Search results for ""author axel"
BAI NV Axel Enthoven
Designed by Axel Enthoven. Day after day he proves that elegance still exists today. He demonstrates that statements, sloganesque formulations, cutting corners, taking an obtuse attitude to people are not his thing. That kindness is not synonymous with weakness. That taking the time to think things through properly should not be exceptional. Taking responsibility regarding the impact of actions and words is not a rare occurrence. Striving after timelessness and sustainability are given a lasting interpretation. For him, combining aesthetics and functionality is a matter of course. Thanks to Axel Enthoven we are reminded that things can be different. And how important design is.
£52.65
Kerber Verlag Axel Grünewald: Bankett
Axel Grünewald (*1954) looks at the edges of the present. For more than five years, he has repeatedly travelled through the coastal regions of Morocco and southern Spain, to the continental border between Europe and Africa. His photographs show the sea, barren landscapes, and people on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. However, Grünewald doesn't name any concrete place; his images do not belong to either side. They're at once empathetic and oppressive, depicting the invisible and seemingly insurmountable space separating North and South where people are 'stranded', defenseless, with all their hopes for a better life in the unknown. Axel Grünewald looks to where Europe turns away. Text in English and German.
£45.00
Booket Axel
£12.98
Editions Flammarion Axel Vervoordt: Living with Light
Following the bestseller Axel Vervoordt: Timeless Interiors, this volume of fifteen new interiors expands on the Vervoordt vision for creating exceptional homes that combine natural elements, antiques, and fine art. The art of harmonious living is extolled in this volume through twenty bespoke interiors designed by the Axel Vervoordt Company. Each room incorporates natural light as an essential component of design, along with other elements—water, metal, wood—blended with a modern aesthetic and punctuated with fine art. The Vervoordt concept of the home is revealed through a refined balance between art and nature to create timeless living spaces. The range of featured properties includes homes by the sea, as well as in urban and rural locations, demonstrating a breadth of styles possible within the essential Vervoordt design principles. Photography by Laziz Hamani brings into focus both the unique design details and the carefully constructed interiors that fuse to create each striking setting. These exceptional residences are rich with inspirational ideas to incorporate into your own home so that you can celebrate your living space in the singular Vervoordt style.
£40.50
Scholastic Axel Scheffler Fairy Tale Treasury
A gorgeous gift book of classic fairy tales, beautifully illustratedby bestselling and award-winning illustrator, Axel Scheffler. Featuring Goldiocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs,The Hare and the Hedgehog, Puss in Boots and Nursery Rhymes, allbound into one must-have collection.
£13.49
Nosy Crow Ltd Axel Scheffler's Flip Flap Ocean
Crazy underwater creatures in this bonkers book of mixed-up animals from bestselling, award-winning illustrator, Axel Scheffler What do you get if you cross a squid with a fish? It's a squish, of course! And how about a shark and a turtle? Why, that's a shurtle! With over 121 possible creations, silly names and strange noises to make you giggle, this Flip Flap book is perfect for preschoolers and ideal for animal fans. With a hilarious rhyming text and brilliant artwork from the illustrator of The Gruffalo and the Pip and Posy series, Axel Scheffler, simply flip the pages to create some seriously silly mixed-up animals! Other titles in the series include: Farm, Jungle, Safari, Pets, Dinosaurs, Frozen, Minibeasts
£8.99
Nosy Crow Ltd Axel Scheffler's Flip Flap Jungle
Crazy creatures in this bonkers book of mixed-up jungle animals from bestselling, award-winning illustrator, Axel Scheffler What do you get if you cross a gorilla with a chameleon? Yes, that would be an goeleon! And how about a toucan with a tiger? Why, a touger, of course! With over 121 possible creations, silly names and strange noises to make you giggle, this Flip Flap book is perfect for preschoolers and ideal for animal fans. With a hilarious rhyming text and brilliant artwork from the illustrator of The Gruffalo and the Pip and Posy series, Axel Scheffler, simply flip the pages to create some seriously silly mixed-up jungle animals! Other titles in the series include: Farm, Safari, Pets, Ocean, Dinosaurs, Frozen, Minibeasts
£8.99
Editions Flammarion Axel Vervoordt: Wabi Inspirations
£40.50
Editions Flammarion Axel Vervoordt: Portraits of Interiors
£54.00
Penguin Random House Children's UK Alex vs Axel The Impossible Quests
The hilarious new fantasy adventure from the author of Charlie Changes Into a Chicken.Alex is a normal, everyday kid, living in a normal, everyday city. Axel is a monster-slaying hero, living in a world of magic. Unfortunately, when the two boys mysteriously swap places, each of them ends up being mistaken for the other.With zero experience of heroism, Alex is thrust into an epic quest to defeat the evil Felonius Gloam, who has stolen the Book of Lifetales and is using it to unravel the very fabric of the world of Aërth.Meanwhile, Axel is faced with double maths, a gran who''s six months behind on the rent, and a crucial chess tournament he''s got to win when he doesn''t even know how to play.Can the two boys complete their Impossible Quests and find a way back to their own lives, or will they both discover they don''t have a life to come back to . . . ?
£8.42
Hartmann Projects Axel Herrmann: Continental Breakfast
£12.00
Scholastic Axel Scheffler's Fairy Tales: Puss In Boots
The classic, much-loved story of Puss in Boots, masterfully brought to life by Axel Scheffler, illustrator of The Gruffalo and Zog. When a young miller's son is given a cat by his father, he doesn't understand what use the cat will be to him except as a pair of furry gloves... But when Puss starts to talk, the miller's son soon learns that his fortune is about to change. With clever Puss in Boots by his side, the pair move up in the world ... but will they be able to outwit a wicked magician and save a kingdom together? A well-known children's fairy tale story illustrated by the one and only award-winning superstar, Axel Scheffler Hardback pocket-size format is perfect for little hands Part of a new series of fairy tale stories illustrated by Axel Scheffler, published by Scholastic - Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs are also out now! Watch out for The Hare and The Hedgehog, which publishes simultaneously Translated by Alison Green, author of bestselling picture book Kind A guaranteed classic, to sit on children's bookshelves and be cherished for years to come
£7.21
Nosy Crow Ltd Axel Scheffler's Flip Flap Pets
What do you get if you cross a snake with a cat? It's a cake, of course! And how about a tortoise with a fish? Why, that's a tortish! A very silly but absolutely engaging book that will charm the whole family.
£8.99
Scholastic Axel Scheffler's Fairy Tales: Goldilocks and the Three Bears
The classic, much-loved story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, masterfully brought to life by Axel Scheffler, illustrator of The Gruffalo and Zog. When Goldilocks stumbles across a little house in the woods, she finds an array of treats await her inside... the perfect little chair to sit on, the perfect bowl of porridge, not to mention the perfect place for a nap - Baby Bear's bed. And when the three bears arrive home, who will be more surprised at what they find... Goldilocks or the bears?! A well-known children's fairy tale story illustrated by the one and only award-winning superstar, Axel Scheffler Hardback pocket-size format is perfect for little hands Part of a new series of fairy tale stories illustrated by Axel Scheffler, published by Scholastic. Watch out for The Three Little Pigs publishing simultaneously Translated by Alison Green, author of bestselling picture book Kind A guaranteed classic, to sit on children's bookshelves and be cherished for years to come
£7.21
£6.59
Edition Axel Menges Auf der Suche nach verlorenen Paradiesen
The fact that the entire history of culture and technology could represent a single, continuous expulsion of mankind from the original, paradiese state of nature was already described visionarilyin the Bible and predicted with all its positive and negative consequences. Everyone knows the story of Adam and Eve, of their 'Fall' and their 'Expulsion from Paradise'. Even as a non-Christian it is worth taking a look at the fairytale-like-mythic text of the Old Testament, although the picture and the process completely contradict our current scientific findings. One would almost be inclined to assume that the idea of a primeval paradise is innate in all human beings and that every human being with his becoming, his birth, his childhood and his adulthood experiences something like a Genesis. He is born innocent and helpless, wakes up, looks around, believes to be free, gets to know his time, his surroundings, his life. The final expulsion of every human being from life is his death. He is a sentenced to death. Despite all religious promises, man has always been aware of this fact, also of the fact that he has only this one life and that he ultimately cannot count on the hope that beyond this life there is something that could be called 'salvation', a happy return to the Garden of Eden. As the book shows with numerous, primarily European examples, the history of man is therefore full of efforts to regain here and now the lost paradise, no matter how precarious the result may be. In search of the lost paradises: a somewhat unusual history of man in his relationship to nature, followed by a description of the current state of landscape planning and garden design. In the third, concluding part of the book, the author develops new, strangely surreal and poetic concepts of the treatment of nature, inspired by literature, film, theatre and tourism.Hans Dieter Schaal, born in Ulm in 1943, is an architect, landscape architect, stage designer and exhibition designer. His works, the majority of which have been published by the Axel MengesEdition, have meanwhile reached an audience far beyond his in my homeland. The author lives and works in a village near Biberach an der Riss.
£53.91
Edition Axel Menges Hans Dieter Schaal, Stage Architecture 20012021 / Buhnenarchitektur 20012021
Play-acting but above all the opera have only seemingly little to do with our everyday life. In fact opera is a very artificial work of art in which reality is nevertheless present, but condensed in such a way that it touches us throughout the ages. In experiencing opera performances, we thus become companions of the bard Orpheus in Monteverdis opera L'Orfeo, who mourns the death of his beloved nymph Eurydice with his laments. We transform ourselves into sympathetic and compassionate brothers and sisters of Orpheus, Wozzeck, Tosca, Tristan, Isolde or Jenufa and are thus directly referred to the perils and also pleasures in our own lives. In order to make the visual and sound dimensions of an opera tangible for the audience, a close interaction of dramaturges, actors, singers, dancers, directors, stage designers and technicians is necessary. What role do stage designers play in this? Dont some performances owe their success primarily to the work of the set designer? The stage settings created by Hans Dieter Schaal, who has worked on almost all German stages, but also in many important international theatre venues, including Vienna, Salzburg, Zurich, Brussels, Paris, Moscow and San Francisco, have, over and over again, such a lasting effect due to their visual power that they remain in the memory of the audience for a long time. The first volume on Hans Dieter Schaals stage settings covered the years 1982 to 2000, and this book now brings out a further volume dedicated to the works from 2001 to 2021. The book is captivating not only because of its abundance of mostly large-format photographs and many design drawings, but also because of the detailed texts written by Schaal himself, which reveal how intensively the artist deals with the respective work. As a result he invents images that often trigger a completely new perspective on the works. Hans Dieter Schaal, born in Ulm in 1943, is an architect, landscape designer, stage designer, exhibition designer and artist. His works, the majority of which have been published by Edition Axel Menges, have found an audience far beyond his home country. The author lives and works near Biberach an der Riß.
£61.20
Edition Axel Menges Schinkel, Persius, Stüler - Buildings in Berlin and Potsdam
Text in English & German. This book is a synopsis, a summary of the books also published by Edition Axel Menges about the Prussian architects Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), Ludwig Persius (1803-1845) and Friedrich August Stüler (1800-1865), but it covers only the works of these architects in Berlin and Potsdam. The three books mentioned above are subtitled 'The architectural work today'; in other words, they are exclusively about buildings that still exist. This is also true of the present selection. The question whether this selection and limitation to Berlin and Potsdam is representative of the work of the three architects can clearly be answered in the affirmative. For Persius this question does not even arise, because during his short life he worked almost exclusively in Potsdam and its immediate vicinity -- he was the 'King's architect'. Stüler's work is found in a region extending from Cologne on the Rhine to Masuria, with some important buildings in Stockholm and Budapest as well. About a quarter of his works can be found in Potsdam and Berlin, where Stüler, too, was the 'King's architect'. The truly gigantic lifework of Schinkel extends from Aachen to St Petersburg. Berlin and Potsdam have about a third of his works. It can be confidently said, however, that those who know the works of Schinkel, Persius and Stüler in Berlin and Potsdam also know the architect's work as a whole in each case. Since the pictures assembled here were taken between 1998 and 2005, they themselves have already become somewhat historical.
£8.54
Edition Axel Menges Jan Kaplicky: For the Future and For Beauty
This is the first monograph on the life and work of the Czech born British architect Kaplicky (1937-2009). It is a fully comprehensive work based on a decade of research and is a distinctive portrait of one of the most distinguished architects and designers of the 20th and 21st centuries. At the same time it is an exploration into historical events, which influenced a number of talented artists, writers and designers, some of whom were forced, like Kaplicky, to emigrate from Czechoslovakia in order to expand their skills and search for beauty through living in freedom in democratic countries. After immigrating to the United Kingdom in 1968, Kaplicky applied his imagination and diligence and enhanced his skills and aptitude, gaining admiration and respect following the cofounding of the innovative Future Systems studio in 1979. With his wide-ranging architectural and design oeuvre Kaplicky affirmed greatness of his immense talent and ability. The author was a friend, through their shared émigré life experience, giving him broad insight into the inception and realisation of this book. He searched family archives and referenced Kaplickys private diaries. The author drew on everybody who had something important to say and gathered written memories and interviews from Kaplickys friends, colleagues, partners and clients, which form the cornerstone of the monograph. His aim was to write a book that would mirror Kaplickys life and work, a representation made up not only from the authors own point of view, but also according to others with whom Kaplicky had been in contact during his life. The book has many voices and has a kaleidoscopic format, which truly explores Kaplickys complex personality and his creativity. It does not overwhelm with excessive information, but builds a picture of the man behind his designs and tells his story. The author presents Kaplickys personal side with sensitivity and explains his dramatic decision-making.
£61.20
Edition Axel Menges Essen vermessen
Text in German. The theme of this book is nutrition: the manufacture and availability of foodstuffs, and their preparation and presentation in the context of a societys social and cultural development. Nutrition and physical wellbeing are closely linked. Human beings and animals alike need to eat in order to survive. In our rich industrial nations, where the availability of food is taken for granted, attitudes towards food tend toward extremes: asceticism on the one hand, and overindulgence and excess on the other. Over the centuries, methods of food consumption and food preparation have become refined in tandem with the ever more differentiated organisation of human coexistence between these two poles. Regional and social differences in taste-related culture have arisen, each representative of the lifestyle of their time. Today, cooking and the arranging of food may have an almost artistic form, with high expectations for the quality of the product and its preparation. The fact is, however, that we live in a society in which almost all products are industrially produced. We have no power to influence the production process, and the lists of ingredients on the packaging that provide information on the composition of individual foods are puzzling, and make us doubt whether the product is really what it pretends to be. In a wide-ranging tour dhorizon, this book investigates the complex contemporary semantic fields of foods, their production and preparation, their presentation in a commercial context, and their marketing in the media. The author also takes a critical look at the new enthusiasm for DIY food production, baking, and even livestock slaughter, and examines the star system way cooking is presented in the media. The resulting book is a cultural history of food and of eating from a cultural history, sociology, psychology, economy, and media perspective, as they exist within the contemporary discourse on nutrition with its extremes of hype and hubris. Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. From 1994 to 2012 he has built up a new design department at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt. At the same time, he taught on the history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Heiliger, Richard Meier, Stefan Wewerka, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt by Nicholas Grimshaw, on "beauty design" as well as on the design activities of Lufthansa and Apple.
£32.40
Edition Axel Menges Hans Dieter Schaal. Festung Königstein. Ausstellungsdesign/ Exhibition Design
The Königstein Fortress, located not far from Dresden on a rocky plateau high above the Elbe River, is considered one of the most interesting and best preserved fortifications in Europe. It has a long eventful history dating back to the Bronze Age. Königstein was first mentioned in documents in 1241. It was not until the end of the 16th century that the former castle began to be expanded into a fortress, which was then constantly adapted to new conditions. However, it was spared from warlike destruction over all the centuries. Instead, it was sometimes used as a prison camp in times of war, for example during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and for the last time during the Second World War. In 1949, the then GDR set up a youth workshop in the fortress based on the teachings of Soviet pedagogue Anton Semyonovich Makarenko. In 1955, the GDRs Ministry of Culture finally converted Königstein into a museum and since 1991, now owned by the Free State of Saxony, it has undergone extensive structural renovation. The managing director of Festung Königstein gGmbH, Angelika Taube, became aware of Hans Dieter Schaal as early as 1997, and in the following years established an intensive collaboration with him, which has now resulted in six permanent and twelve temporary exhibitions. They illustrate the multifaceted history of the fortress in a way that clearly stands out from pure documentation and always creates something new and original from the factually given. This book presents these exhibitions in large-format colour illustrations. In addition, it contains descriptions and comments by Schaal that clarify the history of the exhibitions and also give the reader insights into the creative processes. Hans Dieter Schaal, born in Ulm in 1943, architect, stage designer, exhibition and landscape planner, makes the complexity of reality visible through his analytically differentiated stagings and brings its background into the field of vision of the attentive viewer. His works, the majority of which have been published by Edition Axel Menges, have since found an audience far beyond the borders of his native country. The author lives and works in a village near Biberach an der Riss.
£32.40
Axel & Ash Becoming Mama
£30.00
Axel & Ash Press Pause
£22.99
Edition Axel Menges Stefan Polónyi: Bearing Lines -- Bearing Surfaces
Text in English & German. Since the 1950s Stefan Polónyi has realised a large number of buildings of all kinds from his Cologne office, working with famous architects all over the world. In his view, load-bearing structure, form and function have to form an indissoluble entity, and thus create an aesthetic appearance: beauty feeds on structural consistency. Very few civil engineers have made claims of this kind. Architects who have worked with Polónyi see this ambitious claim as something that has enriched their own design process. First of all Polónyi, working with Josef Lehmbrock and Fritz Schaller, developed bold folded structures and shells for church buildings, and this at a time before statical calculations were not done by computer, but a lot of things still had to be tried out in model form. Polónyi co-operated closely with Oswald Mathias Ungers on the Galleria for the Frankfurter Messe, among other projects. He made the flying roof for Axel Schultes' Kunstmuseum Bonn possible, supported by a row of irregularly placed columns, and also the undulating metal ceiling in the auditorium of Rem Koolhaas' Nederlands Dans Theater and the umbrella-like roofing for the approach tracks in Cologne's main station. Polónyi's bridges, built from the 1990s in the Ruhr District, have become landmarks in the meantime with their red curved tubes as a structural and aesthetic element. Today he creates his bridges as buildings over the river, so-called Living Bridges. Polónyi's wide range of professional experience had a considerable bearing on his teaching at Berlin and Dortmund Technical Universities. Working with architects Harald Deilmann and Josef Paul Kleihues, Polónyi established the "Dortmund Model for the Building Sciences". It provides joint training for architects and civil engineers in a single faculty. The present book is appearing to accompany the exhibition of the same name in the "Dortmunder U". The essays address specific aspects of Polónyi's work. So Karl-Eugen Kurrer and Ulrich Pfammatter look at the development of structural analysis and the resultant distinction drawn between the professional territories of the civil engineer and the architect. Patrik Schumacher, partner in Zaha Hadid's practice, represents a current position in terms of co-operation between the two disciplines. Katrin Lichtenstein's account of the Dortmund Model and Atilla Ötes' view of the current study situation consider the effect on training and teaching. Sonja Hnilica analyses the folding systems and shells in the church projects, and Polónyi presents his bridges, including the designs for the Living Bridges.
£44.10
Edition Axel Menges Urban Fiction: Urban Utopias from the Antiquity until Today
Dissatisfied 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.
£10.90
Edition Axel Menges Coop Himmelb(l)au, Musée des Confluences, Lyon: Opus 79
Since the end of the 20th century, an unprecedented number of remarkable museums have been built. None have had bigger worldwide implications than Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (199197). Until, that is, the new Musée des Confluences in Lyon was opened to the public, in late 2014. It was created by Wolf D. Prix of the Coop Himmelb(l)au team, which was founded in the 1970s. Many avant-garde groups from those wild years such as Archigram, Superstudio, Archizoom, Haus-Rucker-Co, and the Japanese Metabolists are now consigned to the past, but the Coop Himmelb(l)au architecture firm, whose special aspiration was always to bring into the world buildings that overcome the pull of the earth buildings 'to float on the horizon like clouds' is more in demand than ever. The finest demonstration of this endeavour to date can now be admired in Lyon. Functioning as a museum of human history, this impressive concrete, metal and glass colossus truly does appear to float above the peninsula at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône. Like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, this new building, so impossible to overlook, is an inspiration for the revita-lisation of disrupted urban areas and the valorisation of derelict industrial areas within the city precincts, but also far beyond Lyon. This Opus volume deals with the origins, construction, function and formal appearance of the Musée des Confluences, and also offers a preliminary theoretically based evaluation of the architecture of the building. Frank R. Werner was professor of history and architecture theory at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart from 1990 until 1994 and director of the Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal from 1993 until his retirement in 2012. He studied painting, architecture and history of architecture in Mainz, Hanover and Stuttgart. Christian Richters studied communication design at the Folkwang-schule in Essen. He is one of the most sought-after architecture photographers in Europe. To date he has been represented in the Opus series by 14 volumes, including ones about the embassies of the Nordic countries and the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Nieuwe Luxor Theater in Rotterdam and the BMW Welt in Munich. See also: Opus 66. Coop Himmelb(l)au, BMW Welt, München, Edition Axel Menges 2009.
£26.91
Edition Axel Menges Beauty Design: Cosmetics as Intention & Conception
Text in English & German. Cosmetically-enhanced beauty is something that has existed for decades. Over the course of the last century, however, a cosmetics industry has arisen that is worth millions. Its products claim to optimise visual appearance, to bestow inner and outer health and to delay aging, under a veneer of medical credibility and reliable results. Cosmetics deals in alleged 'deep-acting' substances, which are supposed to detoxify and to purify the body from within. However, the whole arsenal of cosmetic ingredients is founded more on persuasion than conviction. Cosmetics is always a matter of mimicking an ideal. To this extent, cosmetic discourse deals in what might be described as an iconography of hunger -- it requires and is predicated upon a feeling of lack. At the same time, it promises to remedy that lack. The referential frame for cosmetics is constituted by cultural history and iconology, by semiotics and sociology, by psychology and rhetoric. Like fashion, it has called into being a linguistic system of considerable depth and complexity; one that draws its subtexts from futurology and history, from medicine and alchemy, from nostalgia and from heritage preservation. Cosmetics are supposed to make one more attractive and more seductive -- to make one positively irresistible, in fact. Cosmetics hold out the prospect of sexiness to women and men alike. All that one has to do is to acquire the right creams and lotions, the right palette of powders and rouges, of lipsticks and mascara, and one has a form of beauty that can be bought! The persuasive power of cosmetics is as dominant as it is irresistible. All of us could resist it if we wished to. And yet we don't wish to. This book exposes the rhetorical system behind the promises of cosmetics in terms of the histories of cultures and of mentalities, analysing the verbal/visual messages of selected examples. The internationally known architecture and design historian Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. Since 1995 he has built up a new design department in the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt; in addition to his museum work he teaches history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Volker Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Wewerka, Richard Meier, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt am Main by Nicholas Grimshaw, and the design activities of Lufthansa.
£35.91
Edition Axel Menges The Other Italy: Stories from Liguria and Calabria
Text in English & German. The "other Italy", that is the rural Italy, far from the bustle of the cities. It is the Italy of the Apennines, its natural scenery, its remote villages, churches and religious communities, its farmers, charcoal burners, shepherds and fishermen -- even if these old professions are now dwindling away. The author has travelled hundreds of kilometres through this rural Italy on foot, and travelled thousands of kilometres through it by car. Although he was acting in a professional capacity as a geologist, his interests went beyond this wonderful country's geology to embrace everything it had to offer. In the year 1959, he embarked on ten years working in Liguria (north of Genoa) and twenty years in Calabria, on the toe of the Italian "boot", on the flank of the Aspromonte facing the Ionic Sea. Further visits to both areas up to the present day have contributed to his fifty-year relationship with Italy, and a body of Italian experiences which was simply begging to be set down with accompanying pictures. Eight stories tell of the land and the people, of the wild landscape of Calabria and its Mafia, of rural festivals, Christmas customs, Italian food, abandoned farms -- and of "Nonno", a grand-father. A wealth of photographs, mainly in colour, join with the stories in encouraging the reader to forsake bathing holidays and art tourism and take a trip to a near and yet distant land.
£10.90
Edition Axel Menges Hans Dieter Schaal Work in Progress: Work in Progress
Text in English & German. From the 1970s to the present day there is scarcely an architect who has produced such pioneering work as a creative explorer of limits, lateral thinker and stimulating inspirational figure than Hans Dieter Schaal. With a high level of professionalism Schaal has regularly provided us with essential food for thought and hypotheses as an architect, painter, sculptor, draughtsman, designer, garden and stage designer, Utopian, philosopher and author. His work has always been driven not by superficial effects, but by existential statement on what surrounds us in terms of facts and things that are concealed or suppressed. Schaal's artistic statements have elicited responses at home and abroad and have influenced whole generations of younger designers to a considerable extent. Thus Schaal embodies an ideal artistic type that one rarely comes across, known in the Renaissance as uomo universale. As anticipated for some time now, the current volume explores all facets of this complex and fruitful oeuvre, revealing above all its synergetic interrelationships. In addition to this Schaal's thought and action patterns as relevant in terms of art and architectural history are emphasised in this comparative survey of his work, and their efficacy demonstrated. An extensive catalogue of Schaal's work rounds the volume off. Thus the present volume offers an indispensable encyclopaedia of the life's work of one of the truly creative design artists of our day.
£71.10
Edition Axel Menges Greenwards / Grünwärts: The New Delight in Urban Nature / Die neue Lust an urbaner Natur
Text in English & German. The inhabitants of our cities have undoubtedly come down with a gardening virus. Gardening is being propagated as the new sex. Wherever one looks, a gardening euphoria is in bloom. We only have to think of the riverbanks restored to their natural state, the urban gardening and urban farming projects springing up all over the world, the green skyscrapers (prospective and actually built) such as, for instance, the utopian farmscrapers of Vincent Callebout, the conversion of former high rail lines into green recreation spaces, the meditation gardens of Piet Oudolf, and the vertical gardens of Patrick Blanc. We dwell on the growing and sprouting, on the sowing and harvesting, with a kind of covert pleasure and sublimated erotic desire. These days, we feel close to greenery, just as we feel close to our pets. We tend and nurture the seeds and stalks, the leaves and flowers, the shrubs and grasses, the bushes and trees, with a matchless solicitude. These culturally coded natural phenomena also have therapeutic qualities, because they offer us self-determination and the possibility to share in social development. This is nothing less than the reintegration of the first, primal nature into the context of the conditions that have become ubiquitous today into the context of what has, today, become 'second nature'. For some people, such as the campaigners of 'Guerilla Gardening', these plants, wild and domestic, provide a way of criticizing the system; others, such as vertical planners of wall gardens like Ken Yeang, utopia-infatuated and bitten by the green bug, presumably see themselves as an avant-garde working in harmony with the system. All of those coming down the garden virus, however, have in common that they see themselves as reformers, as campaigners and as voices arguing for a reconciliation the first and the second, ubiquitous urban, nature, but also between the ecology and the economy. Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. From 1994 to 2012 he has built up a new design department at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt. At the same time, he taught on the history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Heiliger, Richard Meier, Stefan Wewerka, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt by Nicholas Grimshaw, on 'beauty design' as well as on the design activities of Lufthansa and Apple.
£26.01
Edition Axel Menges Memorials: Betrachtungen über Denk-Male in unserer Zeit
Text in English & German. The topic of this book is memory. What do we remember? We like to recall joyful events and wish we could relive them again and again. On the other hand wars, genocides, flight, destruction and epidemics are events remembered with horror, and sometimes their memory is even repressed. Eventually times change, and we begin to forget everything that happened. Our vision of the world is in danger of vanishing. Monuments counteract forgetting. Up to the beginning of the 20th century these were marble busts, figures of horsemen, bronze sculptures, columns, gateways and tombs that were erected in public urban spaces and in parks. This was a way to honour heroes and their military, political and cultural feats and to keep their memory alive. Their goal was to educate and admonish people. Their function was thus to provide models, but also to make viewers feel submissive. Today, in our democratic, pluralistic society, when modern means of communication accelerate all developments, the definition of the monument as a solemn, massive sign of remembrance that brings to mind historic moments has become obsolete. Daily the mass media inundate us with a plethora of images of the past and the present. Thus millions of people can participate in past and present events. There is an almost infinite number of collective experiences and just as many signs of remembrance. This being so, is there anything that can still be called a monument? It is this and similar questions regarding monuments that preoccupy the author in this book; he presents his profound insights into all aspects of the history of architecture and art, of philosophy and the new media. The book is a godsend for readers who are looking for ideas and information that go beyond the mainstream.
£50.40
Edition Axel Menges California: Impressions from the American West
Text in English and German. Perhaps the fascination of American landscapes, particularly the deserts is their featurelessness. In Germany, Brandenburg for example, the much plainer landscape lives on in its history. This where the Great Elector won his victory and Napoleon lost a battle. Actual nature unaffected by human beings is hidden under the woodland and heath. The American desert landscape is dominated by grandiose nature with out human intervention. Here the history of the earth is to the fore exercising a particular fascination and anyone who reads it enjoys a double gift. The author travelled around the country photographing the mountains and valleys, the coastline and nature reserves. He also encountered people and writes about American friendliness.
£25.20
Edition Axel Menges Structuralism Reloaded: Rule-Based DEsign in Architecture and Urbanism
Originally 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.
£70.20
Edition Axel Menges Home of Ones Own / Emigrierte Architekten und ihre Hauser: Emigre Architects and Their Houses. 19201960
Text in English & German. When architects design a house for themselves, the often tense relationship between clients and builders is usually absent. That is why in many such buildings the architect-designers artistic stance and political position, preferences and antipathies, temperament and character are more pronounced than usual. Moreover the architectural theories, debates and trends of an epoch also leave their traces in them in a particular way. We encounter both attachment to tradition and commitment to the avant-garde, willingness to experiment and pragmatism, distinctive artistry and views shaped by the fact that a building is also a product of engineering. And last but not least, expressed in their houses are the personal life circumstances of the people concerned, or the messages the houses are meant to convey above and beyond their actual purpose: as a 'manifesto', as the 'self-portrait' of the architect, but also as an advertising tool or as a sign of connection to specific milieux or positions. Building for oneself has a special connotation under the conditionsof migration and exile. Among the most prominent examples are the private homes of Rudolph Schindler in West Hollywood (1921/22), Richard Neutra in Los Angeles (1932), Walter Gropius in Lincoln, Massachusetts (1937/1938), Ernst May near Nairobi (1937/1938), Bruno Taut in Istanbul (1937/1938), Ernö Goldfinger in London (19371939), Marcel Breuer in New Canaan, Connecticut (1938/1939 and 1947/1948), Josep Lluís Sert in Lattingtown, New York (19471950) and Max Cetto in Mexiko-Stadt (1948/1949). What expression could voluntary migration or forced change of location find in these buildings? To what extent do the architects other buildings differ from such 'homes of ones own' in a foreign country, to use an expression borrowed and modified from Virginia Woolf? The book is a collection of contributions by internationally renowned authors and examines not only the buildings themselves but also other aspects of the topic that have hitherto received little attention.
£53.91
Edition Axel Menges Gunnar Birkerts: Metaphoric Modernist
Latvian-born architect Gunnar Birkerts belongs to the second wave of modernists who arrived in the United States from abroad, a group that includes Kevin Roche and Cesar Pelli among others. Educated at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Birkerts worked first with Eero Saarinen in his now-legendary office in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and later was chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki. At that time both Saarinen and Yamasaki were developing their distinctive architectural signatures and building their international renown. Subsequently Birkerts established his own practice, evolving a design process and a philosophy with its own original profile. His approach does not seek a "right style for the job" in the manner of Saarinen. From the first, Birkerts' work was tied to a program as well as a particular context -- a place -- to the extent that it became expressive of the surrounding landscape and accommodating to the existing vernacular. Birkerts' designs, from the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis to the Corning Museum of Glass to the Houston Arts Museum and recently the Latvian National Library, shows him exploring with ever greater resource and inventiveness the expressive possibilities of symbol and metaphor. Form, he believes, expresses function, and does so with its own rich, meaningful vocabulary. Birkerts uses visual metaphors to link program, client, and landscape in a resonant solution. His methodology of using metaphor -- meaning -- as a first principle, as a generator of design concept, is unusual in the profession, but it is vitally connected to his Latvian heritage and his family background as the son of a folklorist and writer. This heritage is given a new turn here, for the biographical text of the book has been written by his son, Sven Birkerts, who is a noted literary critic and author of the influential book The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. He has also written a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades which describes at some length his coming of age struggles with his architect father. Now, years later, Sven brings his cultural perspectives as well as his family insights to bear, offering a unique portrait of a life and career. History and description are enlivened throughout by observations and reflections on the career -- the destiny -- of this master of the expressive concept. The book is richly illustrated and complemented by descriptive assessments of the projects by Martin Schwartz, who is an architect and writer and who teaches at Lawrence Technical University in Southfield, Michigan.
£71.10
Edition Axel Menges Ruins: Reflections about Violence Chaos and Transience
Text 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.
£62.10
Edition Axel Menges Basic Design: Ein Gestaltungshandbuch für Architekten und Designer / A Design Handbook for Architects & Designers
Book & DVD. Text in English & German. Friedrich Christoph Wagner spent the years between 1965 and 2002 with few interruptions lecturing students of architecture on the basics of design. In this book he spreads out a summation of his teachings. Thereby he presents an insight into his working methods, a definition of the position of the basics of design, a practical didactic system for creativity, perception and aesthetics as well as a large number of examples of his students' work. A first block about creative training is followed by a broad selection of sculptural themes by means of study pieces based upon "body space" and "the logic of the form". Then the author is moving along with studies of the phenomenon of space with its basic topological and geometrical patterns as well as the primal images and primal acts in architecture. This is followed by a discussion of the surface and of surface structures as well as of the line, with the concomitant topics of sequences and proportions. Under 'Elements of architecture' the author presents students' projects and findings, with an emphasis on proxemics, locations, situations, the ways in which people behave and the corresponding forms in architecture. In connection with this, a number of excursions were undertaken to the island of Sifnos in the Cyclades, where students assisted in making measurements and conducting research at the Kato Petali site. The book contains a DVD with sound samples and films concerned with 'space and light'.
£53.91
Edition Axel Menges Sonwik, Flensburg: Series: Opus 61
Text in English and German. Shortly after the navy had given up its Flensburg Fjord base a group of developers acquired the site which comprises 7 hectares of land and 5.5 hectares of water. The group developed an urban quarter here and called it 'Sonwik', from the north Frisian words 'Son' (sun) and 'Wik' (bay). Its principal attraction is a housing estate, unique in Germany, which consists of 20 water-houses painted in vibrant colour. They are placed in loose series on a right angle by a jetty, at the same time forming the outer framework for a large marina for 400 sailing boats and yachts. Most of the former navy buildings on the wide green promenade have now been converted for civilian use -- under the eyes of the monument-protection authorities and with great skill and sensitivity. The red brick buildings date from the first third of the 20th century, and now accommodate apartments, offices, shops, cafés and businesses related to water sports. The row of buildings is about 500m long, and is complemented, in urban development terms, by two taller buildings that at the same time mark the unmistakable entrance to this attractive site. They were designed by the Hamburg architects APB, who won the competition for them. However, the special feature are the 20 houses standing in the water, designed by the Flensburg practice of Asmussen & Partner. Each of them was built on a reinforced concrete platform placed about 2m above water level, using a two-storey timber-post structure. The owners were able to structure their own floor plans and equally -- following a canon established as a matter of principle -- the size and position of some windows. In addition to the roof terrace and private mooring 'cellar', the striking characteristic of these buildings are their colours -- red, blue, orange and yellow -- which are visible from a great distance.
£22.41
Edition Axel Menges Paul Wegener: Early Modernism in Film
Text in German. The title of Paul Wegener's film Hans Trutz im Schlaraffenland, dating from 1917, alludes to Pieter Bruegel's well-known picture Cockaigne (Das Schlaraffenland). For Wegener art history, which he counted as one of his 'favourite occupations' throughout his life, was an inexhaustible treasury of images. Although he did not always allude so openly to the relationship between film and other arts as he does here, it is always a tangible presence. Wegener was one of the most striking actors in the German theatre, from the time he joined Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater (1906) until his death in 1948. And at a very early stage he mastered the new pictorial language of the cinema, as a leading performer, director and author of many fairy-tale-like, imaginative films. He started in 1913 with his Student of Prague, which immediately brought him world fame. The high point was the 1920 film The Golem (with sets by Hans Poelzig), which played in New York, for example, for eleven months. Films like these placed Wegener at the beginning of a brilliant epoch in German film art. Wegener's pictorial world is seen both in the context of the art of his period and in a retrospective view of the history of the motif. Pictorial comparisons and analyses from the point of view of interdisciplinary iconography are revealing about Wegener's position in artistic development. Unknown aspects emerge, which show Wegener's personality and work in a new light. Comparative observation shows that this work is the film variant on the great Neo-Romantic renewal movement, which affected all fields of life and art at the beginning of our century. It has increasingly attracted academic attention in recent years, adding an interesting early phase to the excessively one-sided image of Modernism.
£34.20
Edition Axel Menges Karl Friedrich Schinkel--Leben und Werk: Leben und Werk
Text in German. This monograph was first published in 1980, and appears now in a third, improved edition. It is the first and to date the only book to place Schinkel's life and work in the artistic context of his day. It is devoted to his family and circle of friends, and to his universal artistic, technical and administrative activities. Arranged according to his various spheres of work, it brings together a variety of material from contemporary sources, letters, newspapers, diaries and other writing and presents Schinkel as his contemporaries saw him and in his own words. Authors featured include Bettina and Achim von Arnim, Clemens von Brentano, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Johann Gottfried Schadow, Christian Daniel Rauch, Friedrich Tieck, Carl Friedrich Zelter and many others of his friends, who followed his artistic development sympathetically and also critically. As well as his architectural designs and buildings, a fitting place is found for his publicly exhibited dioramas and the magazine critics' response to them, his oil paintings, which were much loved by the Romantics, his stage sets, which are still admired and not least his arts-and-crafts work. The chosen illustrations underline the diversity of his output. Dankwart Guratzsch wrote about the first edition in the daily paper Die Welt: "...certainly the most moving book of the Schinkel year -- as it shows the setbacks and disappointments, and the physical suffering this tough, tireless, imaginative man had to go through to keep faith in his task as an ennobler of all human circumstances. Heinz Ohff, for many years arts editor for the Berlin Tagespiegel, wrote recently that he still considered the book 'unsurpassed' in terms of its wealth of facts. And Walter Jens referred to it in a lecture as an important cultural-historical analysis".
£41.40
Edition Axel Menges The Architecture of East Australia
In 1840 Sir Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor General of the British Crown, chose a rocky promontory on Sydney harbour for his home. He built a cottage in the style of Gothic Revival, popularised in England by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and documented in popular copy books shipped with his baggage from his home country. The house perfectly expresses the imaginative dislocation of European culture into the romantic wilderness. Whether they came out of duty, like Mitchell, or in the hope of opportunity, the European immigrants viewed Australia as a "terra nullius", as an empty land, a vacant space waiting to receive a model of Christian civilisation. It took a century to realise that the dream did not comfortably fit the continent. The story of Australian architecture might be said to parallel the endeavours of Australians to adapt and reconcile themselves with their home and neighbours. It is the story of 200 years of coming to terms with the land: of adaptation, insight and making do. Early settlers were poorly provisioned, profoundly ignorant of the land and richly prejudiced towards its peoples. They pursued many paths over many terrains. From the moist temperate region of Tasmania with heavy Palladian villas to the monsoonal north with open, lightweight stilt houses, the continent has induced most different regional building styles. The buildings included within this guide extend from the first examples of Australian architecture by convict architect Francis Greenway to the works by today's rising generation. It covers not only buildings by such famous architects as Walter Burley Griffin, Harry Seidler, Jørn Utzon, John Andrews, Philip Cox and Glenn Murcutt, but also many high-quality works by less known exponents of the profession. Photographs by the renowned Max Dupain and the present proprietor of his firm, Eric Sierins, including many especially commissioned for this book, support the text. Contributing authors have supplied material where vital local knowledge is essential.
£21.60
Edition Axel Menges Healthy Homes in Tropical Zones: A Plea for Improving Rural Domestic Building in Asia & Africa
Early nomadic shelters, including caves, animal skin tents, and igloos, were used for protection against wind, rain, snow, sunlight, and other forces of nature. These basic homes also provided defence against predators and were used to store a few important possessions. They were temporary, and proximity to a water source was of prime importance. For hunters and gatherers, shelter was an important aspect of survival. Health and comfort were not yet under consideration. As civilisation evolved, housing became more permanent, with increasing attention to well-being. The housing and utilities available in rich countries are vastly different from those in poorer settings. Unlike in industrialised countries where piped-in water, indoor toilets, and sewage systems are the norm, in the developing world these facilities are often not available. Waterborne enteric diseases, preventable by the supply of safe water, hand washing, and appropriate sanitation, continue to be a major disease burden in poor countries. Vector-borne diseases that can be controlled by screening and other barrier methods also remain an important health problem. Safe, comfortable, and healthy homes are an essential requisite for healthy living around the world, irrespective of culture or socio-economic status. Throughout the tropics there is a huge diversity in house design and use of building supplies based on centuries of indigenous experience, customs, and availability of local resources for construction. These differences in building style and materials affect the indoor conditions and comfort of occupants, which in turn influence the occupants' exposure to certain infectious diseases. In this book the authors describe the architectural designs and materials of rural houses in two countries in Asia (Thailand, Philippines) and two in Africa (The Gambia, Tanzania). They analyse the effect of design on the indoor climate and relate these factors to health, notably the risk of mosquito-borne infectious diseases such as malaria. Based on their findings and a detailed understanding of local building styles and preferences, they describe a series of house modifications that could enhance comfort whilst reducing health risks.
£62.10
Edition Axel Menges Modern Architecture in Berlin: 466 Examples from 1900 to the Present Day
2019 Edition. Although Berlins history encompasses more than eight hundred years and its beginnings reach back as far as the twelfth century, its present-day urban image is essentially characterized by structures and building measures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Four "modern" development phases, whose respective qualities were vastly unalike, played a determining role in this image: during the second half of the nineteenth century, against the backdrop of industrialization, Berlins rise from a comprehensible Prussian capital and residence to an expanding metropolis of the German Empire; the 1920 consolidation of the city with the surrounding ninety-three townships, rural communities and properties to form "Greater Berlin"; following the destruction of World War II, working "back to back" politically, territorially, and regarding the look of Berlins divided, urban structure until 1990; and from the reunification to the present-day, the ongoing structural and spatial connections as well as architectural refinements required for Berlins role as capital of the new Federal Republic. The contents of this architectural guide vividly stand out against the backdrop of Berlins recent history a course of events as multifaceted as it was, in part, excessive, up until today. This publication deliberately focuses on the citys last one hundred years when, generation by generation, Berlin daringly and almost obsessively rediscovered itself architecturally. The selected examples not only convey a visually impressive and representative longitudinal progression, but also in which form the most provocative of social movements, changes and breaks presented themselves in the architecture of the city. With texts and images, the book presents 466 architectural works built from 1907 to the present day. The authors choices support the greater intention to present what can now be deemed contemporary, typical, and exemplary about every period of Berlins diverse, irregular, and amazingly rich architectural history. That the examples offered here blatantly declare themselves products of the "modern age" and "Neues Bauen" permits them to be understood as a "manifesto in images" which consolidates to a twentieth-century architectural collage, whose quality and wide range grant it an unquestionable uniqueness. Rolf Rave is an architect practising in Berlin together with his wife Roosje. He comes from a family of architects and art historians; his father, Paul Ortwin Rave, director of the Berlin Nationalgalerie until 1950 and director of the Berlin Kunstbibliothek from 1950 to 1961, was the editor of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Lebenswerk from 1939 until his death in 1962.
£28.80
Edition Axel Menges Stadttagebücher
Text 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.
£62.10
Edition Axel Menges Oswald Matthias Ungers, Haus Belvederestraße 60, Köln-Müngersdorf: Haus Belvederestrabe 60, Koln-Mungersdorf
A house is a representation of the idea of the world, of life, of existence. For the Cologne architect Oswald Mathias Ungers (19262007), owner of a famous collection of books on architecture, who also repeatedly addressed the theoretical aspects of building, the construction of his own house, in 1958/59, was more than a private adventure. For him it meant a chance to gain spatial experience and explore what was possible. It was a laboratory, a little universe, a piece of world. In the course of his life, Ungers built himself and his family no less than three houses, two in the Cologne suburb of Müngersdorf, one in the Eifel highlands. Even the first house, to which this richly illustrated volume is dedicated, caused an international sensation; it was considered to be an important example of so-called Brutalism. It showed "everything I knew how to do at the time", Ungers wrote regarding the building. He wanted a house that enveloped and sheltered, he wanted metamorphosis and transformation; architecture that was autonomous but at the same time respected the genius loci. At the time, architects preferred to build their private homes as freestanding bungalows in the countryside. Ungers, on the other hand, settled in a place where there were traces of the Roman past and purchased a plot of land adjacent to an already existing row of terraced houses. Three decades later, Ungers expanded the cataract of forms of his first home by adding a geometrically strict cube, intended to house his library. The shock aesthetics of the early work had evolved into the rigorous abstractness of his late work. This building too one of a kind, and in interplay with its predecessor became a manifesto. It corresponded to the idea of a house as a small town and the town as a large house, an idea that has run through European architectural history since Alberti. In spite of all their differences, the two contrasting formats make common cause. They show a world full of contradictions, illusions and realities that reflects the entire spectrum of the image of architecture, from the fiction to the reality of the function. Today the house and the library are the seat of the UAA, the Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft, and open to the public. The architectural historian Wolfgang Pehnt often visited Ungers. The author of an authoritative book about the architecture of Expressionism, he profited by Ungers' collection of material back in the years when Ungers was still interested in Expressionism. Thus he is familiar with the house in its details and has witnessed its modifications. As portrayed by him, the history of the origins of the house gives access to the impressive uvre of a great German architect.
£26.91
Edition Axel Menges Erdmut Bramke, Werkverzeichnis. Bd. 3: Kunst am Bau
The third volume of Erdmut Bramkes catalogue raisonné is devoted to "art in architecture" and temporary works in public spaces. It complements the two volumes already published with the presentations of paintings and works on paper. This makes the artists work accessible to the public in its entirety. The richly illustrated catalogue presents the artists competition entries from 1974 to 2002 in chronological order. The reconstruction of more than 20 realised and unrealised projects on the basis of unpublished material and personal notes from the artists estate provide an insight into her working methods and allow a detailed view of the process of creating the works. Both the sketches and designs and the executed works show an incredible joy for experimenting and variability in the use of materials, ranging from painted metal sheets, holes drilled in wood and stone to tiles, fabrics, canvas, graffiti, glass and paving stones. Embedded in the discourse on "art in architecture" and its genesis in the 20th century, Bramkes works are presented in the context of the design process. Characteristic of her interventions in public space is her sensitiveness to the surrounding space which does not see her work as an addition to the existing architecture, but rather uses the architectural space to evoke quiet, contemplative moments through intense colour experiences or to make the space experienceable. The "Bramke system" manifests itself even with the early, expansive work for the University of Constance. The form-giving element is a variable order structure. The arrangement of the same elements with slight changes and nuances, but following the same laws in rows, condense into a structure and become a vibrating lineament. Even 50 years after its completion, the work is considered as a successful example of how "art in archi- tecture" can have integrative and functional qualities without losing its artistic value. Between this first major work for the University of Constance from 1974 to 1976 and the expansive work for the central library of the University of Tubingen at the end of her life constants in the "Bramke system" become apparent. At the same time, the overall view clearly shows the development of an artist who helped to shape her ambience in a grand gesture. Susanne Grötz, born 1961 in Koblenz, studied art history and German and Italian literature in Marburg and Pisa. She has been working on the estate of Erdmut Bramke for many years. The author lives and works in Stuttgart and Italy as a freelance exhibition curator and tour guide.
£35.91
Edition Axel Menges Roads and Bridges of the Roman Empire
As a civil engineer with leading German construction companies, Horst Barow has built highways and bridges in many parts of the world. He was aware of the importance infrastructure has for the development of a region, and he knew how important efficient administration is to achieve public works. During vacations he and his wife liked to visit the Mediterranean countries, and they were amazed by the vestiges of the Roman Empire, not the least of them being roads and bridges. In many cases they still carry modern traffic after 2000 years. Thus Barow decided to make the study of Roman roads and bridges his special interest, and through many years he systematically collected material and surveyed bridges on the spot. Having retired, he studied history, with emphasis on the Roman period. His untimely death in 2010 left his wife with a great work in progress, and it is thanks to the publisher that this book has been realised. Friedrich Ragette, an architect who taught history of architecture and engineering for many years, was entrusted with editing the material and translating it from German into English. The book covers all aspects of road and bridge construction in the Roman Empire, from commissioning, planning and design to contracting and execution. Technical details include surveying, materials, tools, and implements. The Roman road network is shown with Latin place names; principles and types of construction are explained. The core of the work deals with bridge construction: design criteria, structural systems, foundations and abutments are dealt with in detail. Particularly attractive are five dozens of case studies, presenting individual bridges, which were reviewed by the author on site. Countless illustrations, mostly in colour, enliven the book. Bibliography and glossary complete the work.
£49.90
Edition Axel Menges Debordered Space: Indeterminacy within the Visual Perception of Space
Text 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.
£32.40