Individual architects Books

Book SynopsisText in English and German. Early in the 20th century, Robert Bosch, the founder of the Stuttgart electrical business, built a large villa on the hills east of the city. It was half Palladian, half in the reform style of the period before the First World War. The building was to meet the head of the company's need for prestige, and to provide a private refuge thanks to the pleasant qualities of its large park and open position. The foundation of the same name is now housed in the Villa Bosch, but the space available has not been adequate for some time. As the company also needed rooms for seminars and other events, a decision was taken to build new accommodation next to the villa. Seven well-known teams took part in a restricted competition, including Tadao Ando, Richard Meier and Richard Rogers. The commission went to Peter Kulka, based in Cologne and Dresden. He found a convincing solution to the problem of leaving the dominance of the old building untouched and at the same time making the foundation's new accommodation attractive in its own right. He came up with a second 'villa' slightly below the first one, precise in its volume and minimalist in its resources. The building responds impressively to the challenges of the topography, the landscape around it and its neighbouring building. Kulka's work combines transparency with physical presence, structural austerity with poetry. This villa suburbana represents a milestone in his career. Kulka, born in 1937, was a pupil of Selman Selmanagic and worked with Hermann Henselmann, Hans Scharoun and in various partnerships before setting up his own practice in 1979. He has been seen as a member of the German architectural avant-garde since his Dresden parliament building (1991-94).Table of ContentsWolfgang Pehnt: A Classical Villa from Today; Buildings by Peter Kulka: A Selection; Plans -- Site Plan / Floor Plans / Sections; Pictorial Section: The Estate in its Setting, The Park Around the Villa, The Villa, The New Building.

Read more less

Book SynopsisArchitects who believe that designs should be based on past architecture.

Read more less

Book SynopsisOutlines this prominent Danish architect and designer's works.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and Italian. Ivano Gianola is one of the most important exponents of the so-called Ticino School. This developed in the early 1970s as a loose association of architects who thought in related ways. At the time, their ambition was to set radical alternatives of a powerfully symbolic nature against the increasing destruction of the environment by new building in Ticino. What made Gianola's buildings different from others of the Ticino School from the outset was the subtle way they were bound into their context, and their precise craftsmanship. The latter meant that building after building, especially in terms of interior finish and the coherence of all the details, became real total works of art. So it is hardly surprising that Gianola created the most beautiful living spaces in Ticino, in the best Artsand-Crafts tradition. This craft precision, combined with high formal and aesthetic values, was probably also crucial to the fact that in the 1990s Gianola was commissioned to design a series of public and private buildings abroad. Thus his conversions and new buildings for the Bayerische Vereinsbank in Schäfflerhof in Munich made a major contribution to the new concept for the well-known Fünf Höfe site. But Gianola's greatest success so far was winning an international competition for redesigning the extensive site around the ruins of the former 'Palace' luxury hotel in Lugano. Here a theatre seating over 1 200 people, a modern art museum, housing and offices, a municipal park and a new section of the lakeside promenade will be created over the next five years. This is the biggest project that the Canton of Ticino has ever awarded, and it will have found an appropriate architect. This first publication of the complete works of Gianola gives the latest of the leading protagonists of the Ticino School a monograph of his own.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in German. Specialist literature on Schinkel has grown enormously since the 200th anniversary of his birth in 1981. But so far questions about the basis of his education and training remain unanswered. No one seems to have seen that Schinkel -- who is often called a classical or a Romantic architect -- was actually a son of the late Enlightenment. This is supported by his teachers' lesson notes (presented here for the first time), the educational periodicals of his period, private letters, exhibition catalogues and also treatises by avant-garde architectural theorists, who also have their say. It was a time of great elation, Kant's cry of 'sapere aude', have the courage to use your own reason, was the motto of this crucial epoch in the history of ideas. Schinkel's father, an unorthodox cleric, fought for the principles of the Enlightenment, and so did the teachers at the two progressive 'model schools' that Schinkel attended. For the first time, these schools brought children from all walks of life together under the same roof -- unheard of in those days. Friedrich Gedike, a leading Enlightenment teacher and the headmaster of Schinkel's grammar school Zum Grauen Kloster, not only tried to impart universal modern knowledge to his pupils, but also to educate them as citizens and servants of the state, with strong characters, and who could cope with life. The state was not just increasingly concerned with schooling, which had been dominated by the Church until that time, but also with education as a whole. The art academy, exhibitions and art as practised were to promote general enlightenment. To a certain extent this also applied to architecture. Friedrich Gilly, Schinkel's fervently revered master, even spoke of an architectural renaissance. The brightest minds of this period -- Schinkel met several of them -- were utterly convinced that the influence of science, culture and the fine arts was powerful enough to refine human nature and to sow peace and concord among nations. And so it is not surprising that the young Schinkel came to Fichte's philosophy at an early stage. Fichte defined the concept of virtue as the good will, which prevailed without exception, to "promote the purposes of humankind to the utmost of one's strength, and to promote them especially in the state, as it instructs". This became Schinkel's life's work.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in French & English. Even though his viaducts for the TGV Atlantic line and several innovative projects rapidly brought him national recognition, Jean-Yves Barrier, who set up his own practice in Tours in 1990, managed to avoid involvement in fashions and trends. Whether he is dealing with homes, public facilities, offices, industrial buildings or shop design, Barrier approaches each project with a fresh eye, and tries to come up with a powerful idea that is then expressed spontaneously in his sketches. His initial insight is developed in very precise studies, bringing an architectural approach to the technical details. The originality of his buildings is inevitably associated with the renewal of form, a great variety of subjects and blending materials in a way that exploits the value of each to optimise the construction as a whole. Even though he was one of the first to realise a solar building (1978), an automated house (1990) and a low-energy apartment block (2001), these technical innovations are not his chief concern. The essential feature for Barrier is the correctness of the response applied to the programme and to the context, with consistent respect for the users. He combines generosity in his human contacts with rigour in conception and realisation. In all his exchanges with contractors, engineers, workmen and users, his taste for dialogue promotes a climate of confidence that enables every project to find its own distinctive quality.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in German. There is a copious and wide-ranging body of literature on Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Germany's most important 19th-century architect. But there is not a single work that records and assembles material on buildings by Schinkel that are still standing today, one hundred and sixty years after his death, after two world wars and major political upheavals. This volume is intended to fill the gap by providing the fullest possible compilation. It is surprising how many buildings by Schinkel still exist. There are over 170 of them in 112 different places, 62 in Germany and 49 in Poland and Russia, with Berlin and Potsdam each counting as a single location. The picture is very varied as far as the individual buildings are concerned. The churches make up the greatest number: about 86 of them are still standing. Then come 34 museums, theatres, guardhouses, schools and similar buildings, 18 palaces, castles and manor houses, 12 memorials, 12 tombs, 6 interiors and 4 fonts. A glance at a map of the former state of Prussia shows clearly that the buildings are not distributed evenly. In the west, the Rhineland and Westphalia, there were and are relatively few buildings by Schinkel. There is a decided cluster, the first regional concentration, in the present Saxony-Anhalt, between Magdeburg and Weimar. Further to the east come major accumulations in Berlin and Potsdam, and then the Oderbruch in the east of Brandenburg as another cluster. There are also concentrations of buildings by Schinkel in the Posen area as well as in West and East Prussia. Pomerania and Silesia have far fewer. Heinz Schonemann provides an introductory essay about Schinkel in his day, Helmut Borsch-Supan has contributed accounts of the way in which Schinkel's legacy is being handled today. The catalogue texts are by Martina Abri, Elke Blauert, Eva Borsch-Supan, Bernd Evers, Hillert Ibbeken and Heinz Schonemann.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. As in 2001, during the 2002 Cologne International Furniture Fair three internationally known designers squeezed themselves into the town's best known building between buildings. There they presented their ideas on the subject of 'expanding the gap'. From Tokyo came the idea of expanding the exhibition space with an installation to make it snow. Designer Tokujin Yoshioka had 18 kilos of down whirled up by fans at the end of the room to create an everlasting blizzard, and the largest snowball of the year. -- In order to burst through the austere geometry of the exhibition building, projections from lava lamps from the London-based designer Ross Lovegrove covered the greater part of the interior. The coloured, gently moving bubbles created in these lamps by heat caused the sharp contours and hard black and white contrasts of the ceilings and walls to melt and flow. -- Greg Lynn from Los Angeles installed an over-dimensioned, organic sculpture on one of the side walls. It reached out well into the room, and so the visitors were obliged to squeeze past it and search on the other side for space.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. This book presents a selection from all Tesar's creative periods and an essay introduces the background to this art and its current positioning, which not least raises theoretical questions about the relationship between pictorial art and architecture. Tesar's drawings are presented as a project that turns a vision of Modernism into reality within a manageable personal sphere. The vision conjures up, as modern creative work is condemned to becoming increasingly specialised, an alternative 'art as a life practice', but -- and this is the present level of perception -- one that can ultimately be realised only in individual art projects.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. The distinguished architect and Pritzker laureate Richard Meier has attracted public attention mainly with his museum and cultural buildings including the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Stadthaus in Ulm and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. The book accompanies the exhibition of the same name at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt, which has recently been relaunched with differently conceived museum facilities and new service areas; these are addressed in detail in an appendix to the book.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAt the dawn of the 20th century, Bruno Paul (1874-1968) stood like a colossus astride the landscape of an emerging Modernism. As an illustrator, architect and educator his influence was unequalled. Arguably the most important German designer of his generation, his work was ubiquitous in the technical and professional publications of his day. For five decades, Paul's reputation was unparalleled among progressive German artists. As a young man he was a member of the Munich avant-garde responsible for the creation of the Jugendstil. As a designer of furniture and interiors, he achieved a commercial success unmatched by his illustrious contemporaries. In the light of his professional accomplishments, he was the most influential German architect of his generation, a figure of international significance. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Adolf Meyer and Kem Weber were among his students, and their work developed from the practices of his atelier. Indeed, as director of the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für freie und angewandte Kunst in Berlin he presided over an institution that rivaled the Bauhaus as a centre of progressive instruction in the arts. Despite the renown he enjoyed at the height of his career, Paul's name has been largely absent from the standard histories of the modern movement. Indeed, this book is the first comprehensive study of his life and work. Nevertheless, Paul's story embodies a significant facet of the history of 20th-century design: the development of Modernism in Central Europe and its coalescence from the influences of Jugendstil, Elementarism, Classicism, Expressionism and Functionalism. Paul played a prominent role in this coalescence, and he deserves a place of honour in the history of the modern movement. Yet his biography also encompasses a less familiar, but no less significant, aspect of the history of modern design. It is the story of a pragmatic Modernism that occupied a middle ground between avant-garde experimentation and conservative professional practice, a Modernism that was timeless, practical and principled. It was this pragmatic Modernism that won the patronage of the middle classes and established progressive design as an accepted alternative, and eventually as the preferred alternative to the period styles. Moreover Paul's pragmatic Modernism, and its underlying principles, remain as relevant today as when they were first conceived.Trade Review"...a beautifully produced book..." -- Wallis Miller, University of Kentucky, H-Net Reviews.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. Peter Kulka is a major German architect. His buildings in recent years have been characteristically succinct and minimalist. This started with the Sächsischer Landtag in Dresden. Since then Kulka has produced numerous works of high creative ambition. His projects regularly feature in architecture magazines, and also on the arts pages in the daily press. Following a 1996 publication, this is the second monograph on his work. The book accompanies the show of his work in the Deutsches Architektur Museum in Frankfurt am Main from late 2005 to early 2006. The exhibition is based on Kulka's archives, which contain an extensive range of first-class architectural photographs as well as project designs and visual presentations. 22 projects are presented, centred around his work over the past 15 years and leading up to the most recent projects like the rebuilding of the Schloß in his home town of Dresden. Kulka studied under Selman Selmanagic' in Weißensee, Berlin. He then worked with Hermann Henselmann in East Berlin, later moving to Hans Scharoun in West Berlin. He had his first major success in the Herzog, Köpke, Kulka, Töpper and Siepmann partnership with the design for the University of Bielefeld. In 1979 he started his own practice in Cologne, followed by a Dresden branch in 1991. Alongside the Sächsischer Landtag in Dresden, Kulka's best-known designs include the "Haus der Stille" in the Abtei Königsmünster in Meschede, the Bosch Haus Heidehof in Stuttgart, and also the new chamber music hall and the new foyer in the Konzerthaus Berlin, Karl Friedrich Schinkel's former Deutsches Schauspielhaus.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. The extensive built work of the 1925 born Reinhard Gieselmann, focussing on housing and church architecture, is characterised by powerfully three-dimensional buildings, dramatic spatial effects, sophisticated handling of light and explicit material effects.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. Despite their usually very large volumes, works by Eckhard Gerber's Dortmund practice are structurally light and transparent, precise in their detail, and make an unmistakable impact on the urban space. Presenting the new exhibition centre in Karlsruhe, this Opus volume is devoted to a building complex with all the self-confidence of a city-within-a-city. Admittedly visitors are not aware of that until they have passed a breath-taking exhibition loggia whose daring roof, protruding powerfully along the whole length of the building, attracts attention even from a distance. The basic concept, tailored to the urban landscape, the functional ground-plan arrangement, the unusually subtle use of structures and materials for a large building of this kind, and not least the high design quality of all structural parts will certainly mean a high level of acceptance and a long future for the Neue Messe in Karlsruhe.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. Otto Ernst Schweizer (1890-1965), architect, philosopher and teacher, had a crucial effect on the path of Modern architecture. When the central dairy in Nuremberg was finished in 1931 it was the largest complex of its kind in Europe and was seen by critics as a work that deserved the rank of prototype.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. The building for the Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung is near the city centre by the commercial harbour. What is striking is the unusual façade: a pattern is made with glazed tiles in white, grey and black, seeming more regular than it actually is.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAt the time San Francisco International Airport opened as Mills Field Municipal Airport of San Francisco in 1927, most of the San Francisco Peninsula was pastureland. Over the years, new terminals and hangars were built to satisfy the demand of increased air traffic. Beginning with a small administration building of residential character including horizontal wood siding and red cedar shingles, the airport advanced to the larger San Francisco Airport Administration Building. After continuous growth, in 2000 the airport was reorganised and expanded into the vast, structurally iconic new International Terminal. The new building acts as a gateway between land and air, offering a recognisable image to arriving and leaving passengers. It is organised over five levels, making it America's first mid-rise terminal. It receives multiple modes of transportation -- linking cars, busses, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system and the internal light-rail system. According to Craig Hartman, design architect with SOM, the terminal is "founded upon the qualities of light and lightness". He says of the new roof: "We conceived of it as a floating, sheltering plane and as a symbol." The building's position above several lanes of traffic required a 380-foot long span between the central columns -- essentially the building is a bridge. Thus the building itself is in a state of lift-off, offering the first step into the air for departure or a transition space for arrival before the traveller really gets back to the ground. The terminal is built on friction-pendulum base insulators that allow it to swing in the event of an earthquake. The roof trusses' shape evokes many possible associations, the rolling Bay Area hills, the wings of airplanes, a bird in flight -- all images not unusual inspirations for airport designs, though in this case especially elegantly achieved.Table of ContentsAnne-Catrin Schultz: Space, structure and light; Model and plans; Model and site plan; Floor plans; Elevations; Perspective section; Axonometric diagram of the departure hall 30; Detailed section through the building; Detailed section through the ticket counter; Pictorial section; Exterior views; Interior views; Final view; Facts.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English & German. Heroic 20th-century Modernism saw the private home as a place to first test out utopian theories -- a place for free play and experimentation where new approaches could be put into action, on a small scale but no less radical. Here, where architecture and life are most closely interwoven, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gerrit Rietveld, Le Corbusier and even Konstantin Melnikov found the suitable space to give their visionary concepts a plastic reality. The house built by the architect Fritz Barth for his own use in his home town of Fellbach places itself in an ironic, possibly melancholic distance from this kind of heroic pathos, but still has this tradition as its background. So it is considered by his builder as an experiment to determine the state of architecture at the start of the 21st century -- not to apply whatever offers itself to expand the architectonic repertoire (an approach that Barth considers to be a questionable, increasingly rhetoricised form of a somewhat naïve belief in the future), but to find out what possibilities are still open to architecture and how far architecture still permits a concept of 'dwelling' in the sense the word was used by Heidegger. The result is not a backward-looking homeliness, but a structure that, as a commitment to architecture in and of itself, stands his ground like few others in its time and place. This is not least because its complexity its multi-layered, opulent fabric of allusions, references and quotations, only reveals itself gradually and with close observation behind a simple appearance targeted on the immediacy of experience and architecture. Despite the somewhat polemical intentions of its builder and inhabitant, the house is not experienced as an ideological manifesto in bricks and mortar. It is and here lies its radicality, devoted to the immediate experience of 'dwelling' in so far as it does not allow, as Thomas Hettche writes in his essay, any distinction between surface and function, life and experience.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English & German. A whole issue of the architectural magazine Bauwelt, being published in Berlin, was dedicated to the completed building. The Institutes of Pharmacology and Food Chemistry of the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main by Ferdinand Kramer, who had also built most of the other new buildings on the campus, soon advanced to a highly appreciated master work of modern post-war architecture but later it was nearly forgotten. Many years of intensive use and neglected maintenance rendered the rehabilitation of the buildings indispensable. After a comprehensive renovation by the architects SSP Schürmann-Spannel of Bochum, the concrete structure with its striking brise-soleil elements on the south side and the lecture-hall cube detached from the main building, is not only again a convincing built monument, but also an exemplary example of a successful conversion. Where for many years students of pharmacology and food chemistry studied and experimented, 160 scientists of the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F) are researching the interaction of climate and biosphere. The book provides a detailed description of the building, which dates from 1957 and which was completely reconditioned by the office of SchürmannSpannel in the years 2009 to 2013. The pictorial section contains plans of the original and present condition as well as photographs especially made for this publication by Jörg Hempel. It is preceded by Fabian Wurm's essay, which not only discusses the building in detail, but also addresses the pressing question of converting buildings from the time after World War II.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English and German. The prize-winning design, of which all can be seen from the outside is a glass cube making an impact over a distance and defining the urban situation, solved the enormous space problem of a collection of contemporary art including 15000 works.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAll the world's knowledge is stored and collected here. The place serves as an assembly point and information centre and is all things in one: laboratory, workshop, building site, university, theatre, opera house and museum. The shape of the building should be like a sphere with a silver-grey surface gleaming in the sunlight. It stands in a shallow pool of water. Broad walkways lead to the entrance. Extensive gardens in gentle geometric patterns invite visitors to rest, play, chat and look.

Read more less

Book SynopsisHeinz Tesar's architecture is associated with holistic ideas, and is 'value-conservative' in this sense. But at the same time, this architecture relates to its time, is modern, frank and open to consensus in a subjective dialectic between connection and isolation. However, this holistic concept is not concerned with hierarchical orders, but with relative weighting in a denomination process. Tesar is someone who names things, a 'baptist' who makes his objects that have acquired form individual and thus unmistakable.

Read more less

Book SynopsisLatvian-born architect Gunnar Birkerts belongs to the second wave of modernists who arrived in the United States from abroad, a group that includes Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli among others. Educated at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Birkerts worked first with Eero Saarinen in his now-legendary office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and later was chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki. At that time both Saarinen and Yamasaki were developing their distinctive architectural signatures and building their international renown. Subsequently Birkerts established his own practice, evolving a design process and a philosophy with its own original profile. His approach does not seek a "right style for the job" in the manner of Saarinen. From the first, Birkerts' work was tied to a program as well as a particular context -- a place -- to the extent that it became expressive of the surrounding landscape and accommodating to the existing vernacular. Birkerts' designs, from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis to the Corning Museum of Glass to the Houston Arts Museum and recently the Latvian National Library, shows him exploring with ever greater resource and inventiveness the expressive possibilities of symbol and metaphor. Form, he believes, expresses function, and does so with its own rich, meaningful vocabulary. Birkerts uses visual metaphors to link program, client, and landscape in a resonant solution. His methodology of using metaphor -- meaning -- as a first principle, as a generator of design concept, is unusual in the profession, but it is vitally connected to his Latvian heritage and his family background as the son of a folklorist and writer. This heritage is given a new turn here, for the biographical text of the book has been written by his son, Sven Birkerts, who is a noted literary critic and author of the influential book The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. He has also written a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades which describes at some length his coming of age struggles with his architect father. Now, years later, Sven brings his cultural perspectives as well as his family insights to bear, offering a unique portrait of a life and career. History and description are enlivened throughout by observations and reflections on the career -- the destiny -- of this master of the expressive concept. The book is richly illustrated and complemented by descriptive assessments of the projects by Martin Schwartz, who is an architect and writer and who teaches at Lawrence Technical University in Southfield, Michigan.Trade Review"This monograph proves Gertrude Stein's assertion that no artist is ahead of his or her time. There are simply many people behind theirs." Norman Weinstein, October 2009

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in German & English. The 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. In this respect, Rob Krier, born in 1938 in Grevenmacher, Luxembourg, is indeed the proverbial exception that proves the rule. Besides his actual profession, which demands his daily attention, Krier has for years also made a vocation of his love of art, one which he nurtures parallel to his work. Fine art could 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 and move them to thoughtful reflection. In the works of Mies van der Rohe it is not rare that one finds naturalistic figures from, for example, Aristide Maillol or Wilhelm Lehmbruck -- as an anthropomorphic contrast to the strict geometry of the architecture, notes Rob Krier in the comments on his journal. If one is already aware of the realisation of his masterful architectural accomplishments through projects such as Potsdam-Kirchsteigfeld (1991 to 1997), De Resident in The Hague (1993-2001), Noorderhof in Amsterdam (1994-99), Veste Brandevoort near Helmond (since 1995), Citadel Broekpolder near Beverwijk (2000-04), or the Cité Judiciaire in Luxembourg (1992-2008) -- be assured, Krier's artistic skills are in no way inferior to his architectural work. Quite the contrary: as a sculptor and illustrator, too, Rob Krier brings together extraordinarily musical qualities and incorporates them into his work: his bronze The Jumper was erected in Montpellier in 2004, the Cowering Woman ten years earlier on Berlin's Friedrichstraße, the four metre-high duo Bosch i Alsina and Papasseit on Moll de la Fusta in Barcelona in 1992.

Read more less

Book SynopsisText in English & German. Johannes Peter Hölzinger studied architecture at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1954 to 1957. After a residency fellowship at the Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo in Rome he founded a "planning association for new forms of the environment" in 1965 together with Zero artist Hermann Goepfert, who has since died. One of the most successful results of his work with Goepfert was a new design for the Schloßpark in Karlsruhe on the occasion of the Bundesgartenschau in 1967, which won a major German architectural prize, the Hugo-Häring-Preis. From 1991 until his retirement in 2002 Hölzinger directed the art and public-space course at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Nuremberg. Individualistic and oppositional in comparison to other post-World War II architectural achievements, the design of Hölzinger's buildings is very distinctive. The playful elements of Postmodernism are as alien to his work as the functionalism of New Building. Because of his association with Hermann Goepfert, Hölzinger is much more closely connected with the art scene of his time. The integration of art and architecture is a unique feature of his buildings. If we try to assign a category to this "object architecture" (a term he coined himself), we will find less overlap with architecture than with fine art. From the very beginning Hölzinger saw architecture as an artistic discipline. Light kinetics offered him important new perspectives. Lighting design and the resulting colour changes of white walls play a vital role in his work.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe ongoing paradigm change in regard to the use of energy, its efficient usage and the consumption of resources is giving rise to new light systems and lighting appliances. This development might also lead to the use of light as a building material in its own right, comparable to traditional building materials, making it possible to create light space productions something that did not seem feasible up to now due to the high cost of energy and of light systems. The goal of this book is to develop temporary light spaces that re-interpret the existing urban environment on a seasonal basis or over a cycle of several years. As a result, the city will literally appear in a new light. Strollers in the city streets will experience their familiar environment in a new way. Illuminated planes interlacing with planes made by linear fields of light beams will create immaterial material space experiences: still lifes of light within which one can move about and light choreographies that move barely noticeably, creating still lifes in motion. Current research aims at exploring, imagining and inventing stand-alone spatial structures of light, adding on to and transforming existing spaces, creating a new spatial awareness that may enable people to experience urban space in a different way. Similar to the process of architectural design, where haptic built volumes create interspaces, the light spaces that are presently being designed make these interspaces visible and allow urban dwellers to experience unexpected spatial constellations. The discourse in this book starts with essays introducing aspects of light spaces, including the following: Christian Bartenbach on the perception of light as something that creates space; Niels Gutschow on the ritual dimension of light, an element in the history of creation; Samuel Widmer on light in near-death experiences; Aldous Huxley on light as the messenger from a world we perceive on an unconscious level; Jun'ichiro Tanizaki on the world of the shadow and Tadashi Endo on movement as a relation between time and space in Butoh, the Japanese dance of darkness. The discourse concludes with documents on light spaces by Wolfgang Rang collected over a period of 30 years showing how these light spaces were regarded in the writings of con-temporaries, including Max Bächer on the dawn of a new era; Hans-Peter Schwarz on the deconstruction of space by light; Jürgen Hasse on light as a discourse fragment of public space; Manuel Cuadra on red luminescence; and Antonio de Campos on shadow as an expression of light.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Green Energy Laboratory (GEL) is a research centre for low environmental impact building technologies on the the Minhang Campus of Jiao Tong University in Shanghai. Created in collaboration between the university and the Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea Protection, it was designed and built by the Florentine architectural firm Archea Associati in 2012. This book features critical essays, technical drawings, photos of the construction site and the completed project, and illustrates the harmony of this structure through its perfect blend of tradition, architectural ingenuity, and sustainability. The GEL building is based around a central courtyard with a retractable roof. The top, or third floor, is recessed in relation to the main block, with a steeply sloped roof to house solar panels. The outer shell of the building’s double skin is composed of terracotta elements designed to form pictograms common in the Chinese language. This landmark project represents a symbol of intercultural cooperation between Italy and China. Text in English and Italian.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis small house on the sea in a small city near Rome is one of the most amazing experiments made by the Italian architect. Strictly connected to the landscape, such as the Adalberto Libera's casa Malaparte in Capri, this building captures the landmarks of the Roman coast through small deformations in its composition. This particular research inspected by the Architect that, at the first glance, could remember an expressionist gesture, is instead a very interesting work on how to evolve the modern Italian architecture in a "contemporary" way avoiding that nostalgic behaviour taken by many members of Modern Italian Rationalist Architecture Movement (MIAR). As usual this book looks inside, outside and around this building as a "lecture" held by the writer.

Read more less

Book SynopsisOne of the last works from Luigi Moretti tells us many things about his final approach to one of the most actual themes studied by the architects of the XXI century: the landscape. Here Moretti succeeded to have a fusion between "subject" and "object" designing a building whose aim is to disappear, to become landscape itself. No surprise until we see that our architect work crosses many different historical periods keeping quite unchanged his method: from the fascism to the Seventies Moretti was coherent. From the Classical monumentalism of the fascist period to the baroque approach of the Fifties his work has always moved to the direction of perception of space more than mere formalism. The Guendalina Salimei's book reveals, for the first time, how one of the main instruments for the project is the "section". Taking the Michelangelo's lesson, all the masses float above, leaving the ground express as a free form of art.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe pavilion that Zavanella, an architect from Mantua, Lombardy based in Milan builds on behalf of the Officine Meccaniche of Milan is a railway shelter where the so-called “Belvedere”, the OM railcar designed by him, end its maiden voyage during the Milan Fair, in 1948. The OM shelter is composed by a refined balance of constructive elements in tension, in which the dynamism of forms is revealed in one of his most audacious proofs of exhibition architecture.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Roman architect Maurizio Sacripanti, had a deep connection with the group of artists who were carrying fresh streams of creativity in Rome between the sixties and the seventies, reason for his work spans from architecture to contemporary arts. He designed some of the most daring projects in these decades, well represented by the Peugeot Skyscraper, “set to start a new season of creativity” according to Paolo Portoghesi. The surprisingly sharp and clear competition drawings in the Sacripanti’s archive, show the “Sacripanti’s method” in all its beauty.

Read more less

Book SynopsisCasa Malaparte is an Adalberto Libera project. This statement, that dazzle hypothesis dealing with uncertain paternity, is based on the following arguments: the experts who study this “architecture without architect” collect documents and evidences that partially recompose a picture that, however, lack many fragments. Like in a presumptive trial the experts analyze the documents to demonstrate how, after the first plan and its second version, Libera sneaks out to leave a leading role to Malaparte. The parts of this puzzle, patiently recomposed to demonstrate the role of Malaparte in the plan of the villa on Capo Massullo, invoke the missing fragments that would confute the appearance. Lost fragments can be properly found observing casa Malaparte. “Accusations” are based on the substantial difference between the first plan made by Libera for the building licence the 14th of March 1938 and the final result. This lack of correspondence, together with the absence of the architect from the building site since April 1938, leave many doubts about its real paternity. The story is made up of few chapters, short text, wide bibliography and a chronological section that fix in time the facts. The three versions of the project are read by graphic and comparative analysis. Two models have been made to show differences and new sights. This small book illustrate facts, and comments about one of the most famous and fine modern Italian building, considering that Adalberto Libera is the author of Casa Malaparte.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less