Theory of architecture Books

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Book SynopsisScholars and artists revisit a hugely influential essay by Rosalind Krauss and map the interactions between art and architecture over the last thirty-five years.Expansion, convergence, adjacency, projection, rapport, and intersection are a few of the terms used to redraw the boundaries between art and architecture during the last thirty-five years. If modernists invented the model of an ostensible “synthesis of the arts,” their postmodern progeny promoted the semblance of pluralist fusion. In 1979, reacting against contemporary art's transformation of modernist medium-specificity into postmodernist medium multiplicity, the art historian Rosalind Krauss published an essay, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field,” that laid out in a precise diagram the structural parameters of sculpture, architecture, and landscape art. Krauss tried to clarify what these art practices were, what they were not, and what they could become if logically combined. The essay soon as

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Book SynopsisAn architect's defense of drawing as a way of thinking, even in an age of electronic media.Why would an architect reach for a pencil when drawing software and AutoCAD are a click away? Use a ruler when 3D-scanners and GPS devices are close at hand? In Why Architects Still Draw, Paolo Belardi offers an elegant and ardent defense of drawing by hand as a way of thinking. Belardi is no Luddite; he doesn't urge architects to give up digital devices for watercolors and a measuring tape. Rather, he makes a case for drawing as the interface between the idea and the work itself.A drawing, Belardi argues, holds within it the entire final design. It is the paradox of the acorn: a project emerges from a drawing—even from a sketch, rough and inchoate—just as an oak tree emerges from an acorn. Citing examples not just from architecture but also from literature, chemistry, music, archaeology, and art, Belardi shows how drawing is not a passive recording but a momen

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Book SynopsisIn this book, the author argues that architectural functionality is often constrained by political and economic forces, while it is also effectively undermined by modes of expression. Utilitarian building elements-for example, windows or skylights intended to bring daylight into offices or factories-may be subject to excessive heat gain, thereby coming into conflict with an evolving politics of energy conservation and global warming mitigation. Yet at the other extreme they may be deployed as part of expressive systems whose value, understood in terms of symbol and metaphor, can overwhelm these utilitarian considerations. Politics and economics, in other words, establish lower and upper bounds for all utilitarian functions, whose costs and benefits are continually assessed on the basis of the profitable accumulation of wealth within a competitive global economy. Simultaneously, an artistic sensibility, also driven by competition, often contorts buildings into increasingly untenable forms. With utility both constrained by politics and attacked by expression, buildings-especially those that aim to be fashionable and avant-garde-often experience various degrees of utilitarianfailure. The political constraints and expressive tendencies affecting architectural utility are separately examined in the two parts of this book, while an epilogue looks at the implications for architectural education.

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Book SynopsisThis book proposes alternative interpretations of broadly-debated concepts within architectural modernity. Bringing into view the work of lesser-known architects from across the globe, alongside previously unexplored aspects of mainstream masters of the Modern, Rethinking Modernity puts forward a compelling case for the range and diversity of architectural projects encompassed by this term. Exploring themes such as the use of colour, materials, ornament, local traditions and identities, Rethinking Modernity challenges readers to build a better understanding of a crucial moment in architectural history, and of design trends shaping the present-day production of the built environment. Complementing the RIBA Publishing titles Redefining Brutalism and Revisiting Postmodernism, this book sits within a series of books aiming to explore new interpretations of well-loved architectural movements, richly illustrated with rarely-seen archive photography and lesser-known projects. Offers a comprehensive review of modernity, discussing its various strands through less typical case studies, rich and original visual material (photographs, redrawn plans, and spatial diagrams), as well as descriptions Illustrates the range of possibilities the umbrella term of Modernity encompasses, questioning stereotypical definitions and proposing alternative descriptions Offers a window onto lesser-known architectural figures of the modern alongside mainstream masters of the Modern Explores both historical modernity globally and its connection with present-day trends Table of Contents Introduction: Modernity: a small word for such a big world Chapter 1: Tradition and Identity Chapter 2: Modernity and context Chapter 3: Materials and Colours Chapter 4: The forbidden wor(l)d: ornament and decoration in the alternative modern Chapter 5: Geometry and spatial experience Chapter 6: The modern diaspora – Latin America Chapter 7: Modern diaspora and the British interwar Conclusion

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Book SynopsisAs screens and the content they deliver increasingly dominate our lives, and those who once consumed also create, broadcast media are seeing trust in their authority diminish. Mediated Space critiques contemporary intersections of architecture and broadcast media that exploit spaces and places that are real, imagined or hybrids of the two in order to re-establish and strengthen the mechanisms of production and consumption. In three thematic parts that focus on the automotive space of the city, the journalistic space of the news room and the mediated skyline of the city, Mediated Space makes an architectural critique of spaces that are rarely designed by architects but that are experienced every day by millions of people.Table of ContentsIntroduction Part 1: The mediated space of journalistic production Chapter 1 W1A Chapter 2 The Global Local Chapter 3 Live From Doha Part 2: The mediated space of automotive consumption Chapter 4 Imported from Detroit Chapter 5 Inject Some Positive Emotion Chapter 6 The Open Road Part 3 The mediated cityscape of entertainment Chapter 7 I’ll See You In The Boardroom Chapter 8 Lund Point Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe issue of gender inequality in architecture has been part of the profession’s discourse for many years, yet the continuing gender imbalance in architectural education and practice remains a difficult subject. This book seeks to change that. It provides the first ever attempt to move the debate about gender in architecture beyond the tradition of gender-segregated diagnostic or critical discourse on the debate towards something more propositional, actionable and transformative.To do this, A Gendered Profession brings together a comprehensive array of essays from a wide variety of experts in architectural education and practice, touching on issues such as LGBT, age, family status, and gender-biased awards.Table of ContentsEditorial Section 1: Practice, politics, economics Chapter 1 Six Myths About Women in Architecture – Justine Clark Chapter 2 Architecture: A Suitable Career for a Woman? – Sandra Manley and Ann De Graft-Johnson Chapter 3 On Age and Architecture – Sophie Hamer Chapter 4 Why Men Leave Architecture – Doric Chapter 5 G.F. Bodley and the Gravy: Describing Architecture on the Tangent – Hugh Pearman Chapter 6 Women in Architecture: Stand up and be Counted – Virginia Newman Chapter 7 The Hero's Journey – Karen Burns Chapter 8 Lost and Found – John Fitzgerald and Ruth Morrow Chapter 9 Site Parade – Julian Williams Section 2: Histories, theories & pioneers Chapter 10 The Queer Architect In Germany – Wolfgang Voigt and Uwe Bresan Chapter 11 Sister Practices – Ruth Morrow Chapter 12 Architecture: A Villainous Profession? – David Gloster Chapter 13 The “Transition” As A Turning Point For Female Agency In Spanish Architecture – Lucía C. Pérez-Moreno Chapter 14 Redesigning the Profession – Julie Humphreys Chapter 15 Remembering Queer Space – Anthony Graham Chapter 16 Women in Architecture Awards – Laura Mark Chapter 17 Designers of the World Unite – Joe Kerr Section 3: Place, participation and identity Chapter 18 Woods and Treasure – Cany Ash and Robert Sakula Chapter 19 Down To Earth – James Soane Chapter 20 Vauxhall is Burning – Alexis Kalli Chapter 21 On Looking And Learning – Paul Davies Chapter 22 Scenes of Emancipatory Alliances – Brian McGrath Chapter 23 The Eradication of London's Queer Pubs – Sam Douek Chapter 24 Architecture 2.0 – Gem Barton Section 4: Education Chapter 25 Surveys, seminars, and starchitects: Gender studies and architectural history pedagogy in American architectural education – Catherine Zipf Chapter 26 Interiority Complex – House and Harriss Chapter 27 Gender, Architectural Education and the Accruing of Capital – Igea Troiani Chapter 28 Hit Me Baby, One More Time – Lesley Lokko Chapter 29 And Then We Were The 99%: Reflections on Gender and the Changing Contours of German Architectural Practice – Mary Pepchinski Chapter 30 A Gendered Pedagogy – Harriet Harriss Chapter 31 Look Who's Talking: Numbers Matter – Lori Brown Chapter 32 Symbolic Violence – Flora Samuel

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Book SynopsisIn this collection of idiosyncratic lessons, architect and teacher Pier Paolo Tamburelli engages with the very foundations of arch-itecture, proposing a series of new and open-ended perspectives on how we build the world. Developed for the 'Grundkurs', or 'basic course', at Vienna Technical University, Tamburelli's lessons are presented through the annotated sketches that form the basis of his lectures - variously rough and precise, sarcastic and sincere, and always uniquely expressive. This volume is a rich visual sourcebook of architectural ideas that form an accessible and discursive introduction to the discipline - one which pauses on the road to grand theories to learn from the intuitive processes of notetaking, drawing, and association. Tamburelli's lessons are based around a series of dialectic couples, including Roof/Wall, Shelter/Memory, and Language/Action. The pairs are experimental and often provocative, offering a framework to be used to climb in the direction of architecture. Tamburelli trusts in the capacity of images to suspend the restraints of more rigorous theoretical approaches, embraces the flexible wisdom of the note, and relishes the intrigue of the cryptic messages we leave for ourselves. Reproduced here in their entirety, these eight lessons offer countless routes towards, through, and around architecture, providing newcomers and experts alike with an intimate and refreshing encounter with a millennia-old discipline. With an introduction by the author and a text by Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design

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Book SynopsisWithout environmental justice, there can be no social justice. The critical symptoms of human suffering, climate collapse and animal maltreatment are now global and far-reaching. Despite their interdependence, the treatment of these afflictions remains disconnected. What follows is policy and design decisions that fail to tackle the problems collectively. Exposing the narrow perspectives that dominate architectural discourse and practice, this volume sets the table for inclusive architectural engagement during a time circumscribed by pandemic, climate change and inequality. An respected group of international voices amplifies interactions relating to sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, transphobia and environmental catastrophe, exploring how they are inextricably linked. Without acknowledging the interconnectedness of these injustices, we will not find effective ways to halt the deepening crisis. Or be able to experience an architecture that addresses the effects of the human-centred Anthropocene age. Readers are invited to imagine, rage, rail, protest, contest, channel, dream and envision from a position of humility, equity, and in some instances, experiential fury. The future of architecture is contingent on working at the intersection. Features: Marcos Cruz, Casper Laing Ebbensgaard, Antón García-Abril, Alexandra Daisy Ginsburg, Ariane Lourie Harrison, Kerry Holden, Walter Hood, Joyce Hwang, Kabage Karanja, V. Mitch McEwen, Débora Mesa, Timothy Morton, Stella Mutegi, Brenda Parker, Carolyn Steel, McKenzie Wark, Kathryn Yusoff and Joanna Zylinska.Table of ContentsEditor’s Introduction: Beyond the Spaces of Speciesism An Architectural History of Intersectionality by V. Mitch McEwen Architecture is Dysphoric and Wants to Transition by McKenzie Wark Non-Binary Ecologies by Harriet Harriss & Naomi House Loser Images: A Feminist Proposal for Post-Anthropocene Visuality by Joanna Zylinska Planetary Portals in the Upside-Down World by Casper Laing Ebbensgaard, Kerry Holden, Kathryn Yusoff From Anthropocene to Biocene: Novel Bio-integrated Designs as a Means to Respond to the Current Biodiversity and Climate Crisis by Marcos Cruz and Brenda Parker Sitopia: A Landscape for Human and Non-Human Flourishing by Carolyn Steel The Anthropocene Museum: A Troublesome Trail of Improvision Towards the Chthulucene by Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi Ca’n Terra: For Landscapes of the Post-Anthropocene by Antón García-Abril and Débora Mesa Pollinators Pavilion: The Architecture of Analogous Habitats by Ariane Lourie Harrison The Wilding of Mars by Alexandra Daisy Ginsburg Bat Cloud by Joyce Hwang In Between Landscape – Nvidia Headquarters by Walter Hood Final Word by Timothy Morton

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Book SynopsisArchitecture has hit something of a sticking point when it comes to adapting to contemporary life and its various concerns - the finite resources of the planet, the lack of diversity in the profession, the punishing lifestyle afforded by traditional practice models.Changing the Game explores how to create and run a future-proofed small practice through value-driven decision-making and profitability. It considers 'sustainability' in every sense of the word, looking beyond materials and projects to the socio-economic repercussions and responsibilities the modern practice must engage with.This practical and accessible book walks readers through the journey of building a culture that reflects a sustainability/entrepreneurial led-mindset - whether you're starting your own practice or trying to effect change from within an existing practice.It examines efficient practice models and structures, including lean practice models that are sustainable, profitable and innovat

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Book SynopsisEin klassischer Kurs über die Gegenstände der Bauphysik: Wärmeschutz – Schallschutz – Brandschutz, ergänzt durch zahlreiche Beispiele, Bilder und Tabellen. Das Buch bietet einen Überblick zum derzeitigen Stand der Bauphysik, gestützt auf die verbindlichen Grundlagen der europäischen Normung. Dabei werden die relevanten Inhalte der Bauproduktenrichtlinie und nachfolgender Richtlinien der EU ebenso berücksichtigt wie nationale Regelungen. Die im Band angeführten Beispiele sind mehrheitlich zugleich die Grundlage für weiterführende Bauteilbeschreibungen in den Folgebänden der Reihe Baukonstruktionen und ermöglichen somit eine besonders umfassende Betrachtungsweise. Die zweite Auflage wurde insbesondere mit Blick auf Energiekennzahlen überarbeitet. Table of ContentsAllgemeines.- Winterlicher Wärmeschutz.- Tauwasserschutz.- Sommerlicher Wärmeschutz.- Schallschutz.- Brandschutz.- Tabellen

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Book SynopsisArchitecture and urbanism seem to be "weak" disciplines, constantly struggling for a better understanding of their nature and disciplinary borders. The huge amount of metaphors appearing in the discourse of both not only reference to their creative nature but also indicate their weakness and the missing piece strengthening their own understanding: a definition of space for architecture and of city for urbanism. But using metaphors in this field implies a problem - though metaphors achieve to bring opposites together, there remains the question how literal they can actually become in order to relate to these subjects properly. In this volume, several authors from various fields using different approaches discuss this question.

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Book SynopsisThe condition of "fake" and "real" in architecture is rarely publicly discussed nor has it encountered broad journalistic or scholarly attention. This book explores the realm of truth, authenticity and fakery in architecture, providing a timely collection of analytical essays and projects. Photographers, writers and architects share their understanding and speculations about a broad range of spaces and concepts all searching for common ground between real and imagined, function and story. The authors challenge our perception of "authenticity " through the examination of built and simulated environments, architectural fiction, theatric illusions and mannerist trickery. They examine the notion that the principle of Sullivans "form follows function" contains a paradox caused by the ambiguity and complexity of architectural expression. Buildings are perceived through an individuals personal experiences while also being interpreted along broader cultural values. The works shown reveal that under scrutiny, any built environment harbors both, reveals moments of truth, deception and ambiguity all of it partially in the eye of the beholder.The diverse contributions shed light on unexpected identities in architecture inviting criticalthought about our built environment analog and digital. The goal of this publication goes beyond unmasking deception in architecture, it aims at unfolding time-lines and revealing the layerednature of people and places. The images and essays reveal our contemporary condition and let collective and individual narratives unfold, a range of truths in themselves. Expanding from the discussion about truthful materiality and tectonics, this book provides an understanding ofreal, authentic, and fake in urbanism and architecture. Anne-Catrin Schultz studied architecture inStuttgart and Florence. Following post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technoloyin Boston, she worked for several years with Turnbull Griffin Haesloop and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in San Francisco. While developing her own practice, she has taught at the University of California in Berkeley, the California College of the Arts and the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco. In 2013 she joined the Department of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.

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Book SynopsisAnyone concerned with the history, tradition, and culture of our built environment will sooner or later come across the term ‘Public Humanities’. At the interface between an academic discipline and the media-oriented culture industry, Public Humanities is established as a field of inquiry in the US and is increasingly becoming so in Europe too. Whether this field of research remains a product of Western culture will only become apparent in the coming years. However, linking architectural debate with the humanities is an important concern of the papers collected here. These essays on architectural theory provide academic food for thought while encouraging reflection on the discipline of architecture and stimulating urban design in the twenty-first century. The lectures collected here are from a class on Public Humanities at Brown University.

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Book SynopsisAfter its golden age in the last decades of the 20th century, diagramming is still an experimental practice today, but it focuses on the synthesis of complexity and on new disciplinary territories on the edge between humanities, art, architecture, urban planning and landscape. This manual presents experimental diagrams through sensing, analysing and transforming space. The contributions critically delineate diagrammatic behaviours in architectural history, present the design practices of offices such as AZPML and MVRDV, take the medium to its extreme consequences, and outline future trajectories.

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Book SynopsisDissatisfied with the world we live in, we have been longing since time immemorial for two opposing topoi: the peaceful garden -- a carefree paradise -- the New City -- a harmonious community. Utopia has long been sought after by urban architects since the time of Thomas More. Other fictional cities followed, some of which were brought to fruition such as Brasilia and Palmanova. Yet these cities too have turned out to be imperfect, deeply rooted in their own period. For the author, all these places, though only fictitious, have long since been built and he strolls through them in company with the architects, planners, writers and philosophers, just as Thomas More and many others once led us through their cities.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. The church rises to the challenge of providing a spiritual centre for Donau City, the new residential and commercial centre on the opposite bank of the Danube -- not as an act of coronation for the city in the sense of Taut's urban crown, as a temple or cathedral, but as miniature, as a demonstration of the power of the quiet as opposed to the loud, as an 'oasis in the diaspora', to use Karl Rahner's formulation about the parishes of the future. The building gives an impression of starkness: a hard cube, cut off at the corners, clad with sheets of black chromium steel. But it is only stark at first glance. A second glance shows that the hardness is a friendly hardness: because of the reflections that the material admits; because of the grid of the large-format sheets, to which the brightly gleaming drill-holes that cover the walls like fine gossamer respond; because of circular apertures that allow light to shine outwards after dark; because of large, rectangular windows in the receding corners that create a contrast with the closed quality of the building. Inside the starkness gives way altogether: a light space, which one comes into through an art-fully designed entrance. Originally a sparse covering for the space, which thrives mainly because of the light material -- birch wood -, because of the arrangement of the pews, which is as lively as it is peaceful -- segments of circles of different sizes, surrounding the dark syenite altar block in the form of an open circle -- and especially because of the wide range of circular light sources that render the introverted interior transparent, the large windows that create islands of light, the free-form aperture in the ceiling, which sends light gliding down on to the altar. Heinz Tesar's church continues a tradition of forward-looking modern church building, from Rudolf Schwarz's Fronleichnamskirche in Aachen via Egon Eiermann's Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche in Berlin, Franz Fueg's Piuskirche in Meggen on Lake Lucerne to the new Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Munich by Allmann, Sattler and Wappner; and alongside all this there is also the tradition of a genuinely Viennese development of this theme, from Otto Wagner's Kirche am Steinhof to Ottokar Uhl's parish church Katharina von Siena.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. The Neues Haus, the new building for the Munchner Kammerspiele, is not a big building in any sense. The plot of land not far from Maximilian-strasse, whose greatest advantage is its proximity to Richard Riemerschmied's Schauspielhaus, is only about 1000 m2 in area. The most important quality of the design is in fact that it accepts the modesty of its role. The new building subordinates itself to the main Kammerspiele building, and manages without lavish foyers and extensive prestigious areas. The Neues Haus is a servant building, a place where work is done. A hasty passer-by would see the building simply as a white cube, reticent and introverted. Given the serene mastery of the brief and the architectural resources, one is almost inclined to call it a work of Peichl's old age, combining his love of clear volumes with a sovereign grasp of technical requirements. Like the silvery-sparkling ORF studios, the ground radio station in Styria and the liner-like phosphate elimination plant in Berlin before it, the Neues Haus is also crammed full of technology. It contains three stages, and two of them can be used at the same time. The largest playing area is elaborately equipped with gallery and under-stage; it is therefore intended as the main rehearsal area in future. The two large auditoriums are stacked one above the other like shoe-boxes and form a massive hollow core surrounded by all the service functions. The interior is dominated by a plainness that oscillates between poverty and asceticism. The corridors and foyers are narrow, the stairs simple, the interval areas positively sparse. The only opulent feature is the splendid technical equipment. Peichl's handwriting can be seen in the treatment of the details and his ingenious practice of self-quotation. Many of the motifs are reminiscent of earlier projects, and of course the typical portholes, spiral staircases and railings made of steel hawsers crop up again, all Peichl's usual maritime metaphors. In this way he has produced a building whose cool elegance reveals scarcely anything of its inner values.

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Book SynopsisText in English and Spanish. In 2000 the Autostadt, a show park for the Volkswagen group and its subsidiaries from Seat via Audi to Bentley and Lamborghini, opened in Wolfsburg. Alfredo Arribas designed the Seat Pavilion, and has brought off the brilliant trick of making an essentially reticent building into the focal point of the Autostadt. The structure is like a snail shell, forbidding and closed with the exception of a band of windows that seems to rise directly out of the surface of the lake on the Autostadt site. The irregular curve of the ground plan is reminiscent of a leaf or other forms borrowed from nature. Access is via two elegant ramps floating over the water and the site and thrusting straight into the centre of the pavilion: a homage to the old master, Le Corbusier. And then inside we are confronted with a surprise-packed exhibition landscape: a dazzling synthesis of acoustic and visual impressions that cast their spell over visitors as they walk round. Alfredo Arribas was a provocative newcomer on the architectural scene in Barcelona in the late eighties and is now an international success. He was probably predestined for this job like no other architect. He showed a highly personal flair for presenting spaces and goods from the outset, attracting early attention with his designs for discotheques and bars like the enormous Louie Vega (1988) discotheque, or the Torres de Avila (1990). The expressive tower for the Marugame Hirai Museum (1993) is also part of this creative phase, where forms did not necessarily have to be justified by functional logic. But Arribas' architecture changed into its business suit for the very next commissions. For example, even bankers in their pin-stripe suits feel perfectly at home in the cafeteria he designed for Norman Foster's Commerzbank headquarters in Frankfurt. Arribas is working on two large projects at present: a family entertainment centre in Bari and the Cite des Musiques Vivantes in Montlucon.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. Mankind needs to relate to inanimate matter as well. Manking 'animates' stones, mountains, rivers, yes even the world and the cosmos so that it can communicate with them. There is quite clearly a need to initiate individual contact also with architecture, with our surroundings. This is easier if we can also recognise certain characteristics of our own bodies in the constructed bodies of the built environment. We can go well beyond the common phenomenon of corporeality to find countless analogies between buildings and human beings, thus demonstrating a first step towards an anthropomorphy of architecture. These statements become clearer if a column is interpreted as an anthropomorphic element. If certain features in facades are reminiscent of a pair of eyes, then architectural physiognomy helps us to a dialogue: the building is looking at us, in the direct sense of the word. In the world of Christian symbolism the church -- spatially and theologically -- is constantly compared with the body of Christ, and thus becomes an image of a man-god. The church is the 'mysterious body of Christ', and all parts of the building become metaphors of Christ and his congregation.The 'organic' architecture of the 20th century in its three-dimensional and sculptural manifestations constantly addresses the corporeality of biological creatures. In very recent times we are surprised how often the metaphor of man and architecture occurs: in the work of Ricardo Porro, Imre Makovecz, Santiago Calatrava, Reima Pietila and others. Zoomorphic architecture is a variant of anthropomorphic architecture. Elephants, birds, fishes, insects do not just appear in many current works of modern architecture like those of Frank O Gehry and Coop Himmelblau, they are also absurd manifestations of trivial architecture that has also to be considered in its everyday quality. If we are talking about 'expanded' architecture, then cities, the world and even the cosmos have to be included. Mankind is still moved by the transfer from man as microcosm to the universe as macrocosm.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. A yawning gap between two 1960s buildings. Not at all unusual in Cologne. A gap between two buildings, 2,56 m wide and 33 m long. Scarcely wide enough to park a few bicycles. This gap has been used as an office by the rendel & spitz advertising agency since early 1999. The architects b&k+ hooked a few concrete floors into the walls of the adjacent buildings, made sure there were stairs and a bit of infrastructure, suspended a glass facade at the front and back -- finished. To give any curious or interested parties an impression of the building, it was cleared out for a week and used by three selected European designers for a comprehensive development on the theme of 'braving the gap'. The traditional disciplines of product, furniture and lighting design were complemented with contributions addressing the other senses: music and perfume. Johanna Grawunder (Milan) devised a light installation leading from a cold area by the entrance to a warm and comfortable rest area at the end of the space. Konstantin Grcic (Munich) filled the whole volume of the space with a pink ball that fitted into it exactly.Visitors had to show that they were prepared to brave the gap by squeezing between this 'puff ball' and the wall to get to the other side of the room. They were rewarded at the end by reaching the stainless steel fireplace by Timo Salli (Helsinki). The Dusseldorf firm aerome enhanced the installation with a variety of fragrances. Finally, the Hamburg photographer Uli Mattes recorded the whole project and provided his own interpretation of the work.

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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.

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Book SynopsisText in English and German. This monograph describes the construction of reality through the cognitive subject, and, associated with this, potential ways for producing space. The book studies methods for exposing, through indeterminacy, the definition of space to a larger field of possibility within personal interpretation, and thus virtually de-bordering space. Against a historical background of past attempts to de-border space visually, new possible ways of indeterminately defining space through the modulation of light are shown. The analysis of various modulation phenomena is illustrated with references to works of art, and the phenomena are studied with a view to integrating them in the actual production of space. The modulation of light has the potential of creating diffuse and ambivalent characteristics on space-defining surfaces. This fuzziness offers an opportunity for a freer interpretation of spatial definition and thus also for de-bordering space due to the process of perception. New materials and technologies can be used to create spatial worlds that open up genuine, hitherto unknown realms of cognition and experience. Based on multilayered, ambiguous spatial situations, according to the author, new open spaces of perception are possible and thus an expansion of human consciousness as well with respect to the world around us.

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Book SynopsisNOMINATED FOR THE RIBA INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2007. In this book Nili Portugali, presents her particular interpretation of the holistic-phenomenological worldview in theory and in practice, a worldview which stands in recent years at the forefront of the scientific discourse, and is tightly related to Buddhist philosophy. The purpose of architecture is first and foremost to create a human environment for human beings. The real challenge of current architectural practice is to make the best use of the potential inherent in our modern technological age. Yet, modern society has lost the value of man and thus created a feeling of alienation between man and the environment. Contemporary architecture sought to dissociate itself from the world of emotions and connect the design process to the world of ideas, thus creating a rational relation between building and man, devoid of any emotion. Portugali argues that in order to change the feeling of the environment and create places and buildings we really feel at home' and want to live in, what is needed is not a change of style or fashion, but a transformation of the mechanistic worldview underlying current thought and approaches. Based on Christopher Alexander's basic assumption that behind human architecture there are universal and eternal codes common to us all as human beings, and that there is absolute truth underlying beauty and comfort, Portugali demonstrates how this approach, as well as her unique planning process stemming from it (based on the way things actually exist already on site) generates that common spiritual experience people undergo in buildings endowed with soul, no matter where or from what culture they come from. That she demonstrates through a variety of her buildings and projects (with over 600 color illustrations and drawings), in relation to the physical, cultural and social reality of the place they were planned and built on, an Israeli reality which reflects a unique interface between the orient and the west, a cultural interface she personally represents. The book is valuable to architects, artists, scientists, philosophers and anyone who cares about the quality and beauty of the environment we live in.Trade Review"There is no other book quite like this one, it really is singular and worthy of your close attention." -- The RIBA Bookshops."It is not every day that a book is published which describes the world view of an Israeli architect with a fascinating body of work and a structured thesis about how architecture should be practiced here, Such is Nili Portugali's book." -- Books Supplement, 'Ha'aretz', December 13, 2006.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Revisiting a Myth; The Idea: To Universalise "Christendom"; The Man: Fred Nolde; To Write a Just and Durable Peace; Mobilising Christian Forces; The Joint Committee on Religious Liberty; Preparing for San Francisco; The Charter of the United Nations Organisation; An Ecumenical Instrument; Finding a Text; Declaring Human Rights; Conclusion: Faith and Human Rights Need Each Other.

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Book SynopsisText in German. What runs through our minds when somebody says the names of the following cities: Rome, Venice, Warsaw, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Lisbon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Vienna, Paris, Tartu, Tallinn, New York, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Barcelona, Geneva, Brussels, London? Each name's aura of associations is so powerful that no-one will be able to give an answer that applies for everybody. When asked this question, almost everyone's answer will be triggered by their own biography, by any personal experience of the city in question they might have. One person might remember a dishonest taxi driver who drove them from the airport into the city. Another might remember a successful or unsuccessful business deal, while yet another might remember a terrible or excellent hotel, a project that he or she completed in that city or people met there. Some people will have met the love of their lives there -- or quarrelled with them for the final time. Some will have spent their honeymoons there, while other will have been divorced there. Some of those asked will certainly have had a bad accident in one city or the other, or been robbed there. They might say any of the following things: "It's a beautiful city!", "It's one of the ugliest and most dangerous cities I've ever been to!", "You see nothing but rubbish and chaos in that city!", "You can forget the passage of time in that city -- it's so wonderfully old-fashioned that it makes me cry!", "This city is so lively and colourful and loud that it was where I finally found out what life can be like!", "That city is so sensible, neat and well-controlled that it made me even more introverted and depressed than I am usually!", "You should only judge a city by its dogs!", "A good city for shopping!" Although the houses, alleys, streets and city squares really do exist, every city is created mostly from stories, beliefs, prejudices, clichés, scraps of knowledge, observations, personal experiences, first-hand or second-hand impressions, dreams, hopes and fears. The architect Hans Dieter Schaal, who has designed scenery for almost every major theatre and opera house in the world, often spent many days in the same city. He began to research the cities, to get the feel of them and to travel them on foot like a wanderer. Alongside these subjective impressions, the author presents plenty of facts, making this book an accurate picture of an age dominated by cities.

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. Hollywood is not only the secret world capital of dreams and the fictions of the subconscious, but also the capital of architecture. Hollywood is the Rome and the Versailles of the 20th and 21st centuries. A new awareness of space spanning the entire world was created here. These backgrounds, stage sets and filmic spaces are indelibly fixed in every spectator's mind. It may be in the cinema that the first time you saw the desert, the Rocky Mountain cliffs, Greenland's glacier mountains and California's sandy beaches. You saw here the Western saloons and Al Capone's dark rooms, the poor Mexicans' huts and the Kennedys' penthouse apartments; you saw here also the jazz clubs of New Orleans and the dream houses in Los Angeles. There was and is scarcely a corner of the earth that the Hollywood film has not dreamed its way into. Every cinema-goer in the world sees the same plot, the same images, the same faces, the same rooms, buildings, towns and streets. Film's power to bring people together can scarcely be overestimated. Film architecture is world architecture. All other architecture -- your own town, your own street, your own house, your own flat -- remains small and parochial in the face of this, restricted to affecting a very tiny sphere. The architecture of the future will develop in the field of tension between these two aspects -- small and parochial, large and spanning the entire world. The real architecture of houses and cities could be enriched in its language by including film architecture, and real architecture could be jolted out of its banality by including the studio world. Films and their images can teach us that the architecture of houses, streets and towns is not just a problem of order, function and economic viability, but that psychology, atmosphere and images are being built here as well.Trade ReviewFilm and architecture are both visual forms, so its great that someone has now thought to tie them together, on the premise that each will aid a better understanding of the other. Schaals clever and linear approach allows the reader to appreciate his observations so that, by the books end, I too had become a willing convert. Screentrade Nov/Dec 2009

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Book SynopsisText in English & German. Chaos and anarchy represent the opposite pole to an ordered life. Nothing works any more, everything is devastated, everything is falling apart. City walls, buildings that once afforded protection, have fallen victim to the excesses of armed conflict. Infernal threats, ambushes, fiery rain and other catastrophes were described even in the Bible. Pillaging and plunder were part of everyday life in the Middle Ages. Cruel deeds familiar from the Bible, or those described by other people or experienced personally, inspired painters in the transitional period from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and were picked out as a central theme in their pictures. In the 18th century it became fashionable to build artificial ruins in parks and landscape gardens. Ruins became an image of human inadequacy in the attempt to come to terms with nature. 18th century landscape painters used ruin motifs in order to suggest the mysterious magic of pain, the sadness of beauty, to viewers. In the first half of the last century the world had to endure two wars that costs millions of people their lives and reduced many cities to rubble. Countless ruins remained. Few of them have survived. Overgrown with grass, ivy and Virginia creeper they now tower up out of the landscape like many others from various epochs bearing witness to those who see them of the vanity of human endeavour, of transience, of death; filling them with horror, but at the same time exuding a feeling of gloom and sadness, of melancholy. In this book, the author delivers a detailed assessment of ruins as a phenomenon in architecture, landscape design, fine art, film and the media. The result is an extraordinarily intense contribution to the theme of transience.Table of ContentsHans Dieter Schaal is a trained architect living in Attenweiler near Ulm and in Berlin. He works not only in his original profession, but also as a garden architect, as an exhibition and stage designer and as a writer. His exhibition designs and stage sets are among the best of their kind in our days.

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Book SynopsisOriginally developed in linguistics, the structuralist approach has been introduced as a scientific method in anthropology and other human sciences since the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s the double category of primary and secondary structure (langue and parole), essential to structuralism, in which the primary structure's system of rules determines how the secondary elements are placed in relation to one another, also advanced to a leading Ideology in the field of architecture and urban planning. From its development in the Netherlands and within the Team 10 circle of architects, structuralism in architecture quickly spread world-wide. Since the 1990s we have been witnessing a revival of structuralist tendencies in architecture. Whereas the structuralism of the 1970s encountered limits in complexity that were insurmountable at the time, today there is much to suggest that the return to structural thinking is causally connected to information technology, which has opened up new possibilities for dealing with complexity. In the field of digital architecture there is talk of neo-Structuralism. The question arises as to whether primary and secondary structures of the 1960s should be understood today as being in a state of complex interactions with one another that could be described through algorithms. The current interest in design methods based on rules makes the structuralist approach one of the most productive and comprehensive methods for the organisation, design, and production of the built environment. At the same time, it provides the systemic and meta-theoretical background for all disciplines involved in the production of space. This book is a collection of 47 articles by renowned authors including, among others, Roland Barthes, Koos Bosma, Jörg Gleiter, Herman Hertzberger, Arnulf Lüchinger, Winy Maas, Sylvain Malfroy, Hasim Sarkis, Fabian Scheurer, and Georges Teyssot. Through well-founded theoretical contributions, the book provides the first comprehensive representation of historical and contemporary digital structural thinking in architecture and urban planning.

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Book SynopsisThis is an appreciation of architecture of Islam in India. Indo-Islamic architecture is characterised by the prolific use of sandstone -- red stone. It is the culmination of the long tradition of Islamic art that came into bloom right from the faith''s first expansion beyond the Arabian Peninsula in the late seventh century. All the great Mughal emperors were prolific commissioners of monuments and their architecture thus remained the finest representation of this syncretion. Mughal architecture has been rich in ornament, almost at times overwhelming the architecture itself. With lively pictures, giving you a feeling of actually experiencing them, the book is divided into three major sections -- Islamic ornament, Common forms in Islamic ornament, and Mughal architecture. Indeed a tribute to the Islamic architecture in India. A musthave book for all who love Mughal architecture. The pictures present a feast of craftsmanship, as an enduring romance with shape and stone, in its unending variations. For a visitor to these buildings, the photographs allow a return, a recollection of architecture as a phenomenon, giving a sensual experience of the visit, a feel for the infinite craft. Mustansir Dalvi''s text complements Pitkar''s photographs by guiding the reader to an understanding of the variety and symbolism of ornamental forms that grace Islamic architecture, especially in the Indian context. Ornament in its many manifestations transforms the architecture, dematerializing immense monuments into elegant jewel-boxes. Dalvi shows how artisan and patron came together in India in a unique integration of two divergent world views and cultures to create a lasting syncretism of Islamic and Hindu traditions that reached its zenith in the architecture of the Mughal period.

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Book SynopsisThis book raises a discussion in regard to architecture''s role as a catalyst for urban development. Through studies of eight architectural projects in large cities on four different continents, the focus is placed on how architecture can promote the enriching experiences of the tolerant, the democratic, the learning and the experience rich city. In other words: The city worth living in, worth supporting and worth investing in. The projects operate with a mix of design programs, organised so that they invite diverse user groups to a variety of activities. Visual and other sensuous architectural effects frame the interaction between the projects and the human activities within their urban context -- an interaction that indicates a direction for a new narrative about the potential of place. The book is written for everybody with an interest in architecture and urban life in large cities and is a must-read for students of architecture, urban design, town planning, urban geography, urban sociology and aesthetic studies.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisAn examination of the influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri''s historical construction of contemporary architecture.The influential Italian architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri (1935-1994) invoked the productive possibilities of crisis, writing that history is a project of crisis (progetto di crisi). In this entry in the Writing Architecture series, Marco Biraghi explores Tafuri''s multifaceted and often knotty oeuvre, using the historian''s concept of a project of crisis as a lens through which to examine his historical construction of contemporary architecture.Mindful of Tafuri''s statement that there is no such thing as criticism, only history, Biraghi carefully maps the influences on Tafuri''s writing—Walter Benjamin, Karl Krauss, Massimo Cacciari, and the architect Ludovico Quaroni, among others—in order to create a portrait of one of the most complex minds in twentieth-century architecture and architectural history. Tra

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Book SynopsisHow outlaw spatial products—resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, and ports—act as cunning pawns in global politics.In Enduring Innocence, Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw spatial products—resorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictions—in difficult political situations around the world. These spaces—familiar commercial formulas of retail, business, and trade—aspire to be worlds unto themselves, self-reflexive and innocent of politics. But as Easterling shows, in reality these enclaves can become political pawns and objects of contention. Jurisdictionally ambiguous, they are imbued with myths, desires, and symbolic capital. Their hilarious and dangerous masquerades often mix quite easily with the cunning of political platforms. Easterling argues that the study of such real estate cocktails provides vivid evidence of the market''s weakness, resilience, or violence.Enduring Innocence collects six stories of spatial products and their political predicaments: cruise ship tourism in North Korea; high-tech agricultural formations in Spain (which have reignited labor wars and piracy in the Mediterranean); hyperbolic forms of sovereignty in commercial and spiritual organizations shared by gurus and golf celebrities; automated global ports; microwave urbanism in South Asian IT enclaves; and a global industry of building demolition that suggests urban warfare. These regimes of nonnational sovereignty, writes Easterling, move around the world like weather fronts; she focuses not on their blending—their global connectivity—but on their segregation and the cultural collisions that ensue.Enduring Innocence resists the dream of one globally legible world found in many architectural discourses on globalization. Instead, Easterling''s consideration of these segregated worlds provides new tools for practitioners sensitive to the political composition of urban landscapes.

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Book SynopsisBased on her extensive experience in the urban communities of Los Angeles, historian and architect Dolores Hayden proposes new perspectives on gender, race, and ethnicity to broaden the practice of public history and public art, enlarge urban preservation, and reorient the writing of urban history to spatial struggles.In the first part of The Power of Place, Hayden outlines the elements of a social history of urban space to connect people''s lives and livelihoods to the urban landscape as it changes over time. She then explores how communities and professionals can tap the power of historic urban landscapes to nurture public memory.The second part documents a decade of research and practice by The Power of Place, a nonprofit organization Hayden founded in downtown Los Angeles. Through public meetings, walking tours, artists''s books, and permanent public sculpture, as well as architectural preservation, teams of historians, designers, planners, and artists worked together to understand, preserve, and commemorate urban landscape history as African American, Latina, and Asian American families have experienced it.One project celebrates the urban homestead of Biddy Mason, an African American ex-slave and midwife active betwen 1856 and 1891. Another reinterprets the Embassy Theater where Rose Pesotta, Luisa Moreno, and Josefina Fierro de Bright organized Latina dressmakers and cannery workers in the 1930s and 1940s. A third chapter tells the story of a historic district where Japanese American family businesses flourished from the 1890s to the 1940s. Each project deals with bitter memories—slavery, repatriation, internment—but shows how citizens survived and persevered to build an urban life for themselves, their families, and their communities.Drawing on many similar efforts around the United States, from New York to Charleston, Seattle to Cincinnati, Hayden finds a broad new movement across urban preservation, public history, and public art to accept American diversity at the heart of the vernacular urban landscape. She provides dozens of models for creative urban history projects in cities and towns across the country.

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Book SynopsisBridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity.In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-à-vis modernity.Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter

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Book SynopsisAddresses philosophical questions concerning the relation between writing and architecture. This book draws together two cultural fantasies from different periods, and argues that architecture is a system of representation, with signifying possibilities that go beyond the symbolic.

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