Search results for ""axel menges""

Text in English and German. Ludwig Persius (1803-1845) was a pupil of Karl Friedrich Schinkel and his closest assistant. Very little has been published about him to date. With the aim of providing an exhaustive documentation of all his work that is still in existence, the present volume now shows Persius' architectural work in its current condition in 180 photographs, with numerous as yet unpublished exterior and interior photographs including also many detailed views. Persius' architecture was moulded by the work of Schinkel. He was his site supervisor at the Hofgärtnerhaus in Charlottenhof, adopting its style inspired by Italian domestic architecture for his numerous villas with towers, which are still characteristic features of the Potsdam cityscape. He was a master of the disposition of building volumes and of tying buildings into the landscape. About 50 buildings have survived, including early industrial structures. Persius' work is to be found almost exclusively in Potsdam. King Friedrich Wilhelm IV appointed him to the post of an "Architect to the King", a title he shared only with Friedrich August Stüler. His best-known buildings are the Friedenskirche in Potsdam, the Heilandskirche in Sacrow and the so-called Mosque by the Havel bay in Potsdam, a steam-driven pump-house in the Moorish style for the fountains in the gardens of Sanssouci and an eminent example of the romantic and exotic transfiguration of a simple functional building.

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Text in English and German. This book presents a selection from all Tesar's creative periods and an essay introduces the background to this art and its current positioning, which not least raises theoretical questions about the relationship between pictorial art and architecture. Tesar's drawings are presented as a project that turns a vision of Modernism into reality within a manageable personal sphere. The vision conjures up, as modern creative work is condemned to becoming increasingly specialised, an alternative 'art as a life practice', but -- and this is the present level of perception -- one that can ultimately be realised only in individual art projects.

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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".

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Text in German. Despite the wide variety of publications about urban development, there has long been a lack of a full and coherent presentation of the way town planning has developed in our time. The present publication closes this gap in urban-development literature. It starts at the point at which the upheaval of the French Revolution and industrialisation set the course for today's urban constellations. The survey follows the narrative approach taken by Anglo-Saxon historians, and the individual sections deal with the main urban-development themes that shifted into the foreground in the 19th century: municipal revolution and urban regulations; industrial revolution and urban growth, above all in relation to the special part played by Great Britain; and the continuation of the classical urban-design ideal in France, England and Germany. Also the social-Utopian estate and urban-development models devised by Robert Owen and Charles Fourier in the early days of industrialisation; the great city re-developments (Paris, Lyon etc.), urban beautification (the Ringstrasse in Vienna) and urban expansion (London's suburban growth, the Berlin general building plan of 1862 and tenement building); paternalistic workers' housing programmes in England, France and Germany; attempts at aesthetic renewal by Camillo Sitte, Raymond Unwin and the 'City-Beautiful Movement' in the USA in the late 19th century; attempts at reform through the garden-city idea and subsequent movement. The treatment of these themes illustrates the extent to which contemporary urban situations are determined by 19th century ideas and enterprises. Thus the book provides all readers interested in urban development with an extensive set of facts and strategies. It has turned out as a compendium that aims to present and cast light on the essential features of the city as a Gesamtkunstwerk and to identify important criteria for future urban-development decisions.

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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.

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Text in German. The Villa Lante in Bagnaia near Viterbo is outstanding among 16th-century Italian gardens. It is not particularly large, but it is the undisputed highlight of this epoch, the heyday of Italian horticulture, not just because it is outstandingly well maintained, but also because of its unique formal qualities and its extremely complex iconographic programme. The present monograph attempts to establish what triggers the intense sense of beauty with which visitors to the gardens are confronted. It is immediately clear that it is essential to analyse the form of the garden -- here the extremely precise treatment of central perspective as a device is of considerable interest -- but close attention has also to be paid to the significance of the individual elements and the connections between them. This examination brings an elaborate accumulation of various sign systems to light, which seem to have the astonishing characteristic of not being entirely reconcilable, indeed they appear to build in contradictions as a basic constant. From this develops a panorama of the late 16th century, presenting the tangled pathways of perception of the gardens in all their complex relations, from the various late Renaissance garden types, via philosophy, the response to antiquity, perception of nature, perspective, harmony, literature, theatre and religion, and on to models of time and the forms it takes. Against this background the garden of the Villa Lante, which belonged to the scholarly cardinal and inquisitor Francesco Gambara, proves to be a difficult -- and perhaps not entirely successful -- balancing act between Renaissance traditions and the thrust of the Counter-Reformation, but showing at the same time, as a kind of 'apotheosis of the artwork', a surprising affinity with the present day.

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Text in English and German. The surprising success of Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Easy Rider in the late 60s marks a turning-point in the history of the American cinema, as these are films that differ fundamentally from the traditional Hollywood style. They revised the traditional genre formulae and overturned the rules of classical narrative structure, but they were also aimed at a young audience influenced by alternative culture, a group that the big studios had ignored until then. The American film industry, which was in financial crisis and a phase of artistic stagnation in the sixties because it had tried to meet increasing competition from television by producing blockbusters, started to think again, and became more receptive to new ideas. This created a degree of artistic scope that young directors and filmmakers with artistic ambitions were not slow to exploit in order to realise their creative ideas in the context of mainstream cinema. A period of artistic renewal began, of a kind that had never been possible before in America on such a radical scale. The first wave of New Hollywood was starting to die down in 1971, as the films were often too experimental, too self-referential and too alien for a mass audience, and the market for the limited target group of a young audience interested in culture was quickly saturated. But important stimuli emerged, and made it possible for a series of film-makers like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, Mike Nichols, Alan Pakula, Sydney Pollack, Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, Paul Mazursky, Hal Ashby and ultimately an exceptional figure like Woody Allen establish themselves permanently. They were joined in the seventies by the younger generation of so-called 'whiz kids' like Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader or George Lucas. They all represented the liberation of the director from the dictates of the studio, the acquisition of a right to have individual artistic handwriting and the era of the director as superstar.

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When not directly shaping the fabric of Paris themselves, its rulers have always kept tight control over the activities of others, with the result that Paris has developed under some of the strictest building regulations of any major city. Despite Paris's much vaunted reputation as the cultural salon of Europe, a certain suspicion towards foreign architectural imports has characterised its development, and outside influences have always been adapted to local needs and indigenous modes of expression, a tradition which carried on until the post-war era and arguably continues today. The last decades of the 20th century have witnessed a rush to modernise and adapt a crumbling fabric to the exigencies of the electronic age.

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Outlines this prominent Danish architect and designer's works.

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The book presents four of the most important contemporary museums of the world: Museo Canoviano, Possagno; Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa; The Audrey Jones Beck Building, MFAH; Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg. Each essay details the unique design concepts of each museum, illustrated with interior and exterior details

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Text in English and German. Julia Bolles-Wilson and Peter L Wilson have built a large number of striking, thoroughly detailed cultural and commercial buildings in recent years, all sharing the characteristic that they stubbornly resist superficial stylistic categorisation. Their buildings are articulated and positioned in an unmistakable way in their respective urban spaces, thanks to pointed breaks with rational space configurations, sculptural shapes for architectural silhouettes and the use of polychrome surfaces.

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

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is a unique collection of architectural works -- the Caroline Wiess Law Building, comprising the original William Ward Watkin Building of 1924 and the 1958 and 1974 additions designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; the Lillie and Hugh Roy Culien Sculpture Garden created by Isamu Noguchi in 1986; the Central Administration and Glassell Junior School Building designed by Carlos Jimenez in 1994; and now the Audrey Jones Beck Building by Rafael Moneo. Moneo, winner of the 1996 Pritzker Architecture Prize, has proposed a four-storey facility directly facing the Law Building and connected to it via an underground walkway. The limestone building occupies the whole site, thereby reinforcing its urban character. On the inside, visitors can assemble in the dramatic atrium before proceeding to the upper level galleries to begin their itinerary. The Beck Building is a natural progression of some of the ideas put forth by the architect in previous museum projects, especially the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the complex of the Moderna Museet and the Arkitekturmuseet in Stockholm. A collection of rooms is the underlying concept for the gallery spaces. The galleries may seem conventional, but their organisation within the building is guided by the desire for freedom. The exhaustive studies undertaken to help design the skylights allow for optimum lighting conditions combining natural and artificial light. Climate, light, circulation through the space, dialogue between building and art, and simplicity and elegance of materials are once again concerns that Moneo has addressed thoughtfully and successfully in the new Beck Building.

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In 1975, the European Year of Protection of Ancient Monuments, Alsfeld in Upper Hesse acquired model-town status, along with Berlin, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Xanten and Trier in Germany. In this way the Council of Europe was acknowledging the long tradition of monument protection in a place where an astonishingly large number of historic buildings have survived. There are numerous tightly-packed timber-frame buildings in the medieval ground plan of the town, some built as long ago as the 14th century. The market place, forming the centre of the town with town hall, Weinhaus (wine house) and Hochzeitshaus (wedding house), is one of the most important complexes of its kind in Germany. The town hall, built in a way that inspired many of its German successors, was to have been pulled down in 1878 by order of the town council. It was not until residents protested that preservation and restoration of what is now the symbol of the town were assured, providing the first example of Alsfeld's tradition in this field. Even today ensembles of unique unity are to be found in its main streets. There is almost nowhere else where one can form such a good impression of a small German medieval town than here.

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Norman Foster, one of the most consistent advocates of architec- ture based on modern technology, achieved a world-wide reputa- tion with the headquarters for the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corporation in Hong Kong, Stansted Airport in London, Century Tower in Tokyo and his telecommunications tower in Barcelona. His most important projects in Germany are the conversion of the Reichstag building in Berlin and the new Commerzbank headquar- ters in Frankfurt am Main.

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It was in his home in Oak Park that Frank Lloyd Wright made his first contributions to the Modern movement. In 1889 he designed the first part of the house, in 1895 he added to it for his wife, Catherine, and their family, and in 1898 for his architectural practice. The entire building was a learning laboratory of modern architecture. While not a Prairie School house, it led to the development of the Prairie School. Wrights constant changes to this complex paralleled the evolution of his early architectural work and career. There, with his young assistants, he rethought the plan, spaces, materials, proportions, and lines of American residential architecture, creating a revolution on the Prairie. His home and studio provided the architectural environment in which to experiment with his ideas in three dimensions. The house featured contemporary art work, oriental tribal rugs, and Japanese decorative arts chosen by Wright and his wife. The studio was decorated with classical plaster sculpture, Teco ceramics and selections from Wrights large collection of Japanese prints. Wright completed the interiors, toned in natures hues, with furniture and built-in furnishings of his own design, harmonious to the whole. The colour photographs of Jon Miller of Hedrich-Blessing show a glimpse into Wrights first haven, where he challenged prevailing notions about the countrys architecture, and which he then left, to continue as one of Americas most significant architects. Included in the book is a portfolio of historic black and white photographs of the building, a number of them taken by Wright himself.

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Text in English and German. 2 Books in slipcase. Karl Friedrich Schinkel called his designs for a palace on the Acropolis in Athens and for Orianda Castle in the Crimea a 'beautiful dream'. They date from 1834 and 1838 and were Schinkel's last major projects, in which he presented his ideal of architecture in brilliant drawings and watercolours, as if in a last will and testament. Both the formal language of neo-Classical architecture and the quality of presentation are brought to a level here that can scarcely be surpassed. It is clear how highly Schinkel himself esteemed these two unrealized designs from the fact that he had them printed as coloured lithographs in his publication 'Werke der hoheren Baukunst fur die Ausfuhrung erfunden' (Potsdam 1840 to 1942). These lithographs are reprinted in a large format for the first time here, complemented by the no less spectacular lithographs of the two Pliny villas, Tusculum and Laurentinum. These works, which represent a high point in the long story of the reconstruction of the two villas that have come down to us only in literature, also show Schinkel's impressive ability to demonstrate and convey his architectural ideas. He is profoundly concerned, both in the reconstructions of the Pliny villas and in the designs for the royal palace on the Acropolis and Orianda Castle to be archaeologically precise and to fulfil prescribed building programmes, but also to plumb the possibilities of architecture beyond mere utility. For the Acropolis palace project he had his eye mainly on the way in which the new building would interact with the surviving remains of the Propylaea and the Parthenon. In the Orianda project it is a glazed observation pavilion in the form of a temple that expresses architecture's perception of itself more clearly than perhaps ever before.

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Book & CD. When visitors to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., walk through the Skylab of 1967-73 they experience the vehicles interior space but learn nothing about the industrial design of the spacecraft nor the designers who created it.

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Richard Meier's architecture in dialogue with the Ulm Munster, the most famous German Gothic cathedral.

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The dream of owning your own home in the countryside has led to that Cities are expanding more and more, growing together and the destroy untouched nature. In addition, however, the demand is increasing affordable housing and small residential units in the cities. The proximity to the workplace and the good infrastructure are clear advantages of city life. The concept Penthouses for everyone represents the individual living wishes of people at the center. It shows that sophisticated architecture can be affordable for everyone can and is also possible in cities in the course of densification. The Development of the new living space for everyone takes place via the development of flat roofs, which exist in large numbers in urban areas are. Unfortunately, the possibilities of targeted development remained roofs especially in the new development areas in the past largely unrecognized. So far, flat roofs are mostly only here planted or used for energy production. Here and there will be although they are also subsequently built on, they usually remain unused for residential purposes. How different it is in many people southern countries. It goes without saying there that flat roofs are used To use housing and to include it in the planning right from the start. The book gives an insight into the inexhaustible possibilities that arise when living on roofs. Based on numerous Examples are shown that the dream of home ownership in the countryside can also be realized in the city. It's not just small inexpensive roof houses possible. With special construction kits larger units can also be assembled; also alternatives Forms of living can be thought of and implemented, nothing remains utopia. Ultimately, it's about living in the cities to make it more attractive again, to avoid urban sprawl and the destruction of nature to prevent and people well in the city home and return identity. However, this requires new building laws and development plans create the conditions. So far, a subsequent development of roofs is often prevented or excluded by building laws rejected for aesthetic reasons. A further construction on roof surfaces is paralyzed with the demand for adaptation to the existing situation. Only roof structures are created that are hardly recognizable as such or the given monotonous design elements record to adapt to the inventory.

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Since 1970, based in an isolated building situated on the peninsula of Posillipo, Pica Ciamarra Associati (www.pcaint.eu) has acted as a laboratory of architectural and urban design which has gradually incorporated new members and new energies over the time: using a multidisciplinary approach, the roots of the architectural practice lie in the intensive theoretical and practical work begun in the early 1960s by Massimo Pica Ciamarra. Since then the practice has been marked by a continuous relationship with Le Carré Bleu Feuille internationale darchitecture and leading members of the cultural milieu of Team 10: this has led to constant attention to everything that lies beyond form, to the relation ship with contexts that also include non-spatial contexts, and to high levels of integration and dialectical discussion. According to Pica Ciamarra Associati, a design transcends the approaches of a single sector, providing simultaneous solutions to contradictory requirements, combining utopia and practicality. The poetics of the fragment: it mediates between architecture and the urban dimension; some designs also have the aim of becoming absorbed within a context as 'informed fragments'. This monograph is the result of an intensive period of work and consists of two interacting parts. It stems from research into the archive of the studio Pica Ciamarra and conversation with the members of the architectural practice. Organised diachronically, the book tells the long story, unfolding over a period of over fifty years of a team of Neapolitan architects and designers, who have maintained the lively spirit of the practice which is still geared towards the future. The textual and iconographic account tells a story and offers an interpretation that highlight the vibrant atmosphere of the studio, based on a consistency of thought and action, and fuelled by an interest in many different forms of knowledge. The contextualisation of the events related to the studio, as they unfolded over time, is wide-ranging, coherent and connotative. Antonietta Iolanda Lima, professor of history of architecture at the University of Palermo, has always tried, through theory, teaching and design, to disseminate the importance of history which can embracing innovation and tradition to an equal degree, forming a new architectural language. According to her view of architecture, history and design are closely connected, a 'single entity' as is reflected by her career. Since the 1980s, her academic work has gained increasing importance, a way of avoiding narrow sectoral approaches in the training of future architects, offering a holistic stance of the history of architecture and an architecture that contributes to shaping critical thought and a thriving cultural life.

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Text in English & German. If laziness is the mother of all inventions, then the car is its masterpiece. The earliest means of locomotion was walking, followed by riding on horses or camels; finally, with the invention of the wheel, came the ability to use carriages, which not only made locomotion far more comfortable but also brought the transportation of goods to a whole new level. However, it then took millennia for carriages to go from being propelled by horses or oxen to engines, initially steam-driven, then propelled by internal combustion engines and early experiments with electric propulsion. Cars were initially the result of pure craftsmanship, and as passenger cars were based on the concept of the carriage. The assembly line had not entirely abandoned the carriage look, but already showed a typical automobile profile: equal-sized wheels, engine bonnet, passenger compartment. The predominant body colour of cars manufactured between 1910 and 1930 was black, while all makes of car had an almost uniform appearance. As manufacturers moved away from metal-panelled wooden frames to an all-steel design, they hesitantly ventured to adopt new forms. Improved undercarriages and higher engine performance were initially limited by air resistance, which above a speed of 60 kilometres per hour is the strongest of all driving resistances. This led to the development of new body shapes that offer less resistance to the airstream. Engineers still determined the form of the car, sometimes even achieving formal elegance. It was only rarely that members of other professions, such as the architects Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius, were commissioned to design a car. Between the two World Wars North America had the worlds largest fleet of cars; this also meant that their design became an increasingly important sales factor. Professsional automobile design was established. As they continued to develop technically, cars in the 1950s moved further and further away from the physically logical form of a moving body. One of the last and most outstanding examples of a form with optimum resistance to the airstream is the Citroën ID/DS of 1955. Others, indeed almost all, opted for the pure symbolism of speed and power, whose most important ingredients were tail fins and chrome. Today, with a global annual production of close to 100 million passenger cars, automotive style has come to be represented by a wide range of almost every imaginable form. Architect Hans-Ulrich von Mende has worked with partners in an independent practice since 1990. For 50 years his writings and drawings on automotive design have appeared in books, trade journals (mot, autobild) and the daily press (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung).

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If there is a plateau that continuously unites Hans Dieter Schaals numerous artistic fields of activity, a kind of fundamental level, then it is surely that of landscape architecture. Landscape motifs are as convincingly present in his stage sets as they are in his installations, his exhibition architectures, his texts, and, naturally, also his park and garden designs. Schaal has been on the track of the fascination of landscapes since the 1960s. For him, encountering the parterre or 'carpet patterns' of the baroque Herrenhäuser Gärten in Hannover was a key experience. This was followed by an intensive study of the early landscape gardens of Great Britain, the park complexes of the Romantics and the Enlightenment in Weimar, Wörlitz, and Muskau, and by studies of the garden-art ideas and philosophical implications that underpinned each of them. As a twice-over 'artist-in-residence' at the Villa Massimo in Rome, Schaal was also able to absorb the whole cosmos of Italian garden and park planning, from the Renaissance to the present day. In 1978 Schaal published his first book, Wege und Wegräume (Paths and Passages), today considered a classic. Wege und Wegräume has become required reading and an artistic leitmotif for generations of landscape designers and architects. In 1994, a further key work appeared, entitled Neue Landschaftsarchitektur/New Landscape Architecture. It proved to be among the late-20th centurys most comprehensive studies of the topic of 'landscape' in the wider sense. Above all, it prompts an existential subjective excursus into all those spheres that are inscribed into landscape beyond the professional mainstream. Schaal was subsequently able to build a large number of spectacular 'follies' and installations in gardens and parks. From 1998 to 2014 he was finally able to actually realise a whole city park, complete with artistic installations: the Wielandpark in Biberach. The complex architectonic and artistic layout of this park embodies, as it were, the distilled essence of decades of working with the bridle paths at the boundaries of landscape. Frank R. Werner studied painting, architecture and architectural history in Mainz, Hanover and Stuttgart. From 1990 to 1994 he was professor of history and theory of architecture at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, from 1994 until his retirement in 2011 he was director of the Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal. Peter C. Horn studied architecture in Munich. After working for several years in his original profession in South America, he runs a studio for architectural photography in Stuttgart since 1985.

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In 1980 the book Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects was internationally recognized by architects who admired and valued Turner's unique way of seeing and photographing architecture. This new book contains photographs taken between 1974 and 2009 of buildings designed by 17 well-known architects including: Peter Eisenman, Louis Kahn, Fumihiko Maki, Norman Foster, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Alvar Aalto, Shigeru Ban and Renzo Piano. From the beginning of her career, Turner has used architecture as subject matter. Ambiguity has always been a hallmark of her work where solids become voids, causing positive and negative to reverse. The photos are small fragments of architecture taken out of context. Through her eyes, the subject is decomposed and recreated, assuming a new meaning. The photographs are quiet, yet dynamic, beautifully framed compositions. Architects have commented that she exposes elements of their work they never imagined existed. Thus, while using architecture as subject matter to invent her own worlds, Turner is also revealing some of its inherent complexities.

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Text in German. When the synod of the Westphalian Evangelical Church made the decision to build the school in about 20 years ago, this was accompanied by a large number of hopes and desires that - formulated as a commission - were expressed in the foundation stone document that was walled up when building started in 1997. It runs like this: "The Evangelical Church of Westphalia, by establishing the comprehensive school in a district with particular need for renewal would like to set a sign of hope and help to prepare young people to deal with the urgent problems of our day. For this reason the school's educational work will focus on the following three points: the school should be a meeting-place, making it possible for young people coming from various nations and practicing different religions to live together peacefully; the school is to be an ecological place of learning, and enable young people to look after the creation that has been entrusted to mankind; and the school should open up to the district in which it is sited, and become a cultural centre. "The architects conceived the school as a little town, with the key aims of achieving diversity, sophistication and responsibility taken on by the users themselves. Hence the individual sections were all planned independently by colleagues of Peter Hubner and his plus+ bauplanung practice, with active participation by all the pupils involved. As the building was for a new foundation, it was possible to involve a whole year consisting of 130 pupils in planning and designing their own teaching area throughout the six-year building phase. Each year has a housing group, and each of the five classes has its own house inside it. Each house has its own entrance, its own cloakroom with toilets attached, a large gallery, a terrace and a garden. The book shows the entire process from developing the educational programme via the competition, planning and realisation including the participation processes to the everyday running of the school. It is a must for anyone interested in new educational concepts.

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Sanjay Patils tryst with architecture began in his early childhood as he soaked up the environs that surrounded him in his birthplace, Nashik. Moving on to formal education in architecture at the Sir JJ College of Architecture in Mumbai, Sanjay returned to his hometown in 1981 to immerse himself into a meaningful and sensitive architectural practice. Over the years, Sanjay Patil has received many honours from the industry and his projects have been widely published in architectural journals. His greatest reward however continues to be the appreciation and support of his numerous clients who have played a vital role in his approach to architecture. His Workspace 'Environ Planners' has also evolved into a centre for learning; inspiring, training and providing roots and wings to budding architects from various parts of the country. 'Knowledge sharing is integral to me and has always given me great pleasure and satisfaction. I have always made a conscious effort to share with others the little bit that I have learnt through my work, travel and other hobbies. This book is just an extension of this love for sharing; a humble effort to document some of my works across the last three decades and present it to a wider audience. It is an honest endeavour to make the reader a part of the design process and my passion for my work that is so much a part of my being.' The book is an attempt to chronicle the architects journey and delve deeper into his philosophy towards architecture and life, his love for nature and his commitment to architecture. Our journey thus encompasses influences from vernacular architecture, his leaning towards sustainable design, response to nature and his diverse use of courtyards in varying building typologies. It showcases 19 noteworthy projects, which include private residences, restoration projects, educational institutions, resorts and retreats, office spaces including his own workspace and farmhouse. It also includes essays by Christopher Benninger, Anand Mahindra (chairman and managing director, Mahindra Group) and Anu-rag Kashyap (principal, BNCA College of Architecture, Pune) providing valuable insights and perceptions about Sanjay Patils work.

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Text in English and German. If there is one building by Le Corbusier that represents a synthesis of his basic concepts it is certainly the Unité dhabitation built in Marseille in 194652. This built manifesto does not simply put forward a social model as a utopia, but also the unity of architecture and town planning. It is one of the most significant buildings there has ever been, but it also triggered a great deal of controversy. The story of the response to it has been recorded in order to investigate why this extremely ambitious project in particular should have caused such a conflict between intention and effect. The Unité dhabitation in Marseille is now very popular with the people who live in it as a building. Despite all the criticism, it obviously still offers functional advantages that make it easier for individuals and the community to live together. The enormous sculptural force and the characteristic interplay of light and colour shown in the photographs make the building into a personality that can be identified with. As well as this, the building also offers something special in terms of concrete spatial experience. In the age of a superficial "adventure society" it claims the intensity of an everyday experience that is both casual and at the same time complex, embracing all the senses. This extends from the reception in the imposing foyer to the theatre of figures on the roof terrace in the light of the landscape, from the inverted urban scenery of the promenade publique to twilight seclusion in the silent residential streets. And it includes the flats themselves, which open up expansively to draw in the sea and mountain mood. Le Corbusier used his architectural resources atmospherically and scenically to give the Unité dhabitation a succinct coherence that also forms the basis for individual lives within its rooms and spaces. Precise observation and description reveal the mechanisms of these effects.

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Describes a viable alternative power source. Manzanares, Spain's solar chimney has proven to be effective.

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A study that dates from 1995. It was written in the context of research into 'natural constructions' by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

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