Individual architects Books
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited Prototyping Architecture: The Solar Roofpod: An
Book SynopsisClose to 75% of primary energy in New York City is used in or for buildings. Amid the many different initiatives being implemented today to increase energy efficiency, it is clear that it is our built urban environment that needs the most improvement. Besides the fact that existing buildings have to be upgraded, the forgotten, interstitial spaces, where improvement can become architecturally tangible, should also be addressed. The project described in this book developed from the observation that “our most abundant energy resource is the sun and our most underutilized urban space is our rooftops”, and a successful entry into the Department of Energy’s 2011 Solar Decathlon whose goal was to design and build a ‘Net-Zero-Energy’ house to be exhibited on the National Mall in Washington DC. What if we could make use of infrastructure developed over generations by developing the underutilized space of apartment building rooftops to generate some of the power for the ‘host-buildings’ underneath, and thus immediately renew the way we power our buildings and, beyond that, our urban way of life? This visionary concept, documented here in comprehensive architectural detail, became reality when a team of students from the City College of New York took on the challenge of presenting their vision of a built ‘Roofpod’ prototype that could be promoted in New York City.
£47.50
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited City for City: City College Architectural Center
Book SynopsisCity for City presents examples of the work of the City College Architectural Center over the past fifteen years. The projects selected are grouped under the categories of exhibitions, visioning exercises, planning and urban design studies and also include a few examples of assignments for implementation. The work was developed at the request of the affected communities and undertaken with their full participation. The projects were financed in various ways, from pro-bono studies to grant-supported efforts. These grants and the special support from state and municipal entities enable the center to develop the projects in greater depth. City for City illustrates the value of cooperative community-based work in which both sides learn and share in the experience. Such interactions offer valuable insights for both students and faculty not normally found in traditional architectural practices.
£47.50
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited Beyond Petropolis
Book SynopsisEach year, the Graduate Program in Urban Design at the City College of New York travels to a city somewhere in the world that is experiencing a revelatory form of stress. In January of 2006 – joined by students and faculty from the Universidad Catolica in Quito and from the architecture and landscape programs at CCNY – the destination of the group was the small town of Nueva Loja in the Amazon basin of Ecuador. At the time, a population of around 100,000 was expanding exponentially. Nueva Loja was the fastest growing municipality in the country • There was one reason for this: the oil boom. Indeed, almost everyone calls the place “Lago Agrio” – Bitter Lake, after the town in Texas that houses the headquarters of Texaco, the first petroleum giant on the scene. There’s no little irony in this name. As the endless lawsuit against Chevron, Texaco’s successor, has made abundantly clear, Lago’s growth has come at the cost of extremely bitter consequences. The group was inspired to visit by a more particular observation: Lago’s projected rate of growth would see the population exceed 150,000 at just the moment the oil ran out. And so, they decided to investigate what might happen then, how Nueva Loja could move beyond oil to an economy and urban pattern that embrace renewed harmony with the natural environment and is dedicated to creating an intensely humane and supportive place for its inhabitants. The projects in this volume represent a series of propositions for such a place. They are utopian in that they look to a time of harmony and prosperity but intensely practical in that they stem from the specifics of people and place and utilize simple, historical, and local technologies, not any magic fix.
£50.00
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited Dialogues in Space: Wendell Burnette Architects
Book SynopsisDialogues in Space: Process and Ideas in the work of Wendell Burnette Architects is the first multi-project monograph on this American architects selective body of work. The title alludes to the architects view that architecture is a constructed conversation between people, things and time. Six singular projects from the architects oeuvre are presented in-depth through the architects’ own words, drawings and photography. Also included is a comprehensive essay by the celebrated architectural writer / critic Robert McCarter entitled Crafting Space: Composition and Construction in the Architecture of Wendell Burnette that examines the “thinking and making” process behind the built and un-built work across 15 years of practice. The different typologies of the work explores authentic human experience through provocative spatial constructions - public and private in diverse locales - that attempt to promote an expansive dialogue with our places, our environment, our communities, ourselves, and our time. Through extensive research into the ‘art of building’ – the specificity of place and locally appropriate construction systems, materials, craft, and their infinite capacity to transcend mere construction, the work strives toward an architecture that is at once functional and poetic.
£71.25
Oscar Riera Ojeda City Works 5
Book Synopsis
£36.00
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited Make Alive
Book SynopsisThe migration of computing from dedicated appliances to physical environments, thanks to increasingly proliferating microchips and ever-expanding information networks directly implicates and empowers architecture as a transformative agent and medium. The fact that objects can now sense, think, act, and communicate with the help of embedded technology is opening up the potential for an architecture that is more closely aligned with the networked dynamics of living systems – a sentient architecture. The technological enhancement of physical matter charts a movement away from a mechanical paradigm towards a biological model. The shift manifests itself on several levels, from the micro scale in the form of new composite or “smart” materials capable of registering and responding to external stimuli, to larger network formations between people, objects, spaces, and landscapes. Radical artifice here serves to imitate nature, enmeshing built environments in a complex web of interactions whose emergent properties approximate the resiliency of natural ecologies. • It is precisely this fine attunement to life that has made these emerging technologies pertinent in dealing with a wide range of issues from the therapeutic benefits to the body, to the mediation of global and climatic energy systems. The projects featured in this book demonstrate in working prototypes architectural applications of synthetic sentience in the broad research area of ambient intelligence, focusing on: Immersive Spaces, Hybrid Living Systems, Responsive Cladding, Surface as Interface, Augmented Building Technologies, and Individuated Experience. Initial informal efforts have evolved with this team into a focused and funded university-based research. The projects establish a collaborative platform involving designers, scientists, and engineers and a new family of spatial problems where, architecture is re-charged.
£30.00
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited In Situ: George Ranalli,Works & Projects
Book SynopsisIn Situ Design sums up the theoretical position embodied in the work of New York architect George Ranalli. Over the past 32 years, George Ranalli has worked on projects in New York, other states in the U.S., and across the world that have involved large-scale urban design, houses in the landscape, additions, renovations of major landmark buildings and new constructions • George Ranalli is internationally celebrated and published for his work in historic settings, National Register Historic Landmark buildings and settings with rich design and craft traditions. In Situ is his operational strategy in the design of these new buildings and additions to these complexes, providing contemporary and creative structures that also blend in seamlessly with their historic environments • The projects have developed a rich craft and design vocabulary, which links this work to the origins and roots of the longer craft tradition in design and architecture.
£71.25
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited Luminous - Carlos Domenech
Book SynopsisThe Landscape Architecture of Paul Sangha brings landscape to the foreground of daily life—as lifestyle, recreation, aesthetic pleasure—challenging notions of what one can gain from their outdoor surroundings. Sensuous, playful, and provocative, designs by Paul Sangha are meditations on the human relationship with landscape. Drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of materials and botanical species as well as a deep unders- tanding of clients’ habits and desires, works by Paul Sangha are robust systems for living.• The book presents ten residential projects by the award-winning Vancouver-based firm. The featured projects demonstrate the practice’s expertise in orchestrating powerful, unique landscapes with spatial harmony, tactful grade changes, and vibrant plant life. An urban garden for a compact lot gracefully weaves the inside and outside to expand the space of both; a series of programmed terraces creates a staircase gradually descending from the residence to the wilds; and a cantilevered platform is an invitation into the canopy of an old-growth forest.• The Landscape Architecture of Paul Sangha documents the ins- piration, process, and poetry of Paul Sangha’s designs. Coupled with text that vividly describes the details and design concepts, photographer Nic Lehoux sensitively captures each project, narrating through image the spellbinding experience of discovering gardens. This book reveals the inner-workings of a dynamic practice built on the notion that man can write himself in the land, and land can write itself in the man.
£71.25
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers Limited Bali Villas, The: Bedmar & Shi
Book SynopsisPerched on the spectacular southwest coast of Bali, this award winning villa by Bedmar & Shi is Ernesto Bedmar’s long awaited first project on the island that has so inspired his successful career. The exquisitely designed villa was given the name The Jiva Puri, where “Jiva” in Hindu religious texts denotes the immortal essence of a living organism or being and “Puri” in Sanskrit refers to a palace or large dwelling. Although highly contemporary in expression, the design is intrinsically linked to the built history of the island and shows a deep understanding of traditional Balinese architectural concepts and their relationship to the landscape. Featuring a foreword by Darlene Smyth that puts The Jiva Puri into context before taking the reader on a detailed tour of every pavilion, and sumptuous photography by Albert Lim, the monograph also includes comprehensive plans, elevations, and details to give a fully rounded view of a villa complex that has set new standards of subtle architectural brilliance on the island.
£45.00
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers eastwest
Book Synopsis
£71.25