Search results for ""park books""
Park Books Best of Austria – Architecture 2010–11
'Best of Austria' is edited biennially by Architekturzentrum Wien Az W to present award-winning buildings by Austrian architects and projects by foreign architects realised in Austria. Covered are all architecture prizes that have been awarded by public and private institutions or corporations in Austria. Thus each edition provides an up-to-date survey of contemporary architecture and building culture in Austria. The new 2010/11 edition presents around 160 projects, each with around 3 images and a floor plan, section or elevation as well as short introductory texts. Included are projects by such renowned Austrian firms as Baumschlager Eberle, COOP HIMMELB(L)AU, Delugan Meissl Associated Architects, Hermann & Valentiny and Associates. Also featrured are important international offices such as David Chipperfield Architects, London, or UNStudio, Amsterdam. The documented buildings are arranged in 15 sections: Living (multi-unit residential architecture), Tourism, Leisure, Culture, Single-family House, Industry, Trade, Commerce, Public Space, Infrastructure, Education, Public Buildings, Office, Administration and Actors (persons, institutions, towns or boroughs etc. that have been awarded prizes). Previous editions of 'Best of Austria' covered the periods 2006/07 (published 2008), 2008/09 (2010) and were published by Austrian publishers. The new 2010/11 edition is the first to be published by Park Books for Az W. Text in English & German.
£36.00
Park Books Imaginary Apparatus – New York City and its Mediated Representation
During John V. Lindsay's Mayoral tenure in New York 1966-73, the city created innovative policy intended to draw on-location media production to New York's streets. Simultaneously, the New York City Planning Commission and associated offices produced a wealth of documents that reflect conceptual and aesthetic influences of various visual media. American architect McLain Clutter undertook to analyse to what remarkable extent the effects of these two areas of political ambition were interrelated. In his new book Imaginary Apparatus, Clutter describes the relationship between New York City and its mediated representation at the conjuncture of these circumstances, tracing the interrelation of their attendant cultural, economic and aesthetic valences. The second part of the book explores the legacy of Lindsay's policies by analysing their effects on New York City's built environment. Clutter illustrates his argument with a large selection of photographs and film-stills, many of them previously unpublished, and with original documents from various archives. This ground-breaking new book is rounded out with a DVD featuring What is the City but the People?, the film version of the study Plan for New York City of 1969, a unique document that has never before been publicly available.
£28.80
Park Books House of Switzerland – A Dictionary of Elements
The House of Switzerland is a relocatable building serving as Switzerland's official visitor centre at major international events. Its operational premiere were the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sotchi. Further stations the same year were the European Athletics Championships in Zurich, the Giro del Gusto in Milano, and the FIFA World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. Commissioned by Switzerland's Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the design is by Spillmann Echsle Architects with Ortreport scenographers, both based in Zurich. The unique functional timber structure consists of four houses of different size that can be used in combination or individually. It offers a variety of rooms, such as restaurant, show rooms, covered outdoor stage, lounge, and a broadcasting studio. The 193 modular elements, tailored to fit in standard truck containers, can be transferred and re-assembled at a new location within days. This new book features a dictionary of all elements in the pavilion's building set by keyword, illustrated with images and plans and offering much technical detail. It presents the architectural and scenography concept and design, and also documents transport and assembly, again richly illustrated with photographs and plans and diagrams.
£31.50
Park Books Typology 2: Paris, Delhi, São Paulo, Athens. Review No. III
Typology 2 follows up on the preceding and successful Typology, published in 2012. Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein together with their teaching staff and students at ETH Zurich expanded their research on building typology to four more metropolises, again in Europe, Latin America, and Asia: Paris, Delhi, Sao Paulo, and Athens. 180 buildings were analysed over the past two years to find inspiration and models that can be adapted for the local context of any given city. Each example is documented with an image, site and floor plans, axonometric projection, key data, and a brief description. An introduction and four essays on the interaction between various protagonists and in particular the effect of governing local building regulation again show the potential for contemporary urban architecture. The result is again a rich sourcebook of great practical value for students, lecturers and practitioners of architecture. Essays by the authors, and Anupam Bansal and Philippe Simon.
£36.00
Park Books Places for Strangers
mae Architects is an ambitious design led practice delivering high quality architecture, landscape and urban design. Established in 2001 and based in London, they have designed award-winning projects, mainly in the UK but also for in Copenhagen and Oslo, receiving extensive publicity and recognition. Places for Strangers,illustrates a set of negotiated principles and creative attitudes that encompass mae Architects project portfolio, establishing their design work as exciting and innovative. This volume is a contemporary examination of the creative process; it is part manifesto, part manual and comprises texts written for newspapers and architectural journals facilitate discussion by illustrating the socio-political, ethical and formal concerns that need to be considered in architectural production today. Several of the firms's projects are used to illustrate 'key' concepts and ideas that run as a continuous thread throughout.
£18.00
Park Books Wiener Hitze: Architecture and Storytelling in Times of Heat
For centuries, dealing with cold has been the dominant climatic factor for architectural design in Central Europe. The climate change apparent now assigns this role to heat. Architecture and urban design strives for efficient, resource-saving technical solutions to meet the changing climatic conditions and the energy standards they demand without really questioning customary notions of comfort, forms of living, and urban coexistence. Yet architects must increasingly search for experimental approaches and new ways in which we can live together well in a rapidly warming climate, in particular in cities and metropolitan regions. Despite a supposed powerlessness in the face of the impending climate catastrophe, the contributions collected in this volume offer a diverse range of narratives that tell of experiences, observations, and the needs of people that inhabit hotter worlds, both real and imagined. What role as climate producers can architecture and the city play in shaping our habitat if these important issues are understood not only in purely technological but also in cultural and social terms? Text in English and German.
£25.20
Park Books Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner: Costruire in Italia – Esperienze 1996–2023
Architekten von Gerkan, Marg und Partner (gmp), with more than 500 employees at seven locations in Germany, China, and Vietnam, is a world-leading architectural firm, as well as being one of Germany’s largest. In 1996 gmp realised its first project in Italy: the exhibition Renaissance of Railway Stations that was part of the 6th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. In 1997 gmp’s winning design for the new exhibition halls in Rimini marked the beginning of its list of another 59 projects in the country, comprising diverse structures such as train stations, airports, stadiums, hospitals, or research buildings. Many of these were for sites of historical significance that required the utmost sensitivity in execution; 13 of them have been realised to date. This book tells the story of gmp’s work in Italy in seven chapters, placing all projects in the historical context of their respective location. In an interview, Volkwin Marg, one of gmp’s two founding partners, talks about his experiences, his enthusiasm for Italy’s building culture, gmp’s great successes, unexpected major obstacles, tough negotiations, and deep disappointments. Numerous colour photographs, plans, and historical reference images supplement the texts. Text in Italian.
£31.50
Park Books Roger Boltshauser - Response
Zurich-based Boltshauser Architekten, which also runs a branch office in Munich, is one of most successful and idiosyncratic Swiss design firms. Precise examination of materials and their constructive potential is combined in their buildings with a profound understanding of ecological issues. Many of their realised designs of varied scale and typology have won international awards. Founder Roger Boltshauser has set himself the goal of finding new forms and solutions for the architectural challenges of our time. The elegant book Roger Boltshauser - Response reviews 12 of Boltshauser Architekten’s key and recent buildings in a three-step presentation of plan, photograph, and sketch. Italian Swiss architecture photographer Luca Ferrario’s atmospheric images, Roger Boltshauser’s own artistic hand drawings, and the sections, axonometries, and floor plans produce a multilayered picture of the practice’s oeuvre. Text in English, German, and French.
£49.50
Park Books Corner kick: Mapei Football Center Sassuolo
Milan-based architecture firm Onsitestudio have designed a new training campus for Italian Serie A soccer club U.S. Sassuolo Calcio. Located in the town of Sassuolo, in the Emilia-Romagna region, and inaugurated in 2019, it is a functional-modernist yet highly atmospheric structure that provides the professionals of U.S. Sassuolo Calcio with state-of-the-art training facilities and offices. As part of a pioneering social engagement of the club, its playing fields and other amenities are also available to local amateur teams and for recreational sports. This book features the Mapei Football centre through newly taken colour and black-and-white photographs by Stefano Graziani and Filippo Romano, as well as floorplans, sections, and construction detail drawings. Complementary essays are contributed by Onsitestudio’s founding partners Giancarlo Floridi and Angelo Lunati, British historian and football expert John Foot; and Italian architect and intellectual Pier Paolo Tamburelli.
£22.50
Park Books The Synagogue Project: On the Reconstruction of Synagogues in Germany
Germany is currently experiencing an intense debate about the reconstruction of synagogues that were destroyed under Nazi rule in the 1930s, and the related search for an appropriate architectural expression of Jewish life and culture in the country’s major cities today. This book, which results from a collaboration between the Technical Universities of Darmstadt and Dresden, Hamburg’s HafenCity University, and the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, vividly contributes to this discussion. The Synagogue Project features designs for new synagogues replacing the lost buildings on Berlin’s Fraenkelufer and on Joseph-Carlebach-Platz and Poolstrasse in Hamburg by students at the participating universities. They illustrate the search for a structural expression that can provide space for Jewish life and worship in the future. In conversation, members of Jewish communities and Franz-Josef Höing, representing the City of Hamburg’s department of urban development and housing, explain their views on the past and future of synagogues in Hamburg and Berlin. Mirjam Wenzel, director of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, Salomon Korn, former vice-president of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, Rabbi Edward van Voolen, and Swiss architect Roger Diener also contribute to the discussion on the history and significance of spaces for Jewish life, culture, and religion in German cities. Text in English and German.
£31.50
Park Books The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown
Despite its consistent presence in architectural practice throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, collage has never been considered a standard form of architectural representation like drafting, model making, or sketching. The work of Marshall Brown, an architect and artist, demonstrates the power of collage as an architectural medium. In Brown's view, collage changes the terms of architectural authorship and challenges outdated definitions of originality. Published in conjunction with the exhibition The Architecture of Collage: Marshall Brown at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, the book features some forty collages by Marshall Brown. These works come from four of his collage series, including Chimera, Je est un autre, as well as the previously unpublished Prisons of Invention and Piranesian Maps of Berlin. Additionally, there are photographs of Ziggurat, an outdoor sculpture with a design based on a collage from Chimera. The full-color plates are supplemented with essays by critic and curator Aaron Betsky, scholar of art history and archaeology Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s curator James Glisson, and Marshall Brown that outline the conceptual foundations of Brown's intriguing exploration of an intersection of architecture and art.
£40.50
Park Books Out of the Box: 13 Spatial Configurations
A truly unique perspective on their own work: Swiss-American architectural studio agps, with offices in Zurich and Los Angeles, has delved deep into their archive and woven a visual thread of some 160 illustrations that guides readers through this new book. Literally Out of the Box, from archival box and model crates, models, model photos, small hand-drawn studies, visualisations, but also photographs of realised buildings have re-emerged, covering agps’ entire work of decades of practice. The images are organised according to 13 keywords: spatial configurations that characterise agps' core design concepts and summarise central elements of their ideas. At the same time, they are terms that define the formal presence of their designs. The result is a multifaceted and inspiring insight into the work of an international firm that proves just how important spatial constellations are for the formulation of good architecture. Essays by Sabine von Fischer as well as by Marc Angélil and Cary Siress, along with an index of all featured buildings and projects, round off this unique volume. Text in English and German.
£37.80
Park Books The Wood That Makes Our Cities
Wood is an ideal building material for sustainable architecture. It grows back and absorbs large quantities of CO2. But where does it actually come from in each case, and how will we make forestry and wood processing fit for the future? In what ways are conventional notions of professions and qualifications in architecture, engineering, and construction tested by using wood as building material? French journalist Michèle Leloup together with architect François Leclercq — a pioneer of timber construction in France — have for a long time explored the ecological, economic, industrial, and technical challenges of using timber for major structures and urban architecture. This book summarises their findings using examples from the French forestry and construction industry. It also takes a look at Austria and the innovative work by Hermann Kaufmann, an internationally revered leader in the further development of traditional timber architecture. In addition, the book features five projects by Leclercq Associés. Richly and attractively illustrated with new images by French architecture photographer Cyrille Weiner, The Wood That Makes Our Cities offers a concise survey of topical questions and findings in contemporary timber construction.
£40.50
Park Books Survey
When architects visit a building, and want to record or identify what they see, they take out a bundle of folded sheets in search of a blank piece of paper. These sheets may be ground plans, diagrams, sketches and ordnance maps. In one way or another, all are survey drawings, operating as both documentation and analysis, enabling an architect to examine certain conditions of the built environment, whether geometric, relational, material or technical. This book explores the history of the survey and its multiple forms in order to understand how the methods of recording what already exists can also be used to imagine what might be. Lavishly illustrated, with works from the collection of Drawing Matter and beyond, it addresses the multiple forms of the survey through focused studies – on John Soane (1753–1837), Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863), and Detmar Blow (1867–1939); French architects Louis-Hippolyte Lebas (1782–1867), Henri Labrouste (1801–1875), and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879); and Swiss-based Peter Märkli (born 1953) – and an extensive section of plates with commentaries by contemporary architects. In doing so, it maintains that while all surveys begin with the site, the outcomes are as idiosyncratic as their authors – and their methods have much to offer as tools in design practice. The book is the first in the Architecture Iconographies series, published in collaboration with Drawing Matter, an organisation based in Wincanton, Somerset, that explores the role of drawing in architectural thought and practice. They consider the image-making of architecture through its typologies and unique approaches to drawing. Exploring their resonance in the history of the profession, as well as their relationship to the architects themselves, the series aims to open up further possibilities for their use in both practice and teaching.
£37.80
Park Books Bernina transversal. Guido Baselgia – Bearth und Deplazes: Architecture and Photography – Intervention and Reaction
The unique convergence of architecture and landscape found on the Bernina Pass inspired Swiss photographer Guido Baselgia to create a visual epic. The result is a one-of-a-kind presentation of the new road maintenance base near Bernina Pass, designed by renowned Swiss firm Bearth & Deplazes Architekten, in a seemingly arctic winter landscape. Baselgia explored the territory along the road and railway line with his analogue camera. His images also draw a connection between the existing infrastructures for traffic and energy production - built over the course of the landscape’s industrialisation and continued development since the late 19th century - to the architecture of the new maintenance base. A concavely curved shield wall topped by a round tower is all that is visible of this vast, purely functional, and largely underground space. The shield wall cuts a segment from the existing topography and thereby encloses a courtyard along with an area of the surrounding landscape. The tower refuses direct encoding - until entering the camera obscura at its very top, which connects photography, architecture, and landscape to reveal that this place is about insights and not outlooks. The book features a selection of Guido Baselgia’s striking photographs and reproductions of camera obscura images from the tower in outstanding duotone reproduction and documents Bearth & Deplazes’ architecture through concise texts, images, and selected plans. Text in English, German and Italian.
£58.50
Park Books Duplex Architects: Housing
Duplex Architects were founded in 2007 in Zurich and now also run offices in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, and, most recently, in Paris. They have gained an excellent reputation internationally for their designs of various scales and across a vast range of typologies. This first monograph on Duplex Architects’ work in Germany and Switzerland offers a close look at their approach to housing design. Five projects in Switzerland are documented extensively through a wealth of images, plans, and visualisations, exemplifying the firm’s position on urban planning, typology research, and materiality and demonstrating their utterly independent way of working. Urban scale, search for new forms of communal living, the importance of community, and a collaborative design process are at the core of Duplex Architects’ explorations into residential architecture. Nele Dechmann’s text and Ludovic Balland’s photo essay serve to illuminate Duplex Architects’ work each in their own way. Further texts are contributed by the firm’s founding partners Anne Kaestle and Dan Schürch, as well as by other expert authors, who cast their own personal glance at the five projects featured in this book.
£45.00
Park Books Verify in Field: Projects and Coversations Höweler + Yoon Architecture
Höweler + Yoon Architecture, founded in 2001 and based in Boston, gained early praise for ephemeral and interactive public projects and is recognised today for striking works that combine conceptual speculation and technological sophistication. The firm’s impressive body of work has expanded the scope of design beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and has won them numerous national and international awards. Verify in Field is Höweler + Yoon Architecture’s second book. Its title derives from a notational convention on architectural drawings to indicate that the information is subject to unknown conditions in the field. The book highlights verification as an intergral part of the design process and demonstrates it as a productive tool to test ideas and act on the world. For both disciplinary and contractual reasons, the instruments of design - drawings, models, and prototypes - operate on the world at a distance. Techniques of prototyping, measurement, feedback, negotiation, and intervention inform the diverse output of the studio. Verify in Field features recent designs by Höweler + Yoon architecture, including such projects as the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia; a floating outdoor classroom in Philadelphia; the MIT Museum; and a pedestrian bridge in Shanghai’s Expo Park. The book also examines the discipline’s pressing questions, as they relate to verification, uncertainty, and design agency, in a series of essays by Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon on topics that include means and methods, the public realm, energy and environments, the construction detail, and social media. These themes are echoed in conversations with collaborators, historians, and theorists: Adam Greenfield, Nader Tehrani, Kate Orff, Daniel Barber, and Ana Miljacki.
£40.50
Park Books Europan 15 Austria – Productive Cities 2: Resources, Mobility, Equity
EUROPAN is an initiative that puts on competitions for young architects. Founded in 1989 and supported by 13 countries in the EU, it runs a competition every two years for innovative and experimental models in urban development. The 2017 and 2019 EUROPAN competitions focused on the topic Productive Cities. The 2019 edition involved more than 900 planning teams from all over Europe, who prepared proposals for 47 towns. This book features the 12 winning submissions to the 2019 Productive Cities 2 competition for the Austrian cities Graz, Innsbruck, Villach, Weiz, and Vienna. They are presented in great detail through photos, drawings and visualisations, along with commenting texts. The projects focus on architectural and urban-planning interventions and processes. They offer innovative concepts for the use of public space as well as holistic solutions for sustainable construction and models for cross-functional use of space. The book is a rich source for trend-setting ideas about our future cities and the development of a new urban lifestyle.
£19.80
Park Books Openings: h2o Architects
This book brings together 29 projects from the past ten years, completed and ongoing, designed by Paris-based h2o Architects. The presentation is arranged by thematic categories that stem from the firm's singular approach. The tasks vary greatly in type, scale and individual context: From a housing development in Paris to a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, from a temporary school pavilion and a timber construction for a vineyard to the rehabilitation of Paris's Museum of Modern Art in the eastern wing of Palais de Tokyo and other large public spaces. h2o Architectes' proposals are united by an approach that is always both radical and sensitive. Interviews conducted by architect and writer Fanny Léglise and essays by architect and anthropologist Miguel Mazeri and architect Bernard Tschumi shed light on various aspects of the firm's practice, vision and philosophy. The book also features poems by French writer and poet Frédéric Forte, composed in situ at several of h2o Architectes' building sites. Photographs, renderings, and plans round out this first comprehensive monograph on one of France's leading up-and-coming architecture firms. Text in English and French.
£31.50
Park Books Sergei Tchoban - Lines and Volumes: Encounters with the Architect, Artist, Collector and Museum Founder
The career of architect Sergei Tchoban, born 1962 and educated in St. Petersburg, follows multiple yet closely linked trajectories in his native Russia and in Germany. He is a founding partner with the Moscow-based firm SPEECH as well as with Tchoban Voss Architekten, with offices in Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden. His designs reflect a deep interest in local and historical contexts of a project rather than an aim to create singular iconic structures. His design process is deeply rooted in sketching and drawing by hand. In 2009 he established the Tchoban Foundation and in 2013 opened the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin as a home to his vast collection comprising ancient and modern masterpieces from around the world. In four conversations with Kristin Feireiss, Tchoban offers very personal insights into his design process, his understanding of architecture, and his engagement as a collector and museum founder. An essay by the British writer and broadcaster Deyan Sudjic as well as some 130 illustrations round out this beautiful volume.
£22.50
Park Books 21BB – Model Region Berlin-Brandenburg
How should a diverse metropolitan region such as the German capital Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg reinvent itself, while preserving its character, nurturing its attributes, and simultaneously preparing for climate change? 21BB-Model Region Berlin-Brandenburg offers an analysis of these important strategic questions, along with constructive solutions. As a comprehensive survey of the entire Berlin-Brandenburg region, this book presents essays; striking visualisations, maps and graphics; and projects in a large-format atlas. Its findings are based on extensive research at University of Texas at Austin’s School of Architecture (UTSOA) into complex subjects such as the circular economy, social equity, mobility, energy and water management, environment, population growth and density, inclusion, and urban culture. Wide-ranging essays are supplemented with proposals developed by UTSOA’s students. The book also features a radical urban and regional design submitted to an international competition for Berlin-Brandenburg’s long-term development by Berlin-based firm Hoidn Wang Partner. Given the urgent need for a public debate about the future of Germany’s capital region, this volume offers a solid factual basis and offers new approaches, projects, and ideas.
£58.50
Park Books Manor Lessons: Commons Revisited. Teaching and Research in Architecture
Our contemporary condition, governed by the abstract apparatus of the capitalist market, demands a critical reading of the distribution, ownership, and use of common resources such as land. This is especially true in Britain with its long history of privatisation stemming from land enclosure. The latest research campaign of Laboratory Basel (laba), a satellite studio of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, investigated the English manor house and how it can serve as a testing ground to reassess Britain’s complex and ongoing relationship with the countryside. The south-west of England, the most rural region of one of the more densely populated countries in Europe, reflects all the absurdities of a globalised country under pressure to develop economically, physically and environmentally. Highly protected landscapes, both natural and composed, form the backdrop to historic seats of political power and wealth, whilst sites of intense modern productivity are neatly concealed behind natural veils. Manor Lessons: Commons Revisited, the concluding volume of laba’s Teaching and Research in Architecture series, explores the lessons that can be learned from the compound history of the Manorial System, whose forgotten feudalistic origins were once rooted in the idea of the land, not as private property but as common ground.
£40.50
Park Books Fez Lessons: Industrious Habitat. Teaching and Research in Architecture
The infamous Scramble for Africa in the late 19th and 20th centuries disrupted the entire African continent with enduring repercussions. Morocco - located at a crossroads between Sub-Saharan Africa, the Arab-Muslim world in the Maghreb, and Mediterranean Europe - has struggled to withstand the resulting cultural and sociopolitical clashes ever since. Fez Lessons: Industrious Habitat looks at Fez, Morocco's famous former capital and today its second-largest city. Based on a recent research program conducted by EPFL's Laboratory Basel (laba), it investigates how these clashes have marked the city's socioeconomic structure and urban fabric, and whether or not it offers alternative and relevant means of human association and community. Given the growing stream of large-scale international investment, the constant enticement of tourism, and a worldwide revival of nationalism, Laba's student's and researchers were looking for tiny cues, nagging doubts, and signs of the fusion between form and life, raising questions about identity, authenticity, tradition, the globalisation of culture, and the use of local resources. Their findings are visualised in the book in striking images, graphics and maps. Students' proposals for architectural interventions addressing these issues are presented through images and plans.
£40.50
Park Books Experimental Zone: An Interdisciplinary Investigation on the Spaces and Practices of Collaborative Research
Experimental Zone documents a remarkable experiment in spatial research at the interdisciplinary laboratory Image Knowledge Gestaltung at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Every two months, for four years, researchers reconfigured a 350-square meter workspace for forty scientists. The design-based collaborative experiment's focus was on the interrelation of space and knowledge production: What spatial qualities are required by interdisciplinary teams for their research work? With some 300 striking and straightforward graphics, Experimental Zone presents the findings of the experiment. It highlights the spatial conditions under which individual and collaborative research unfold, overlap, or merge and reveals the characteristics of an architecture that fosters interdisciplinary. The experiment's innovative interdisciplinary approach is also reflected in the book's design, with each of the five chapters and the comprehensive visual material reflecting publishing traditions in design, architecture, and the humanities.
£31.50
Park Books Thinking: Visions for Architectural Design. Towards 2050
Product of a research cooperation between three Swiss universities - the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne's School of Architecture, the School of Architecture and Technology in Fribourg, and the University of Fribourg - the Smart Living Lab is a research and development centre for the built environment of the future. This high-tech structure also serves as an emblem of the cooperation's aim to translate academic research into actual buildings. A new series of books, entitled Towards 2050 will be showcasing the ambitious undertaking at various stages. The series' inaugural volume, Thinking: Visions for Architectural Design highlights preliminary research for the smart living lab and considers visions for sustainable buildings. The book features essays by Sophie Lufkin, Emilie Nault, MArilyne Andersen, and Emmanuel Rey as well as interviews with leading experts such as Tatiana Bilbao, Paula Cadima, Lionel Devlieger, Herbert Girardet, Alistair Guthrie, Kengo Kuma, Ali Malkawi, Edward Ng, Susan Parnell, Antoine Picon, Carlo Ratti, and Koen Steemers. It lays out the myriad challenges and opportunities the project is likely to face, as well as its considerable potential to drive change.
£40.50
Park Books L'architecture comme environnement: PARC Architectes
Founded in 2009, Paris-based PARC Architectes has risen to prominence, winning awards and accolades in its native France and beyond. Just as important as its design work is PARC Architectes's research on contemporary architecture and urbanism, laid out in the theoretical essay Le parc planetarire (The Planetary Park), published in the firm's own journal, PRAGMA, and on its blog, CRAPZINE. This first book to focus on PARC Architectes, Architecture as Environment features fifteen foundational designs by the firm, chosen to reflect the firm's credo that the environment has to become a matter of architecture. At the interface of art and science, PARC Architectes's designs are installations rather than mere structures, enabling adequate responses to contextual and conceptual issues in the construction of contemporary human environments. In addition to brief essays, the book also includes 150 illustrations, including many in full colour. Text in French.
£31.50
Park Books Josef Frank: Villa Carlsten
Between 1924 and 1936, Austrian-born architect Josef Frank built five holiday homes on the Falsterbo Peninsula in southern Sweden. Conceived as summer houses for friends and relatives of Frank's Swedish wife, the Falsterbo Villas constitute a key part of Frank's architectural work and demonstrate the principles at the core of his housing designs. In 2016, Villa Carlsten, the smallest of the Falsterbo houses, underwent an extensive restoration. Published on the occasion of its completion, Josef Frank: Villa Carlsten is the first book to comprehensively document the building. As with all of Frank's housing designs, Villa Carlsten sees the architect paying special attention to the connection between interior and exterior, to the availability of daylight, and to inhabitants' movements through the building. A particular part of Villa Carlsten's charm is its scale, as everything is of slightly smaller dimensions than one would expect. Despite its intricate layout, however, Villa Carlsten is also one of Frank's most accessible homes, and the design is full of wit, combining comfort with modern refinement. Beautifully designed with seventy-five full-colour photographs by Mikael Olsson, who adeptly highlights the home's qualities and relationship with its surroundings, the book also includes an essay by Mikael Bergquist, who realised the renovation and places Villa Carlsten in context with the other Falsterbo Villas and Frank's broader work.
£22.50
Park Books Carlo Mollino: Architect and Storyteller
Today, Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is known chiefly for his furniture designs. He is famous also for his erotic polaroid photography of the 1960s, which has been subject of many exhibitions and has lost nothing of its great appeal to the fashion world today. Much less attention has so far been given to Mollino's architecture, and a comprehensive critical study of his work in this field has been lacking. Yet his built work, although relatively small, constitutes a seminal contribution to modernism that is uniquely marked by a strong relationship with Surrealism. Based on years of research and drawing on rich archival material as well as on Mollino's own writings, this new book is the overdue tribute to an extraordinary personality in 20th-century architecture. It features an exemplary selection of his key designs, both built and unrealised, lavishly illustrated with images and reproductions of previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents. Rounded out with scholarly essays by expert authors, this is a long-awaited addition to the library of architecture lovers, professionals, and scholars.
£72.00
Park Books Best of Austria: Architecture 2016-17
The new sixth edition of Best of Austria again offers an impressive survey of Austria's contemporary architectural culture. It features some 170 buildings in Austria and designed by Austrian architects abroad that have been awarded national and international prizes in 2016 and 2017. Each building is documented with colour photographs and selected plans and a brief descriptive text. Individual architects and teams, as well as architecture institutions in Austria are also portrayed. An introductory topical essay provides an outside perspective and a detailed index of the various prizes rounds off the book.
£31.50
Park Books Ritual / Original: driendl*architects
Since its establishment in 1996, Vienna-based firm driendl*architects have pursued their search for prototype solutions in furniture and building design, infrastructure, and urban planning. The notion that we are constantly situated in a built environment, or in any case influencing it in some way or another, is guiding all their projects and is reflected in this new book. Ritual / Original reviews driendl*architects' work in a striking literary-visual manner, analysing in theory and exemplified by selected designs the circumstances of their approach: How environment and users affect buildings, cities, infrastructures, and systems; the effect of the inevitable discrepancy between vision and reality; and architects' capacity to observe and react to social structures and phenomena.
£31.50
Park Books Promenades: Photography and Architecture
Promenades is both a treatise on the relationship between architecture and photography and the first book to focus on the work of the Swiss architectural firm Bauart Architects and Planners. The firm commissioned a variety of photographers working in landscape or architecture to document nine of their projects throughout Switzerland, from houses, schools, and government and office buildings to entirely new neighborhoods. Each of the photographs represents a personal, wide-angled view of a project, drawing on the rich legacy of nearly two centuries of architectural photography. An essay by Markus Jakob explores the relationship between photography and architecture in the context of the firm's work over the course of three decades, which carefully accounts for ecology and urban and social context.
£40.50
Park Books Aire: The River and its Double
South of Geneva, Switzerland, the River Aire runs across a plain that for centuries has been agricultural land. From the late 19th century, the waterway has been embanked for flood protection, also causing the gradual loss of habitat for a large variety of plants and animals. In 2001, decisions were taken to re-naturalise the river. Yet rather than to merely reconstruct its former natural bed, Superpositions, the association of firms commissioned with the project, applied 'topographic imagination', a method termed by American landscape designer Elissa Rosenberg. It combines the embanked channel with a newly designed pasture landscape. The channel indicates a work in progress and serves as a reference line that makes 'before' and 'after' traceable. This new book documents this much recognised, award-winning re-naturalisation project with drawings, images of construction work and of the new waterway. Essays and comments by international contributors Jean-Marc Besse, Lorette Coen, Gerorges Descombes, G. Mathias Kondolf, Elissa Rosenberg, Gilles A. Tiberghien, and Marc Treib demonstrate how the restored River Aire has been upgraded to become again a characteristic feature of this landscape on the fringe of the city. Text in English, French and German.
£40.50
Park Books Exposed Architecture: Exhibitions, Interludes, and Essays
Exposed Architecture offers an overview of work by young architects in Latin America. It is published in collaboration with LIGA, Space for Architecture in Mexico City. Founded in 2011, LIGA is an independent initiative for the promotion of contemporary architecture in Latin America by staging exhibitions and conferences and by publishing books on selected topics. The first part documents exhibitions by twelve firms from Argentina, Brazil/Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and Portugal have created at LIGA's exhibition space in Mexico in images and brief texts. In the second part, six "Studio Interludes" shed light on practice and aesthetics in contemporary Latin American architecture. The third part comprises short essays by Agnaldo Farias, Barry Bergdoll, Carlos Minguez Carrasco, Daniel Fernandez Pascual, Florencia Rodriguez, Anna Puigjaner and Jorge Munguia, Rory Hyde, Tina Dicarlo, and Wonne Ickx, as well as two interviews with local protagonists. They look at key aspects and topics against a backdrop of manifold difficulties and challenges the region poses for the production and communication of architecture. Text in English and Spanish.
£22.50
Park Books The Good Life: A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity
With his book The Good Life, Inaki Abalos takes the reader on a tour of seven iconic 20th-century houses. Some of them were actually built, others merely imagined or film sets: Mies van der Rohe's House with Three Patios, Martin Heidegger's cabin in the Black Forest, the houses from Jacques Tati's movie Mon Oncle, Picasso's house in Cannes, the New York loft of Andy Warhol and the Factory, the self-build house from Buster Keaton's movie One Week, the house in David Hockney's painting A Bigger Splash. Abalos's selection represents a variety of concepts for living. It is based on a clear archetypal assignment of a place to a particular modern way of living. He analyses each house from key philosophical points of view. He demonstrates relations between architectural concepts, philosophical schools, and various approaches to planning and designing, constructing, and inhabiting a space. Abalos offers an intellectual introduction to these icons, rather than a manual for the design of residential architecture. He focuses on the 20th-century's radical pluralism, rather than celebrating modernism as a triumph of positivism. This new and revised edition of this book, first published in 2001 by Gustavo Gili and out of print for many years now, makes the significant contribution to the perennial discourse on concepts of living available again.
£31.50
Park Books Paulo Providência–Architectonica Percepta – Texts and Images 1989–2015
Paulo Providencia occupies a special place in contemporary Portuguese architecture. He is recognised by many as one of the best of the generation following Eduardo Souto de Moura. His work is concerned about interpretation of programmatic needs, relating architecture to specific cultural contexts. His buildings the vast majority of them located in Portugal are based on sound theoretical background, rooted in philosophical and anthropological research. This new book features seven of Providencia's realised structures in striking duotone photographs taken by the Portuguese photographer Alberto Placido. Each is documented as well with selected plans and key information. Five topical essays by Providencia round out the first monograph in English on this eminent architect and theoretician.
£27.00
Park Books Kashef Chowdhury–The Friendship Centre – Gaibandha, Bangladesh
The Friendship Centre near the district town of Gaibandha, Bangladesh, is for an NGO which works with some of the poorest in the country and who live mainly in riverine islands (chars) with very limited access and opportunities. Very limited funding prevented an elevated structure in this area under constant threat of flooding. This and the location in an earthquake zone and the low bearing capacity of the silty soil lead to a design surrounded by an embankment for flood protection while built directly on existing soil. Rainwater and surface run-off are collected in internal pools and the excess is pumped to an excavated pond. The design relies on natural ventilation and cooling facilitated by courtyards and pools and the earth covering on roofs. An extensive network of septic tanks and soak wells ensure the sewage does not mix with flood water. This new book features the austere beauty and simplicity the building by Dhaka-born architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury in striking photographs taken by Helene Binet and selected plans and sections. Essays by architects and critics Kenneth Frampton and Robert Wilson round out this building monograph.
£27.00
Park Books Precisions on the Present State of Architecture and City Planning
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of his death (August 27, 2015), one of Le Corbusier's most significant books becomes available again in English. The "Precisions", as the book is commonly known, emerged from a spontaneous and exuberant series of 10 lectures Le Corbusier gave in Buenos Aires in 1929, reflecting a new maturity in his thinking. They contain some of his most compelling aphorisms, covering technique as the basis of architecture, the human scale in design, furniture, the private house, apartments and office buildings, the city, the League of Nations competition, teaching architecture. As he spoke, Le Corbusier improvised colour drawings on large sheets of paper. The drawings and lectures are unique in their eloquent and concise summary of his philosophy of architecture and urban design, stating the principles that informed his work from the 1920s on. This new edition for the first time features all of Le Corbusier's drawings in colour. A new essay by British scholar Tim Benton, written for this new edition, contextualizes the "Precisions" within Le Corbusier's oeuvre and comments on their lasting significance.
£22.50
Park Books Neri and Hu Design and Research Office - Works and Projects 2004 - 2014
Founded in 2004 and based in Shanghai and London, neri & hu design and research office works internationally providing architecture, interior, master planning, graphic, and product design services. They work on projects in many countries with a multi-cultural staff. This diversity emphasises the firm's vision to respond to a global worldview incorporating overlapping design disciplines. This first ever book on neri & hu design and research office documents a selection of their work in architecture and product design. With a lavishly illustrated beautiful design concept, it is structured in three sections: Buildings features seven renovation projects in Shanghai, complete refurbishments as well as interior redesigns. Products presents four designs for household goods and furniture. Projects documents ongoing and unrealized architectural work in Florida, London, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur. An introduction and a topical essay on renovation as well as an overview of neri & hu design and research office's projects to date round out the book. Lyndon Neri studied architecture at University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Graduate School of Design. Before founding his own firm with Rossana Hu he has been working for more than ten years with Princeton-based Michael Graves & Associates and various architectural firms in New York. Rossana Hu studied architecture and music at University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. She worked with Michael Graves & Associates and Ralph Lerner Architect in Princeton; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in New York; and The Architects Collaborative (TAC) in San Francisco before founding neri & hu design and research office.
£40.50
Park Books The Playground Project
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the open-air playground was a social laboratory. Innovative, wacky, educational, and exciting playground designs emerged in European and American cities, as well as elsewhere around the world: artists, landscape designers, architects, and activists sought to provide children with the best possible place to play, while also reimagining cities and communities. First published in 2018, The Playground Project instantly became a classic. This much-expanded new edition brings back the wealth of ideas of that period to inspire us today. It offers many previously unpublished images, numerous new portraits, especially of female protagonists of the time, as well as findings from the latest research on playground design. An incisive introductory essay places the playground at the intersections of education, architecture, urban politics, design history, and leisure policy. A detailed focus is placed on the forgotten history of playgrounds in the former German Democratic Republic. Moreover, young researchers explore the culture of memory surrounding the Shek Lei Playground in Hong Kong, and the role that playgrounds played in the process of state-building in Mexico. The book is a tribute to play in public spaces and a rich source for architects, designers, students, children, and political actors.
£45.00
Park Books SAY 2023: Swiss Architecture Yearbook 2023/24
The new SAY Swiss Architecture Yearbook is the first of its kind in Switzerland. Jointly edited by the Basel-based Swiss Architecture Museum S AM and the renowned architecture journal werk, bauen+wohnen on behalf of the Stiftung Architektur Schweiz, it reflects the country’s remarkably diverse architectural creation and provides international visibility for the outstanding quality of Swiss architecture and building culture. Yet SAY is more than a mere selection of the best: it thoroughly examines current topics that concern many people at the time of a construction boom in the country and amid the increasingly felt effects of climate change. From a list of well over a hundred nominees from all parts of the country, 36 projects were selected by an international jury for SAY’s inaugural 2023/24 edition. The featured projects are supplemented by topical essays that look at the most pressing questions in Swiss architecture discourse, at the characteristics of Swiss architecture today, and examine what lasting contribution it makes to the quality of life in all parts of the country.
£40.50
Park Books Re-Use in Construction: A Compendium of Circular Architecture
Re-using entire parts and components of existing buildings in the construction of new structures has become highly topical in European architecture discourse. Re-using elements that could last for decades longer, rather than destroying them, offers huge potentials in saving increasingly scarce resources and in cost reduction. Moreover, it makes construction more climate-friendly through deep cuts in energy consumption and the emission of greenhouse gasses. For millennia, disused buildings have been cannibalised for the construction of new ones. Yet in today’s world, what is known as circular architecture raises a multitude of questions and challenges with regard to technology, safety, energy, and to legal aspects. This book is a unique compendium of circular architecture. It explores comprehensively and in detail all the questions and challenges that architects and engineers face with circular architecture designs. It is based on the case study of the K.118 project in Winterthur, Switzerland’s largest building to date that consists mainly of re-used parts. Since its outset in 2018, the K.118 project has been evaluated within the framework of an interdisciplinary research with regard to aspects of design and engineering, energy, economy, processes, and legal issues. This volume presents the results in striking visuals and concise essays, supplemented by illuminating conversations between experts.
£45.00
Park Books Brick 22: Outstanding International Brick Architecture
From hand-made brick to high-tech product: building with blocks of fired clay today draws from a heritage of nine millennia and remains innovative, sustainable, and highly appreciated for its manifold applications. Since 2004, Wienerberger, the world’s largest manufacturer of bricks and other clay building materials, biennially presents the international Brick Award as a scene for outstanding achievements in brick architecture. The 2022 edition of this master class saw 789 submissions from 53 countries, that were reviewed by an international jury of experts. This book features the 50 nominees and the 5 winning designs, which are located in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central America. All projects are presented in texts and richly illustrated with atmospheric images, site and floor plans, views, elevations and sections. Five topical essays by international authors, discussing the winning buildings in a wider context, round out this celebration of contemporary brick architecture.
£40.50
Park Books Portraits: 15 Buildings KAAN Architecten
KAAN Architecten, founded and led by Kees Kaan, Vincent Panhuysen, and Dikkie Scipio, promote Dutch building traditions of sustainability, welfare, pragmatism, and quality through a collaborative and analytical design approach. The Rotterdam-based firm, who run satellite offices in Paris and São Paulo, gained wide renown through complex public commissions that surpass traditional notions of typology and method. Their range includes government offices, museums, urban development projects, as well as buildings for health care, education, and research. This first substantial monograph on KAAN Architecten offers a comprehensive survey of their most important projects to date. The 15 buildings documented in the book are presented as different characters with varying physiognomies, but which belong to the same family and feature similar traits—hence the title of the book. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, visualisations, plans and drawings, and through essays by French architect, critic, and scholar of architectural history Pierre Chabard and by Dutch architectural critic, writer, and editor Ruud Brouwers, Portraits explores KAAN Architecten’s work using different lenses. By mapping out their complex genealogy, the book also highlights that the firm’s designs are not single autonomous entities but rather parts of a shared vision.
£37.80
Park Books Absolute Beginners
In his new book Absolute Beginners, acclaimed Spanish architect Iñaki Ábalos explores forms of innovation in architecture. Drawing on diverse materials elaborated during the 20 years since the publication of his best-known book, The Good Life, Ábalos examines questions centred on how and why architectural creation — at least the kind that arouses the greatest cultural interest — is strongly linked to philosophical thought, especially to the essay and the aphorism. He guides us to an understanding why innovation — as happens in philosophy — is inextricably linked to a reflection on the past and to the emergence of new ways of appropriating old problems. Absolute Beginners is a single essay written with effort and passion, made for the pure pleasure of composing a new and complex work and understanding the source materials as necessary fragments, while remaining open to adjustments, changes, and bridges between them. Ábalos organises his materials like a piece of music into a cohesive composition, to the delight and insight of his readers.
£28.80
Park Books Agadir: Building the Modern Afropolis
On February 29, 1960, a catastrophic earthquake devastated the Moroccan coastal city of Agadir, erasing it almost entirely and killing a third of its population. The world was shocked and very quickly large amounts of international aid arrived. Following an emotional speech by King Mohammed V, the reconstruction of Agadir was also an undertaking of national and international solidarity. A new and unprecedented process of urban construction was developed that allowed many architects — national and international — to simultaneously design the new city. The result of this joint effort was astounding. In a very short time, the new Agadir rose from the ashes. The best Moroccan and international architects experimented with novel housing typologies, which mediated between ultramodern and vernacular ways of dwelling, complemented by innovative public structures, such as schools, dispensaries and cinemas. All of these combined into an original urban reality: a modern Afropolis. This book for the first time thoroughly explores the forgotten tale of Agadir’s reconstruction. It features previously unpublished archival documents and striking period photographs, as well as new plans and contemporary images by London-based photographer and academic David Grandorge, alongside scholarly essays by architects and architecture historians Tom Avermaete, Laure Augereau, Irina Davidovici, Janina Gosseye, Cathelijne Nuijsink, Hans Teerds, and Maxime Zaugg. A three-part interview with Lachsen Roussafi, who witnessed the 1960 earthquake as a student, rounds out this tantalising narration of the international architectural adventure of rebuilding Agadir as the modern Afropolis.
£31.50
Park Books On the Duty and Power of Architectural Criticism: Proceeds of the International Conference on Architectural Criticism 2021
Should architectural criticism be enlightening? Should it help in the creation of a better built environment? Is there a factual basis to it? Does it have a duty to present evidence in the evaluation of a building? Or should it take on what architects say about their designs? In the context of a flat internet, should architectural criticism be able to define best practices? Does it wield the power over who is in and who is out? Architectural criticism, like all human endeavours, is at a crucial juncture. While serious architecture struggles for recognition, much so-called architectural criticism is merely a poorly paid, decorative legitimation for hyperbolic practice. Incisive architectural criticism is rare, while the definition of criticism itself has become opaque. The 2021 International Conference on Architecture Criticism has gathered exceptional papers that define the purposes and methods of architectural criticism: What should be the ethical basis of architectural criticism? Can it be objective in the context of paid content? Should it outline ideal practices? Or what else should it do? All contributions in this book address either the duty or the power of architectural criticism. In both cases, the authors offer the outline of one analysis of an existing building.
£31.50
Park Books Alexander Brenner – Villas and Houses 2015–2021: A Holistic Art of Building
Only few architecture firms in Europe have addressed the villa as a building type as consistently and with such formal rigor as Stuttgart-based Alexander Brenner Architects. The firm is widely known for designs characterised by plastic-geometric facades often resembling constructivist tableaux. What all of Alexander Brenner’s designs have in common is a truly holistic approach to the task. A house’s interior, kitchen, cupboards and other built-in furniture, is attended to with the same care for detail as its exterior. Corresponding gardens with curved sensual forms surround, and contrast, Brenner’s bright white cubic architectural sculptures. This new monograph follows-up on two successful previous volumes published in 2011 and 2015, and features five buildings realised between 2015 and 2021, including the architect’s own home in Stuttgart, the Brenner Research House. They are all documented in rich detail through striking photography, standardised plans and visualisations, as well as concise texts. An essay by Alexander Brenner rounds out this volume that serves again as a source of inspiration for anyone with an interest in residential architecture. Text in English and German.
£63.00
Park Books Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life
“This gorgeous doorstop of a book … Seductive and serious — for the most discerning coffee tables.” — Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times. Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975) is one of the most highly revered – and also one of the most heavily mythologised – protagonists of modern European architecture. Arguably Sweden’s most distinguished modernist, he is more influential to other architects internationally today than he has been during his lifetime. Countless architecture lovers from around the world visit his still existent buildings. Stockholm’s woodland cemetery Skogskyrkogården, his most significant contribution to landscape design, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. This authoritative new monograph on Sigurd Lewerentz is based on extensive research undertaken at ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design, where his archive and personal library are being kept. It features a wealth of drawings and sketches, designs for furniture and interiors, model photographs etc. from his estate, most of which published here for the first time, as well as with newly taken photographs of his realised buildings. Essays by leading experts explore Lewerentz’s life and work, his legacy and lasting significance from today’s perspective. This vast, beautifully designed book offers the most comprehensive survey to date of Lewerentz’s entire achievements in all fields of his manifold work.
£90.00