Search results for ""DOM Publishers""

From the Arab conquest to the Arab Spring: in its capacity for architectural and social transformation and in its tension between religious tradition and modern glitter, Cairo is like no other city in the Islamic world. In this book, Swiss architect Thomas Meyer-Wieser explores the idea of the North African city that was once the heart of ancient civilisation and is now the capital of modern Egypt. As well as looking at more than 300 buildings, he takes the reader on 20 walks and excursions. • The Arab conquest: 7th to 10th centuries • Fatimid rule: 10th to 12th centuries • The Golden Age: 12th to 15th centuries • Ottoman provincial city: 16th to 18th centuries • ‘Paris on the Nile’: Cairo in the 19th century • The modern metropolis: 20th to 21st centuries

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In the post-war decades, Hong Kong architects, many of them having migrated from Mainland China or studied overseas, embraced modern principles when forced to face the problems of housing shortage, mass construction and limited budgets. Although economic efficiencies often prevailed over design, their buildings were rooted in their time and place, reflecting the local climate, social values, materials, technique and use in an often unique and pragmatic fashion. With more than 300 buildings and ensembles documented, the new publication “Hong Kong Modern Architecture of the 1950s-1970s” by Walter Koditek gives a comprehensive overview on the architecture of that transformative period in combining full-page photographs with detailed background information and further b/w images explaining and illustrating the design and history of these buildings. Information about the architects behind the projects and a series of academic essays penned by renowned scholars Cecilia L. Chu, Eunice Seng, Ying Zhou, and Charles Lai complement the publication. While the book does not seek to provide a complete inventory, its unique documentary format, which deliberately mixes well-known architectural masterpieces with more mundane structures under seven specific building categories, invites viewers to comprehend the intrinsic relationships between these built forms and how their designs have been simultaneously shaped by the advent of the international Modern Movement and adaptions to the local context. Crucially, the uniform framing and composition of these compelling facade images directs attention not only to often overlooked architectural details, but also to the varied informal appropriations that transformed their modernist characters over time. The book aims to serve as a reference and enhance knowledge on modernist architecture of the post-war era in Hong Kong, and will contribute to the discussion of its architectural merit, historic and cultural values. Its publication was supported by the Goethe-Institut Hongkong (www.goethe.de/hongkong), Design Trust Seed Grant (www.designtrust.hk), and Docomomo Hong Kong (www.docomomo.hk).

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This monograph on the work of the Russian architect Galina Balashova presents a unique collection of designs for Soviet cosmonautics. These include plans and engineering drawings for Soyuz capsules and the space stations Salyut and Mir. Balashova acted as a consultant to the Buran programme, the Soviet counterpart to the American Space Shuttle.

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Exploring nursery schools and childcare facilities from an architectural perspective, this publication provides a cultural-historical account of their development, defines design tasks, and formulates quality standards for playing-learning architecture and environments. This publication explores nursery schools and childcare facilities from an architectural perspective. The aim is to provide a cultural-historical account of the development of educational buildings for children, to define design tasks, and to formulate quality standards for play-learning architecture and environments.

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Builders have never been so prolific as they are today. And never have there been so many technical and design-related options available to architects. Yet contemporary architecture often creates a sense of unease. In their book, Sergei Tchoban and Wladimir Sedow show how the balance between prominent buildings and the buildings around them in the background has been lost in the modern era. Every building strives to assert itself over others – to drown out its peers. At the same time, contemporary architects are capable of developing “a sense of harmony full of contrasts”. They have a wealth of options at their disposal to this end. After prowling through 2,500 years of architectural history, the authors arrive at what makes modern buildings so particular. They show what contemporary architects must consider in order to create buildings with a satisfactory, harmonious appearance in a new way. “Sergei Tchoban and Wladimir Sedow do not write about beauty in this essay – certainly not in the sense of defining the term or putting forth a conceptual history. Rather, they write about the relationship between prominent buildings and the nameless buildings around them – the buildings in the background. Or to put it another way, they write about the relationship between architectural monuments and ordinary buildings.” (from the preface by Bernhard Schulz)

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The ancient city of Asmara is the capital of Eritrea and its largest settlement. Its beautiful architecture was rediscovered by outsiders in the early 1990s. In this book, the authors offer an original analysis of the colonial city, providing a history not only of the physical and visible urban reality, but also of a second, invisible city as it exists in the imagination. The colonial city becomes a fantastical set of cities where each one reflects the others as if in a kaleidoscope. This ambitious book breaks new ground, and moves us a little further along in the attempt to read Asmara into contemporary theory. This book brings together scholars from a multiplicity of disciplines who have shown the ways in which colonial and postcolonial criticism has served as a platform for new, diversified readings of Asmara, which compile cultural and social history, critical and political theory, anthropological fieldwork, visual culture studies, literary and cinematic analysis, gender studies, diaspora and urban studies. The book examines the current realities of Asmara in order to address the continuing effects of the legacy of colonialism upon the city dwellers.

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The exotic and ultra-modern architecture of Japan’s capital city fascinates architecture aficionados all around the world. This new Tokyo Architectural Guide is an indispensable companion for anyone seeking to explore the architecture of one of the world’s largest and most complex cities. Two hundred of Tokyo’s most interesting buildings from the post-1945 era are introduced in pictures and informative texts. Historical photographs, plans and several indices complete this practical and user-friendly guide, with maps making the buildings easy to locate. Includes a foreword by the renowned expert on contemporary architecture in Japan, Botond Bognar.

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Preservation is ordinarily reserved for architecture that is unique. So how would we go about preserving buildings that are utterly generic? Such is the case with Belyayevo, an ordinary residential district in Moscow. Belyayevo is a typical microrayon - the standardised neighbourhood system that successive Soviet regimes laid out across the USSR in what was the most expansive programme of industrialised construction the world has ever seen. Belyayevo's buildings, and the desolate spaces between them, are identical to thousands of others, but is it different? Kuba Snopek argues that it is. Home to many of the artists of the Moscow Conceptualism School, the place was written into the character of their art. Snopek argues that this intangible heritage is the key to saving a neighbourhood many feel has had its day. But as Russia comes to terms with its Soviet legacy, will such arguments fall on deaf ears?

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The fifth largest population in the world is rapidly expanding. For the past seven decades, both Indonesian and international architects have developed new ideas in order to fulfil the demands of the country's 250_ million inhabitants, in line with economic progress. Imelda Akmal's Architectural Guide Indonesia presents over one hundred must-visit buildings which date from the post- independence era (1945) to the present day. The book explores buildings that still embrace traditional Indonesian architectural heritage as well as those whose design is based on practical considerations, thus offering a valuable insight into the works of emerging and established architects. Each project is illustrated with stunning colour photo graphs and detailed information to facilitate an understanding of its historical and political context.

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Amid the endless plains of Kazakhstan, an extraordinary architectural experiment has arisen: Astana. Formerly an outpost of the Tsarist Empire in the barren steppe, the location had developed into a typical Soviet provincial town. However, both internationally renowned and local architects are now designing spectacular and unique buildings in this dynamic city. Furthermore, Astana will host the Expo 2017 which will take place only twenty years after the city was built in the steppe alongside the old centre. The Astana Architectural Guide documents eighty diverse buildings and projects in the Kazakh metropolis, which was masterplanned by Kisho Kurokawa, and examines the contradictory nature at play within oriental traditions, western models and Soviet influences. Therefore, this publication represents a critical analysis of architecture and capital city planning in the centre of Eurasia.

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Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, Atacama Desert and the Pacific Coast: even today the apperception of Chile remains remote and indistinct. There is no doubt that its geographical location - confined between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountain range - has had a role to play in the relative nescience, although it was the former political situation that led to the country's isolation for almost twenty years. In fact, it is only in these last fifteen years that Chilean architecture has appeared on the international stage, mostly owing to Mathias Klotz, Alejandro Aravena, Smiljan Radic and Pezo von Ellrichsausen , amongst others. Chile can take pride in having built some genuine Modern masterpieces whilst having preserved a close relationship with its culture. During the twentieth century Europe provided Chile with sources of inspiration. Le Corbusier had a great influence on Chilean architects despite never having visited the country; his followers, such as Emilio Duhart, Roberto Davila and the BVCH office, realised buildings which are today internalised deep in the Chilean psyche. The Bauhaus movement served as another influence for architects such as Sergio Larrain. Overall, this book aims to be a practicalreference source of the best architectural works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in Chile.

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This book aims to explore Berlin's ability not to trivialise new ideas and thus remain a leader in innovation. Berlin is a city that continues to fascinate. It has a tormented history, is the capital of two reconciled Germanies, is an increasingly popular tourist destination, and has affordable living and workspaces for young people, artists, and other creative minds. The 3.7-million metropolis is also the scene for large-scale urban and architectural projects, bottom-up projects, and citizens' initiatives such as communal gardening, cooperative living and other urban innovations. Is the miracle of Berlin's success due to its genius of improvisation, that is to say its ability to adapt to a complex history, to invent specific courses of action, to negotiate? Since 2016, Berlin policy makers have developed an urban strategy to combat real estate price increases and gentrification. Another challenge for Berlin is to adapt to demographic change and the growing number of tourists. More participative, more equitable, and less favourable to automobiles, this city is looking to incorporate diverse methods: public/private partnership, citizen awareness initiatives, social and economic

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The prolific architectural legacy of Delhi is remarkable not only for its antiquity but also its diversity. While the period of antiquity encompass various types of Hindu, Islamic and Colonial architecture, it is modern architecture that laid the foundation of post-independent development of the city. Today, the city has been engulfed by an explosion of the built environment. One has to search for the forgotten or obscure jewels of architecture. Architectural Guide Delhi introduces over 200 of these known or obscure examples of Delhi's architecture particularly those built after india's independence in 1947. All projects presented with over 450 photographs, texts and drawings have been contributed by various architectural practitioners in Delhi. Information about each entry is enhanced by geo-data in the form of QR codes.

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Since 2011, the German government has been implementing a policy phasing out nuclear power. Over a period of seven years, Bernhard Ludewig photographed the country’s atomic landscape and history, keeping a visual record of the buildings and the work performed in them. The images, collected here, create a unique panorama of usually inaccessible spaces. On show are the plants’ operations – processes including the opening of the reactor and the loading of Castor containers for transport – and interiors, such as control rooms and cooling towers. The book follows the journey of uranium from enrichment through reprocessing to final storage, and shows research spanning from ­Otto Hahn’s discovery of fission to thorium and breeder reactor prototypes. In total 55 sites are represented, and im­ages of research reactors, training facilities, and ­Chernobyl’s sarcophagus provide a further look behind closed door. The Nuclear Dream offers an insight into a disappearing world whose rooms and technology ­often appear sacred. It is a fitting tribute to an era of boundless energy – one whose blue glow captured a generation and proclaimed the start of a new era.

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Prefabricated housing, often associated with blighted urban land­scapes and monotonous grey boxes, has evolved into an approach to housing with a wealth of aesthetic and ­structural possibilities. Modern methods of constructing and assembling prefabricated buildings – methods that can be traced back to the 19th century – are going through a renaissance. This is true across the world, from Vancouver and New York to London and Berlin through to Astana and Singapore. Moreover, prefabrication now serves a wider range of purposes than ever before. In ­Moscow, Europe’s largest metropolitan area, it is primarily used ­­­­as a means to provide ­affordable homes. But in some countries, prefabrication is surprisingly also used to build exclusive, upmarket properties. This construction and design manual presents a range of ­different production and assembly methods currently used in the field of prefabricated housing. It particularly focuses on ­efficiency, sustainability, and market relevance, and presents strategies for ­organising processes along with best-practice examples that reflect the latest trends. The manual also ex­plores the historical development of prefabricated housing in order to discover its full architectural potential. Finally, it outlines ten design parameters for prefabricated housing and presents 15 noteworthy examples, making a fresh contribution to the debate on affordable housing today.

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Whatever Rotterdam may be, it is not a cliché image of Holland. Maybe that is exactly the reason why characterizations of the city usually cannot do without a comparison with arch-rival Amsterdam. In contrast to its picture-perfect big sister, war-traumatized Rotterdam is full of urban ruptures: buildings come and go like in no other Dutch city. The transitory nature of architecture might also be related to its identity as a harbour city. “Other cities have a harbour, but in Rotterdam the harbour has a city”, goes a local saying. The book Rotterdam. Architectural Guide presents 150 buildings, arranged by neighbourhood. On this foray through the city, the reader is introduced to its history – from the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century to the massive expansion of the harbour in the 19th century, from “the beautiful merchant’s city” to industrial Rotterdam –, even if the focus is clearly on the 20th century and on the latest developments. For although the social problems are great, the city has recently become much more attractive. Around 2014 four iconic buildings were opened: high-rise De Rotterdam, the new Central Station, Markthal, and Timmerhuis. They kicked off a brand-new hype. At the other end of the spectrum lies a range of bottom-up, low-budget projects. Rotterdam offered ample space for such initiatives, with its openness for experiments and and the idea of the city as a prototype that continues to spread there. In combination with the upgrading of the city centre and the gentrification of former harbour areas, all this led to Rotterdam suddenly being called the “Dutch Brooklyn”, praising its off-beat charm in comparison to overcrowded, mainstream Amsterdam. The book Rotterdam. Architectural Guide shows where this charm comes from and where you can find it.

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This architectural guide brings together 100 of the most original structures built in New York City since 1999. Vladimir Belogolovsky pairs them with such nicknames as Guillotine, Peacock, Shark’s Fin, Turtle Shell, and Woodpecker. The New York-based author’s selection covers buildings realized by the world’s most renowned architects in a period when their creations were celebrated as art, and personal styles were encouraged by the media, critics, and clients. The featured time span begins with the rise of the starchitect in the late 1990s and ends in the present day. But the mission of the book is not only to document; it is also to celebrate New York’s transformative energy. Many of the buildings were designed either by foreign architects or those who settled in the city and now call it home. Through witty, incisive commentary, catchy nicknames, and quotes from the author’s interviews with the architects, this singular guide allows readers to see many of New York’s contemporary icons in a new way.

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