the building had structural damage from the very beginning, the congregation decided in 2008 to take a chance on a new start in the city centre. The third church of St Trinitatis, consecrated in 2015, is the largest Catholic church to be built in East Germany since the political turnover of 1989/90. The new church is located not only in the centre of town, but at a place that could not be more prominent: facing the large complex of the Neues Rathaus. In 2009 a competition held for the new church building with the adjacent parish centre was won by the Leipzig architects Ansgar and Benedikt Schulz. Their clever use of the triangular site particularly impressed the selection committee; at the same time, with the compact body of the church on the east and the tower on the west, they created two striking urban landmarks. Between the tower and the church is the spacious courtyard, which is open on two sides towards the surrounding area, emphasising the congregations programmatic 'openness'. The complex owes its homogenous appearance to the fact that all parts of the buildings are clad with local porphyry, an igneous rock that shimmers in delicate shades of red. While outwardly the church looks quite hermetic, the interior, with an inside height of 14.5 m, surprises the visitor by its vibrant luminosity. The decisive factor here is the skylight on the east side at a height of 22 m. From a source that is invisible to the worshippers, zenith light falls on the entire back wall behind the altar. In its disposition the church interior follows the decisions of the Second Vatican Council: separation between the priests space and the congregations space is abolished, the high altar is replaced by a peoples altar, and the faithful gather of the believers in communio around the liturgical centre. In addition to his main activity as an architecture publicist Wolf-gang Jean Stock was head of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für christ-liche Kunst and its gallery in Munich for nine years. Considering his rigorous artistic attitude, instinctively reminiscent of the work of Hilla and Bernd Becher, there is a certain consistency about the fact that the photographer Stefan Müller congenially creates images of the buildings of Owald Mathias Ungers, Max Dudler, Kleihues + Kleihues or Schulz und Schulz.

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Book SynopsisIn their sculptural works, artists have always broken out of the workshop or studio and into open-air spaces. After all, the place where sculptures are best able to show their three-dimensionalquality is in an open space not enclosed by walls and ceiling, in which all flows of power and movement can have free rein. However, because public spaces offer only very limited possibilitiesfor sculpture development, sculpture parks have been developed almost everywhere in the world where invited artists can work without restrictive conditions. During his search for a place in France where he could present his large sculptures, Erich Engelbrecht discovered in 2000 the open, meadow-like land, with the château tucked into a piece of forest behind it. This open space, picturesquely framed by groups of trees, was precisely what he had imagined. And the fact that a château was waiting for its new owner at the end of this tract of land made this discovery a stroke of luck rarely experienced by anyone in general, and almost never by artists in particular. His monumental sculptures that dominate the landscape have given Erich Engelbrecht a place in the history of modern sculpture. His method of drawing images plastically in the space, and of using these drawings transformed into solid bodies to occupy whole landscapes, is unparalleled. The enigma balanced between representationality and the abstract, the multiplicity of meaning, which invites freely poetic titles, is essential to the unique charm of Erich Engelbrecht's visual work. In the park of Château des Fougis, 29 of these artworks, at once plainly revealing and mystifying, communicate with each other in such a relaxed way that visitors are prompted to think and to enjoy. One strolls through a garden of poetic artworks, through a park of beautiful riddles and silent secrets. There has been nothing comparable to this in Europe since the Mannerist gardens, conceived by poets andequipped with creatures of the imagination by inspired sculptors.

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Book SynopsisFrom the 1960s to the 1980s, new university buildings were regarded as real showcase projects in Germany. With their help, it was hoped to catch up with the international building scene again after the severe destruction of the Second World War. However, deficiencies in the technical execution and also in the subsequent building maintenance often led to the fact that in the course of the years serious structural problems appeared more and more frequently in the former showcase projects, which in some cases even led to the demolition of former demonstrative projects. This opus volume presents such an aging university ensemble on the old campus of the RWTH Aachen, which could not only be saved, but also embodies a renaissance of high-quality urban development and sustainable architecture. This balancing act is thanks to the architects and engineers of the renowned SSP AG from Bochum. First of all, they used the building task to significantly reorganise the old campus area in terms of urban development and to uncover lost urban references. In a next step, they demolished a dilapidated multi-storey car park and built the new technical centre, the Technikum on its foundations. In doing so, they followed the highest construction standards and sustainability strategies down to the smallest detail. However, the architects were able to retain the neighbouring, defective high-rise building of the so-called Sammelbau of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. They stripped the high-rise down to its bare supporting structure and then refurbished it to the highest technical and ecological standards, just like the Technikum. In times when terms such as sustainability or building ecology are being used in an almost inflationary manner, the project presented here is a real model, because it not only speaks of high standards, but has in fact implemented the highest standards and because it has given the concept of re-use (ie: the recycling of old, dilapidated building substance, a sensuously appealing structural form and a long-term new utility).

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Book SynopsisIn 1980 the book Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects was internationally recognized by architects who admired and valued Turner's unique way of seeing and photographing architecture. This new book contains photographs taken between 1974 and 2009 of buildings designed by 17 well-known architects including: Peter Eisenman, Louis Kahn, Fumihiko Maki, Norman Foster, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Alvar Aalto, Shigeru Ban and Renzo Piano. From the beginning of her career, Turner has used architecture as subject matter. Ambiguity has always been a hallmark of her work where solids become voids, causing positive and negative to reverse. The photos are small fragments of architecture taken out of context. Through her eyes, the subject is decomposed and recreated, assuming a new meaning. The photographs are quiet, yet dynamic, beautifully framed compositions. Architects have commented that she exposes elements of their work they never imagined existed. Thus, while using architecture as subject matter to invent her own worlds, Turner is also revealing some of its inherent complexities.

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Book SynopsisThe architect is at all times also an artist. How otherwise would he be able to tame the three-dimensionality of space and subdue the urges of physics and structural mechanics with the creations of his fantasy? This creativity is however mostly restricted purely to its own field. Rob Krier is an exception. For years, he has seen his love of art as a vocation -- one which he nurtures parallel to his work in construction. Fine art should stand in dialogue with architecture and it is Krier's ambition to have iconographic themes brought into the latter, so that they might speak equally to both the occupants of a building and to bystanders, moving them to thoughtful reflection. In his contribution to the European Embankment project in St Petersburg, Krier recently demonstrated the power of architecture and fine art to cross-fertilise. The architects in charge of the urban development of this district are Sergei Tchoban and Evgeny Gerasimov. Krier designed the façade for a 132-metres long building on the Newa riverbank one that looks across the water onto the rear façade of the Hermitage. The vibrancy of the architecture is enhanced by its sculptural ornamentation based on the Balzac theme, 'The Human Comedy'. In this regard, Krier modelled over 50 figures in white clay, as well as around 65 linear metres of reliefs. The short poems that comment on the sculptures also centre on the theme of mankind and its interrelationships in society.

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Book SynopsisThe Prussian gardens in Berlin, Potsdam and elsewhere in Brandenburg: for the first time, texts and photographs present an overall view of all the gardens and parks created under the Hohenzollerns over a period of more than three centuries. Only the cross-genre collaborative effort of garden designers, gardeners, architects, scenographers, sculptors, painters, and creative rulers, the most prominent of whom were Frederick II and Frederick William IV, made it possible "to turn the environs of Berlin and Potsdam step by step into a garden", as Frederick William IV put it in 1840. Figures such as David Garmatter, Friedrich Christian Glume, Siméon Godeau, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, Peter Joseph Lenné, Antoine Pesne, Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, Georg Potente, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Sello brothers, and Antoine Watteau -- picked from a whole cornucopia of names -- indicate the spectrum of artistic forces that created the Prussian garden realm. Impatient with his royal client, who had once again cut his funding, Lenné alluded to the high standard of princely landscape art: "Your Majesty still does not understand how ingenious my idea is". The present volume is an attempt to examine the "ingeniousness of the idea" specifically inherent in the gardens of the Hohenzollerns in Prussia.

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Book SynopsisIn the 18th century the idea of the landscape garden, which had originated in England, spread all over Europe. The geometry of the Baroque park was abandoned in favour of a 'natural' design. At the same time the garden became "The land of illusion": Chinese pagodas, Egyptian tombs, and Turkish mosques, along with Gothic stables and Greek and Roman temples, formed a miniature world in which distance mingled with the past. The keen interest in a fairy-tale China, which was manifested not only in the gardens but also in the chinoiseries of the Rococo, abated in the 19th century. The increasing expansion of the European colonial powers was reflected in new exotic fashions. While in England it was primarily the conquest of the Indian subcontinent that captured the imagination, for France the occupation of Algiers triggered an Orient-inspired fashion that spread from Paris to encompass the entire Continent, and found its expression in paintings, novels, operas, and buildings. This 'Orient', which could not be clearly defined geographically, was characterised by Islamic culture: It extended around the Mediterranean Sea from Constantinople to Granada. There, it was the Alhambra that fascinated writers and architects. The Islamic styles seemed especially appropriate for "buildings of a secular and cheerful character". In contrast to ancient Egyptian building forms, which, being severe and monumental, were preferably used for cemetery buildings, prisons or libraries, they promised earthly sensuous pleasures. The promise of happiness associated with an Orient staged by architectural means was intended to guarantee the commercial success of coffee houses and music halls, amusement parks, and steam baths. But even extravagant summer residences and middle-class villas were often built in faux-Oriental styles: In Brighton, the Prince Regent George (George IV after 1820) built himself an Indian palace; in Bad Cannstatt near Stuttgart, a 'Moorish' refuge was erected for Württemberg's King Wilhelm I; and the French town of Tourcoing was the site of the Palais du Congo, a bombastic villa in the Indian Moghul style that belonged to a wealthy perfume and soap manufacturer.

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Book SynopsisEarly nomadic shelters, including caves, animal skin tents, and igloos, were used for protection against wind, rain, snow, sunlight, and other forces of nature. These basic homes also provided defence against predators and were used to store a few important possessions. They were temporary, and proximity to a water source was of prime importance. For hunters and gatherers, shelter was an important aspect of survival. Health and comfort were not yet under consideration. As civilisation evolved, housing became more permanent, with increasing attention to well-being. The housing and utilities available in rich countries are vastly different from those in poorer settings. Unlike in industrialised countries where piped-in water, indoor toilets, and sewage systems are the norm, in the developing world these facilities are often not available. Waterborne enteric diseases, preventable by the supply of safe water, hand washing, and appropriate sanitation, continue to be a major disease burden in poor countries. Vector-borne diseases that can be controlled by screening and other barrier methods also remain an important health problem. Safe, comfortable, and healthy homes are an essential requisite for healthy living around the world, irrespective of culture or socio-economic status. Throughout the tropics there is a huge diversity in house design and use of building supplies based on centuries of indigenous experience, customs, and availability of local resources for construction. These differences in building style and materials affect the indoor conditions and comfort of occupants, which in turn influence the occupants' exposure to certain infectious diseases. In this book the authors describe the architectural designs and materials of rural houses in two countries in Asia (Thailand, Philippines) and two in Africa (The Gambia, Tanzania). They analyse the effect of design on the indoor climate and relate these factors to health, notably the risk of mosquito-borne infectious diseases such as malaria. Based on their findings and a detailed understanding of local building styles and preferences, they describe a series of house modifications that could enhance comfort whilst reducing health risks.

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Book SynopsisBook & CD. Husain Lehri, the director of Super Book House, approached Yashwant Pitkar, teaching at the Sir J J College of Architecture in Mumbai, to bring out a book on a contemporary Indian architect whose approach is different from the run of the mill. Pitkar had no hesitation in choosing Shirish Beri who in a career spanning almost forty years has built works ranging from private residences to educational complexes and large public projects across India. As it turned out, this book is the result of an extensive collaboration between Lehri, Piktar and Beri -- Pitkar describes the process of making the book as one of slow and deep unfolding. What is most interesting about this book is its structure. Interspersed with the projects are Beri's written and sketched expressions. Each set of two projects is bookended by his illustrated essays and poetry. The essays are more like collections of rambling thoughts, posers and anecdotes -- seeking connections between nature, art, architecture, and life. There is a seamless rhythm set up in the book that constantly keeps the reader acquainted with the architect's outer manifestations in form of his buildings and his inner thought processes, integral to that creation. The opening essay, "Working with Wature ... Towards Sustainability" sets a tone towards not just architecture but life in general. Beri asks whether man's relationship with nature could become a universal archetype for a sustainable future. He advocates an approach towards architecture that grows out from the place and its spirit rather than imposed technocratic solutions. The book features about a dozen projects in greater detail, well illustrated with clear drawings, evocative sketches and excellent photographs accompanied by the architect's own analysis of the design process and governing concerns in each project. The opening section of the book contains a note by B V Doshi and a foreword by Christopher Charles Benninger who was Beri's mentor when he was a student at the CEPT in Ahmedabad. The Hirwai Farmhouse in Nathawade for himself, one of his earliest projects, is perhaps the best example of his avowed philosophy: spaces inspired by nature. The Sanjeevan Primary School and the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species at Hyderabad display Beri's playful and unconventional approach towards space organisation which is at once in harmony with the site's topography and natural features. Projects such as the Dharwad Engineering College or the Computational Mathematics Laboratory in Pune display a nuanced sense of structure, construction and meticulousness towards detail. In the closing section of the book there is an exhaustive list of projects with thumbnails giving a good idea of the full range of the architect's work. Accompanying the book is a CD titled "The Unfolding White: Shirish Beri's search for wholeness.

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Book SynopsisBook & DVD. Text in English & German. Friedrich Christoph Wagner spent the years between 1965 and 2002 with few interruptions lecturing students of architecture on the basics of design. In this book he spreads out a summation of his teachings. Thereby he presents an insight into his working methods, a definition of the position of the basics of design, a practical didactic system for creativity, perception and aesthetics as well as a large number of examples of his students' work. A first block about creative training is followed by a broad selection of sculptural themes by means of study pieces based upon "body space" and "the logic of the form". Then the author is moving along with studies of the phenomenon of space with its basic topological and geometrical patterns as well as the primal images and primal acts in architecture. This is followed by a discussion of the surface and of surface structures as well as of the line, with the concomitant topics of sequences and proportions. Under 'Elements of architecture' the author presents students' projects and findings, with an emphasis on proxemics, locations, situations, the ways in which people behave and the corresponding forms in architecture. In connection with this, a number of excursions were undertaken to the island of Sifnos in the Cyclades, where students assisted in making measurements and conducting research at the Kato Petali site. The book contains a DVD with sound samples and films concerned with 'space and light'.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. The central Mosque of the Turkish-Islamic Union in Köln-Ehrenfeld has given us one of the most vigorously discussed German building projects of the past 10 years. With this spectacular domed structure, Paul Böhm, the youngest son of Pritzker Prize-winner Gottfried Böhm and grandchild of Dominikus Böhm, has successfully introduced the Osman mosque typus into the modern age. The dome and minaret provide the Turkish / Islamic community with visual identification points. At the same time, this shell-construction structure is broken up into individual segments in a manner that opens it up to both the neighbourhood and the world. Containing conference halls, rooms for community use, a bazaar, a library and a museum, the complex is intended to convey to the surrounding area a message of retained ties to the historical country of origin coupled with acceptance and integration into the new homeland, and a willingness to engage in dialogue. Up to now the mosque represents the high point of the architectural career of Paul Böhm, who was born in 1959 and who is teaching at the Fachhochschule Köln. His work encompasses a multitude of exciting projects and realised buildings, including cultural buildings, university buildings, administration buildings and residential buildings. It is, perhaps, unsurprising that an architect who comes from a family of church builders should have added an impressive religious structure to uvre. St. Theodor in Köln-Vingst is a central-plan building that possesses a coherent atmosphere suited to contemplation whilst, at the same time, opening itself to a part of the city that suffers from social problems. Figures who have played a significant role in Paul Böhm's professional development include Tadao Ando, the master of velvet-smooth concrete, Oswald Mathias Ungers, the great lover of geometry, and Peter Zumthor, the essentialist of his generation. Like these three figures, the architects who Böhm worked with prior to founding his own firm in 2001, all espoused very different philosophies of architecture: Otto Steidle, Anton Schweighofer, Richard Meier . Paul Böhm does, of course, also owe a debt to the traditions of the family of architects that he comes from -- a tradition that he continues in his own individual way.

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Book SynopsisThe global resources situation and the climate crisis are amongst the biggest challenges faced by mankind today. In the years to come, these issues will no doubt have an influence on societal evolution, on urban and rural land development, and how we define our cultural identities. These and related issues will be reflected in the world of architecture. In recent years many countries with high energy consumption have made the energy-related requirements for buildings more stringent; the new rules apply to the resources used for construction as well as to those used in the operation of buildings. In the future, these new requirements will have a major impact on the design of buildings. It will not be sufficient merely to increase the insulation thickness or to make the building envelope more airtight. Solutions of this type have an adverse impact on the architectural design, on the construction practices, on the indoor environment and on options for making buildings flexible so that they can be adapted for diverse uses over time. Equally important in terms of its impact on architectural quality is the challenge posed by the continuous growth of industrialisation. The move from craft-based construction methods to computer-controlled production processes now used in industrialised manufacturing has resulted in strict standards, established at design level, being imposed on the process as it takes place on the building site, creating an "assembly architecture" that no longer depends on the locally available materials, on local cultural traditions or on the specific physical context. In this book, ideas, design principles and practices that relate to tectonics in architecture are explored, and a series of themes are discussed in relation to various concepts of ecology. Ecology is, in this case, defined in its widest sense, which includes the cycling of resources, systems of social organisation and the environmental context. Tectonics a concept with a long tradition in architecture and architectural theory is comparable to ecology. It relates to the de-sign and assembly of structural elements, and implies a holistic approach to materials, to construction technology and to the design of structures. It is more than merely an instrumental strategy: it extends into the poetic, which elevates it to the status of a cultural practice. This book is part of a research project conducted by leading academics associated with the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture, the Aarhus School of Architecture and the Danish Building Research Institute. With contributions from a wider network of academic experts and from practicing architects, it provides the first comprehensive representation of contemporary tectonic thought and practices in architecture.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. The topic of this book is memory. What do we remember? We like to recall joyful events and wish we could relive them again and again. On the other hand wars, genocides, flight, destruction and epidemics are events remembered with horror, and sometimes their memory is even repressed. Eventually times change, and we begin to forget everything that happened. Our vision of the world is in danger of vanishing. Monuments counteract forgetting. Up to the beginning of the 20th century these were marble busts, figures of horsemen, bronze sculptures, columns, gateways and tombs that were erected in public urban spaces and in parks. This was a way to honour heroes and their military, political and cultural feats and to keep their memory alive. Their goal was to educate and admonish people. Their function was thus to provide models, but also to make viewers feel submissive. Today, in our democratic, pluralistic society, when modern means of communication accelerate all developments, the definition of the monument as a solemn, massive sign of remembrance that brings to mind historic moments has become obsolete. Daily the mass media inundate us with a plethora of images of the past and the present. Thus millions of people can participate in past and present events. There is an almost infinite number of collective experiences and just as many signs of remembrance. This being so, is there anything that can still be called a monument? It is this and similar questions regarding monuments that preoccupy the author in this book; he presents his profound insights into all aspects of the history of architecture and art, of philosophy and the new media. The book is a godsend for readers who are looking for ideas and information that go beyond the mainstream.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the application of the principle of layering in architecture, its mechanics, possible application and meaning. Layering is widely used in the discussions of the 20th and 21st centuries architecture but rarely defined or examined. Layering bridges the tectonics of structure and skin, offers a system for the creation of different architectural spaces over time and functions as a design principle without hierarchy. Three types of layering are identified: a chronological sedimentation of planes materializing changes over time (temporal layering), the additive sequence of spaces (spatial layering), and the stratification of individual planes (material layering). Like a palimpsest, historic cities frequently reveal temporal layering and aspects of change over time, a condition familiar to archaeologists who study layer upon layer of remnants of civilisation, including architectural remains and urban organization. In historic cities, one can read at least the most recent layers to determine a physical chronology of the city's history; contemporary architects add strata of the 21st century. Cities are composed of several layers, offering a complex understanding of time in which a view of the present includes also the perception of the past. At a building scale, layers can be part of the spatial composition, multiple elements of walls, the skin, the structure or decorative and narrative elements. Just as the position and order of geological strata contain information related to their age, formation, and origin, the position and form of architectural layers come with information about their function, intellectual scope, and provenance. The possible elements of such an architectural strategy include materials, light, water, and color as well as associations, memories, and analogies embedded in the layers or in the voids between them. Material layering is based on a perceived separation of spatial enclosures into floor, wall, and ceiling or roof elements and combinations thereof. Individual elements may consist of multiple planes fulfilling a series of specific functions. The architectural enclosure can represent the physical wrapper of a building and might transport the structure's narrative, tectonic information, cultural expression, the architect's design intent, and other topics that might be embedded.

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Book SynopsisThe juxtapositions of Zaha Hadid's architectural models and drawings and Judith Turner's photographs of the architect's buildings in this volume reveal that Hadid and Turner are complicit. There is a clear agreement of sensibilities. Each understands the other. Hadid does not design with complete geometries in stable con-figurations, but designs instead with incomplete or distorted geometries that are dynamic and visually unstable. Turner does the same in her photographs, cropping before a form completes itself in a frame that leaves the rest of the form suggested outside the frame. Hadid's work is abstract a permutation of Modernism's trifecta of point, line and plane. Turner's photography, too, is abstract so that Turner's photographs of Hadid's buildings compound the abstraction, arguably intensifying the three-dimension-al abstraction by compressing it into two. Hadid's neutral palette of materials, especially concrete, takes on value in Turner's graphic compositions of black, white and gray, counterintuitively giving neutrality subtle intensity. Hadid structures her designs dynamically with diagonal lines and oblique planes playing with and against each other in three-dimensional fields. Likewise Turner works on the diagonal, always positioning herself obliquely to buildings, shooting glancingly rather than frontally: her diagonal position further dynamizes Hadid's already energized diagonals. Often Turner doubles down on the diagonality by cranking the camera's lens off its up-down axis to heighten the architectural dynamism. Turning her photographic angle lofts Hadid's already anti-gravitational architectural system off the ground. Judith Turner resides in New York where she began taking photographs in 1972. She has had solo exhibitions in various cities in the United States, Europe, South America, Israel, and Japan. Turner has been awarded several grants and fellowships. She received an Honor Award from The American Institute of Architects in 1994 and a Stars of Design Award in Photography from The Design Center of New York in 2007.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. The inhabitants of our cities have undoubtedly come down with a gardening virus. Gardening is being propagated as the new sex. Wherever one looks, a gardening euphoria is in bloom. We only have to think of the riverbanks restored to their natural state, the urban gardening and urban farming projects springing up all over the world, the green skyscrapers (prospective and actually built) such as, for instance, the utopian farmscrapers of Vincent Callebout, the conversion of former high rail lines into green recreation spaces, the meditation gardens of Piet Oudolf, and the vertical gardens of Patrick Blanc. We dwell on the growing and sprouting, on the sowing and harvesting, with a kind of covert pleasure and sublimated erotic desire. These days, we feel close to greenery, just as we feel close to our pets. We tend and nurture the seeds and stalks, the leaves and flowers, the shrubs and grasses, the bushes and trees, with a matchless solicitude. These culturally coded natural phenomena also have therapeutic qualities, because they offer us self-determination and the possibility to share in social development. This is nothing less than the reintegration of the first, primal nature into the context of the conditions that have become ubiquitous today into the context of what has, today, become 'second nature'. For some people, such as the campaigners of 'Guerilla Gardening', these plants, wild and domestic, provide a way of criticizing the system; others, such as vertical planners of wall gardens like Ken Yeang, utopia-infatuated and bitten by the green bug, presumably see themselves as an avant-garde working in harmony with the system. All of those coming down the garden virus, however, have in common that they see themselves as reformers, as campaigners and as voices arguing for a reconciliation the first and the second, ubiquitous urban, nature, but also between the ecology and the economy. Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. From 1994 to 2012 he has built up a new design department at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt. At the same time, he taught on the history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Heiliger, Richard Meier, Stefan Wewerka, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt by Nicholas Grimshaw, on 'beauty design' as well as on the design activities of Lufthansa and Apple.

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Book SynopsisThe pioneering character and continuing success of Schaal's scenic compositions for stage sets and exhibitions is significantly due to this field allowing him to take full advantage of his multiple talents. He succeeds equally in the thinking and practical skills of an architect, a painter, a sculptor, a landscape designer, an urban visionary, cineast, and a man of literature, and this allows him to discover, through his space-embracing scenographic installations, unique three-dimensional equivalents for his paper-drawn 'thought spaces' and 'path spaces' or 'thought buildings' from the 1970s. His renowned compendium entitled Architektonische Situationen, published in 1980 and containing, the essence of his early spatial studies, in fact contains within it the seeds of all his later stage set and exhibition configurations. The symbiotic relationship between legendary director Ruth Berghaus and spatial visionary Schaal first began producing history-making stage sets in the early 1980s. Working with Berghaus, Schaal created elementary spatial compositions possessed of great suggestive power for Les Troyens (1983), Wozzeck (1984), Orpheus (1986), Elektra (1986), Moses und Aron (1987), Tristan und Isolde (1988), Lulu (1988), Fierrabras (1988), Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (1991) and Nachtwache (1993), and also working with other directors to do the same for countless other operas and theatre pieces. In creating his installations and their powerful images, Schaal has never solely been concerned with creating suitable illustrations for scene-related plot action. Instead, he always adds something more, as it were, in the form of a boldly independent interpretation. The same is true of his concepts for temporary or permanent ex-hibitions. Before undertaking any of the individual projects on his long list of exhibition projects, Schaal has always researched archive material, historic background, and repercussions, but also the emotional and psychoanalytical implications of the exhibitions' theme and the exhibits concerned, with the meticulousness of a scientific specialist. In works such as his installations for Berlin Berlin (1987) or Prometheus (1998), for the Filmmuseum Berlin (2000), and for the memorials of the former concentration camps Mittelbau-Dora (2006), Bergen-Belsen (2007) or Esterwegen (2011), he always presents his own view of the world, his own view of things. Frank R. Werner studied painting, architecture and architectural history in Mainz, Hanover and Stuttgart. From 1990 to 1994 he was professor of history and theory of architecture at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, from 1994 until his retirement in 2011 he was director of the Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal.

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Book SynopsisWe live in a visual age where everyone considers him- or herself to be a photographer, and 1.8 billion images are posted online each day. User-generated content has been used in a myriad of high-profile advertisements. Like a lottery winner, the amateur photographer may achieve a one-off lucky shot by being in the right place at the right time. This feeds the illusion that professional photographs can be achieved without any great effort and that anyone can do it. Arcaid Images is a world-leading resource for imagery of the built environment and is used globally by advertisers, architects, publishers and educators. It represents a diverse range of photographers worldwide who focus their cameras on architecture, homes, heritage and destinations. Arcaid images was founded on the work of architect-turned-photographer Richard Bryant, making the photography of architecture of particular interest. The Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards aims to draw attention to the expertise of this specialist, architectural, area of photography. And the World Architecture Festival exemplifies the need for the best architectural photography. Over 2000 professionals from more than 145 countries gather annually to show and appraise each others work. The overriding common language is the photographic image. Projects with better images make strong initial impact, and the more prosaic the building type, the more important it is to capture the essence of the scheme and not merely record it. Photography has long been the means of communicating architecture. The earliest known photograph by French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, taken with a camera obscura in the late 1820s, was architectural. This photograph, taken from an upstairs window of the family home, was a record of the courtyard and outbuildings an architectural subject. The medium may have changed from a bitumen-coated plate to a memory card, but the technology is only a means to an end. It is the interpretation, the eye and the creativity of the photographer that the Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards are focusing on. The World Architecture Festival had the vision to see the value of the awards by giving it a platform, and working with the Sto company has extended the overall visibility of the awards. This book seeks to record, celebrate and give a permanence to the first four years of the Arcaid Architectural Photography Awards. Whilst attending an exhibition of images from the awards offers members of the public a time-limited opportunity to share in appreciation of the selected images, the physicality of a book extends that opportunity both temporally and geographically. Lynne Bryant is director of Arcaid Images, Amy Croft is curator of Sto Werkstatt and Paul Finch is editorial director of the The Architectural Review and programme director of the World Architecture Festival.

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Book SynopsisThis book honors Professor M.A. Dhaky's work on South and Southeast Asian temple art and architecture with 32 essays covering temple imagery, materials, stylistics, patronage, and cultural contexts. It provides valuable insights and perspectives for scholars and art history enthusiasts.

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Book SynopsisThis book shows what can be achieved when researchers and practitioners work together to develop the building performance level of tomorrow, but needed today. The book is based on the research and development activities performed in the Research Centre on Zero Emission Buildings (the ZEB Centre, www.zeb.no) from 2009 to 2017. Emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases must be reduced to limit global warming. Thus, the goal of the ZEB Centre has been to develop knowledge, competitive products, and solutions for existing and new buildings whose production, operation, and demolition give zero emissions of greenhouse gases while also considering the users needs for comfort and flexibility. The results presented here are based on research as well as experience from the development of nine real demonstration buildings. The book describes some of the key knowledge areas needed when designing, building, and operating zero emission buildings. It should be read by students of architecture and engineering as well as practitioners looking for ways to contribute to a sustainable future.

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Book SynopsisCircle of Form offers an informative guide to the complex discipline of mastering form, contrast and composition in Architecture. The starting point for this book is our ability to see and think what is similar and what is different. Things can be more or less diverse, but oppositions, contrasts are a particular way to convey the difference. On reflection, opposites are one of the most used methods to quickly and immediately breakdown complex compositions into simple, well-defined but connected pieces. Artists have used this knowledge for centuries because simplicity supports a clear artistic language and oppositions emphasise expression and interaction, whether it is literature, music, painting, sculpture, product design or as in this book: Architecture. The Circle of Form continues this tradition, but with a systematic and modern perspective. The theoretical approach of this book continues the authors previous research into art theories, perception, cognitive theories and neuroscience related to visual experiences.

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