Search results for ""Author Axel"

A yawning gap between two 1960s buildings is not at all unusual in Cologne. A gap scarcely wide enough to park a few bicycles has been used as an office by the Rendel and Spitz Advertising Agency since 1999.

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Text in English and German. In autumn 1997 the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) moved into the production hall of a former munitions factory in Karlsruhe, built by Stuttgart architect Philipp Jakob Manz in 1914-18. Hamburg architects Schweger plus Partner were commissioned to convert this industrial structure, over 300 m long and with 10 atria, after Rem Koolhaas' project of a new building for the ZKM immediately adjacent to the main station in Karlsruhe had been rejected in favour of refurbishing and converting the imposing old building. There is no doubt that the thinking that led to the decision to retain an industrial monument dating from the turn of the century and to bring it back to life for different purposes, rather than putting up a new building, was essentially practical in nature. And yet the result is unique, as a dialogue of a quality that could scarcely be matched anywhere in the world was initiated between the four-storey hall with it's extensive atria and its new users, the ZKM institutes, the Staatliche Hochschule fur Gestaltung and several museums -- Medienmuseum, Museum fur Neue Kunst and Stadtische Galerie.The architects were experienced in handling large industrial and office buildings, but also ambitious museum projects -- among others they designed the Wolfsburg Kunstmuseum -, and they succeeded not only in showing the historical building substance and it's spatial potential to the best advantage, and in complementing this brilliantly inside and out; but they also combined the real architectural space and the imaginative space of modern pictorial worlds in an exciting way.

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Text in English & German. Rob Krier, perhaps the only urban-planning artist among Germany's architects, has, for the first time in 30 years, completed a major urban project in his home country of Luxembourg. With regard to its authorship, this is a true "family project". With the significant contribution of his brother Léon to the masterplan for the site, which is situated opposite his parental home, Krier has, in his own words, fulfilled a "youthful dream". Krier's son-in-law and office partner, Christoph Kohl was involved in the execution, as was his distant relation and Luxembourgian contact architect, Jean Herr. The concept reaches far beyond Luxembourg's borders in its significance, as Krier's crew has formulated something of a manifesto for classical European urban architecture. Rather than a further high-rise for this European city, an entire quarter has been created with public roads, lanes and squares in which the various judicial departments are distributed across eight buildings. The plot structure, small-sized units and traditional plasterwork façades with their three-dimensional sculpted details all enhance the quarter's vitality, as does the masterful treatment of spatial divisions. This new approach is decisive in solving an ever more complex construction problem in contemporary urban planning: the integration of major administration complexes into the existing make-up of the city. In Luxembourg, the Kriers have succeeded in providing model evidence that, even today, this task can be achieved by means of top-quality architecture, without having to forfeit anything in terms of the modernity of equipment, the parsimony of economical execution, the reduction of energy consumption, or in the basic demands of public proximity. With this publication, Rob Krier has created a novelty in architectural literature. It is the first volume in sketchbook format of a series which document the design process from the first hand-drawn sketches, right through to realisation. Here, the entire spectrum of the creative process and its irrepressible joy for variation are revealed.

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What all these buildings have in common is that with the available material, wood, and the most modest means, places of worship, centres in the villages, were built with much feeling and love. The constructions in wood were derived in an old tradition from the dwellings and farm buildings of the peasant population. Their architecture, the typological forms probably penetrated into this seclusion as an idea. "The idea of a church as a building", brought with them by clergymen and wandering master craftsmen from the more fertile plains and the rich, large mining and trading towns.The oldest churches were built as early as in the 15th century, most of those still standing were built in the 18th and 19th centuries, and quite a few are still being built today. Many were destroyed in the two world wars, many fell victim to ethnic cleansing after 1945. Many were destroyed in the two world wars, many fell victim to ethnic cleansing after 1945, some fell into disrepair during the Soviet era, others were burnt down by lightning or short circuits, and quite a few simply gave way to the more "representative" stone churches as early as the 19th century. But a large number are still standing, consecrated, and believers gather in them. In fact, almost all of them in the various Carpathian countries are protected monuments, and many have been lovingly restored in recent times.More than the architectural-historical value, the question arises here of the aesthetic assessment of these small buildings. It is not a refined canon of forms of great architecture that can be derived and proven from the history of architecture that inspires us so much. Basically, they are not overly sophisticated constructions in terms of craftsmanship, they are safe and beautiful in their simplicity. Their aesthetic appeal, however, also includes the surface-weathered material, deformed structures, colour improvisations, recently ornamented sheet metal, inside wall paintings, altar and iconostasis furnishings derived from Renaissance and Baroque periods, but above all their location in the village, mostly isolated, often elevated, surrounded by old trees, enclosures and graves without cemetery order.

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Spread over a hill that climbs up from the plain, Himeji Castle with its white walls shimmering in the sunlight like the feathers of a fantastic bird seems to be rising into the blue sky like a great heron. This impression has given it the name "Castle of the White Heron". The castle, which has nothing martial about it, on the contrary, it is extraordinarily elegant, is undoubtedly one of Japans most impressive fortresses. It was built between 1601 and 1609, when the period of war was almost over, and was used primarily for administration and residence, with defence as a secondary role. Thus its aesthetic impact was as important when it was built as its actual purpose as a fortification. The main building in the castle is the Tenshu or Tenshu-kaku in the northem part of the complex, a wooden structure about 46 m high. Its complicated intermediate roofs make it look more like a skyscraper than a tower. Himeji Castle represents an architectural type that probably does not occur in other areas of the world. Large parts of the building were classified as "Kokuho State Treasure" as early as 1951, and others as "Important Cultural Property". The building was placed on the World Cultural Heritage list in 1993. Art historian Irmtraud Schaarschmidt-Richter specialized in classical and modern Japanese art and architecture at an early stage, as is shown by numerous publications. Her book on the Japanese garden has long been a standard work. Most recently she was involved in publications on architects Kazuo Shinohara and Toyo Ito. Photographer Mo Nishikawa, a pupil of Ken Domon, one of the most important photographers of our century, sees his work as a spiritual and intellectual contemplation of art. His photographs of the Katsura Palace, the Himeji Castle and the Ise Shrine are among the great masterpieces of contemporary photography.

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Text in English and German. The architect and photographer Rolf Reiner Maria Borchard, who is professor of design principles at the Muthesius-Hochschule in Kiel, has chosen seven of the most beautiful gardens and photographed them during several trips, always in spring, in other words at a time when the garden architecture has not yet been overwhelmed by the vegetation, and so can make the best possible impact in the image. His trained eye for the way architecture is embedded in the landscape means that he has found striking and convincing images, steeped in the harmony of the gardens.

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Text in German & English. Ernst Leitz was taking the prototype for the legendary Leica camera to be tested in North America when 'Haus Friedwart' in his hometown of Wetzlar was begun. The architect Bruno Paul (1874-1968) was a sought-after designer of challenging interior designs and architect of grand upper-middle class houses and public buildings. By means of wood panelling, fittings and the design of ceilings he gives every room a special character. Details such as door handles, radiator screens and lamps remain today, as does all the furniture designed for the house. This building is therefore a unique example of Bruno Paul's special art, which, through zigzag lines, twin arches and star forms, represents an early example of Art Decó.

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Since the 1960s, the development of poster design in Germany has been determined by the Brazilian-German painter and graphic artist Almir Mavignier. Featuring text in English and German, this book elucidates 'additive posters' within the context of Almir Mavignier's influential uvre.

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Text in English and German. Peter Basseler, who lives in Berlin and Chicago, stands alone in the contemporary art landscape. The small-scale showcases, produced by a time-consuming process (sometimes taking over a year) since 1970, cannot be allotted to any particular trend. They have nothing in common with the Modern movement's object cases, they are not assembled from found items, not 'ready made', but have their roots in pre-Modernism -- if anywhere. There is nothing prefabricated in Basseler's showcases: everything has to be designed and made for a particular scenario, right down to the smallest detail. The thumb-high figures' gestures and facial expressions are central to the effect of the scene as a whole, and fascinating in their psychological refinement and their craftsmanship. The dioramas are modern fairy tales from a world that hovers between reality and fiction, beyond all places, times and norms. Sober observation of reality are refracted through visionary imaginative imag

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Book & CD. Husain Lehri, the director of Super Book House, approached Yashwant Pitkar, teaching at the Sir J J College of Architecture in Mumbai, to bring out a book on a contemporary Indian architect whose approach is different from the run of the mill. Pitkar had no hesitation in choosing Shirish Beri who in a career spanning almost forty years has built works ranging from private residences to educational complexes and large public projects across India. As it turned out, this book is the result of an extensive collaboration between Lehri, Piktar and Beri -- Pitkar describes the process of making the book as one of slow and deep unfolding. What is most interesting about this book is its structure. Interspersed with the projects are Beri's written and sketched expressions. Each set of two projects is bookended by his illustrated essays and poetry. The essays are more like collections of rambling thoughts, posers and anecdotes -- seeking connections between nature, art, architecture, and life. There is a seamless rhythm set up in the book that constantly keeps the reader acquainted with the architect's outer manifestations in form of his buildings and his inner thought processes, integral to that creation. The opening essay, "Working with Wature ... Towards Sustainability" sets a tone towards not just architecture but life in general. Beri asks whether man's relationship with nature could become a universal archetype for a sustainable future. He advocates an approach towards architecture that grows out from the place and its spirit rather than imposed technocratic solutions. The book features about a dozen projects in greater detail, well illustrated with clear drawings, evocative sketches and excellent photographs accompanied by the architect's own analysis of the design process and governing concerns in each project. The opening section of the book contains a note by B V Doshi and a foreword by Christopher Charles Benninger who was Beri's mentor when he was a student at the CEPT in Ahmedabad. The Hirwai Farmhouse in Nathawade for himself, one of his earliest projects, is perhaps the best example of his avowed philosophy: spaces inspired by nature. The Sanjeevan Primary School and the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species at Hyderabad display Beri's playful and unconventional approach towards space organisation which is at once in harmony with the site's topography and natural features. Projects such as the Dharwad Engineering College or the Computational Mathematics Laboratory in Pune display a nuanced sense of structure, construction and meticulousness towards detail. In the closing section of the book there is an exhaustive list of projects with thumbnails giving a good idea of the full range of the architect's work. Accompanying the book is a CD titled "The Unfolding White: Shirish Beri's search for wholeness.

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Text in English & German. When at the end of the 1960s Michael Nether set out for Berlin, that city held enormous attraction for young intellectuals and artists, just as it had done in the Roaring Twenties. There were demonstrations and happenings, there was Kommune 1 with Rainer Langhans and Uschi Obermeier, and everywhere people held endless discussions that continued throughout the night. Scandalous theatrical performances and legendary concerts with musicians such as Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen and George Moustaki gave expression to a new sensibility. And then there was Klaus Kinski, in his unforgettable performance of Jesus Christ and other one-man shows. Nether photographed what he saw face to face -- 'on stage' -- including stars of international cinema like Claudia Cardinale, Roman Polanski, Peter Ustinov or Pier Paolo Pasolini. One of his first photos was the scene of a 1969 student demonstration at the Berlin Gedächtniskirche. Crowds of people throng the streets observed by countless curious passersby, and the police are there with their vans. The composition of the picture can hardly have happened by chance. Cars and the façades of buildings are points of reference past which people wind like a huge serpent. At the centre top of the picture there is a bright light. The photo sums up the atmosphere of departure and the state of mind of an entire generation. Here Nether demonstrates that he is an articulate documentary photographer. Towards the end of the 1970s, Nether returned to his home region of Swabia. Here he went into business with a partner, worked for advertising agencies -- for instance, taking photographs for Porsche in the company's research and development centre in Weissach -- but he also gradually made a name for himself as a photographic artist, with his own gallery in Bietigheim-Bissingen; particularly noteworthy were his pictures of prominent celebrities such as Wolf Biermann, Martin Walser, Woody Allen or Helmut Newton, as well as numerous photos of performances by the Stuttgart Ballet, but also of "street people". He succeeds in subtly communicating with the latter in these photos and making this dialogue visible. Today his main interest focuses on photographing portraits and nudes. In 2009 the International Center of Photography in New York purchased 100 photographs by Nether.

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Text in English & German. Apple Inc, the Californian computer company, has been marked by unparalleled success over the past three and a half decades. Like no other company, it has succeeded in shifting the focus of use from utility to coveted possessions when it comes to computers and electronic entertainment devices such as the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. In addition, each of the products in the i-family have changed their product genres technologically and ergonomically to such an extent that not only have all competitors adopted these new 'user guidances', but hundreds of complementary products have been created around these products as well, from a wide range of accessories to docking stations (ie: veritable radios with external speakers for the iPods and iPhones) that allow users to experience the stored music without headphones. The iPhone has compelled all manufacturers of mobile phones to add smart phones with touch sensitive screens, the touch phones, to their programs. And the iPad will fundamentally transform the handling of video and news as well. Since the introduction of the iPhone, over 200,000 special application programs, the so-called apps, have been made available for these i-devices. In their product genres, these devices have each caused a paradigm shift: they are both leading and cult products, and they represent a development that has leveraged the mobile Internet and delocalised the act of surfing from the home to almost anywhere. The book comments upon this process of 'disruptive technologies', which has taken place only very rarely in the history of technology and design. They leaf through the preconditions and position these innovative devices in product-historical, social, and psychological contexts.

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Rome is where the history of European architecture was written. The foundations were laid in ancient Roman times when the first attempts were made to design interiors which could be experienced as something physical. Ancient Roman architects also started to develop building types that are still valid today, thus creating the cornerstone of later Western architecture. This guide has been arranged chronologically. Every epoch is preceded by an introduction that identifies its key features. This produces a continuous, lavishly illustrated history of the architecture of Rome, indeed, the whole of the West. The book includes an alphabetical index and detailed maps, whose information does not just immediately illustrate the historical picture, but also makes it possible to choose a personal route through history. In order to clarify the historical development, the key buildings of each period and other major works are emphasised both in the text and on the maps.

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Text in English and German. Heinz Tesar has carefully preserved the existing Bode Museum building on the Museum Island in Berlin, and provided it with highly unusual additional sections for the anticipated hordes of visitors. His work proved its extraordinary qualities even at the opening. There is scarcely anywhere else in the world where the contrasting styles arising from a museum's various building periods come together to form such an individual whole, at best comparable in its density with the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa's museum designs. The essential basis for this successful symbiosis of heterogeneous stylistic elements is the variable historical architecture that museum director Wilhelm Bode invited architect Ernst Eberhard von Ihne to develop around 1900 for the collections, which were very disparate in both style and genre. When the museum opened in 1904, the magnificent architecture still had a political message to proclaim. It was called the 'Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum' at first, and there was a definite programme behind this: invoking the name of the art-minded earlier emperor and erecting ostentatious equestrian statues of figures from Prussian history was intended as a powerful pictorial display to anchor the Prussian dynasty in German history and European culture. But as Ihne eschewed any sense of regional identification, the museum could have carried his name after the abolition of the monarchy. But it was renamed Bode-Museum after its inventor Wilhelm von Bode in the GDR years, which indicates the significance of the stylistic spaces Bode created for the development of exhibition techniques. The text in the book provides a reminder of museum's first collection, a mixed one consisting of paintings, sculpture and furniture. The pictorial section then records the present content of the restored galleries, shaped by Heinz Tesar and using objects from the sculpture collection, the Byzantine museum and the numismatic collection. Tesar carried out some architectural interventions of considerable sculptural quality in the new basement under the small dome, in other words in the rotunda where the planned underground passage from the Pergamon-Museum will come in, and in the new stairwell added as a slim section in one of the courtyards.

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Text in English and German. Albrecht Ade's 'photages', created with special light techniques, have nothing in common with the 'photocollages' or 'photomontages' of the 20th century. When artists as different as El Lissitzky, John Heartfield, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Raoul Hausmann or Hannah Höch constructed futuristically bold, surreal or satirical images from photographic materials as a response to quotations from reality cut out and then stuck into Cubist 'papiers collés' by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, they worked mainly with someone else's material, with trouvailles. In contrast, Ade uses only his own material for his combination images, and his method for mounting images, for 'editing them into each other', does not need of scissors and paste either. He cultivates the usually involuntary effect of double exposure, a hazard from the days of analogue photography. He controls the chances of pictorial superimposition and confusion, artfully and purposefully arranging his own, deliberately positioned images among and on top of each other, using a technically elaborate matching and omission process. Ade, as well as teaching at the Stuttgart Akademie der Bildenden Künste, has intensively promoted cinematic animation techniques in his years as director of the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, and since 1990, as founder-director of the Filmakademie in Ludwigsburg, has allowed animated film and camera arts to develop in the greatest possible breadth, in fact has helped to win the Ludwigsburg model the highest artistic respect in the film world. This all suggests how inventively and ingeniously his creative output mingles artistically creative and elaborately echnical ideas and fascinations. Photography as a creative method for fine art -- something the pioneers of photography dreamed of in the 19th century -- becomes reality in Albrecht Ade's 'photages'.

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Text in German & English. In Cologne's narrowest building, which is also one of the best known examples of modern architecture in the city, special installations have been staged during the International Furniture Fair for several years. Well-known designers are invited to implement a design on a particular topic in this unusual environment for the week's duration of the trade fair.

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

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Text in English and German. Hans Dieter Schaal worked on opera with Ruth Berghaus for ten years, he also created unforgettable stage architecture for the operas of Heinz Werner Henze. Almost all the important European opera houses, for example those in Berlin, Brussels, Stuttgart, Paris, Vienna and Zurich, served as vehicles for his extraordinarily expressive artistic powers, which he used to captivate the public.

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Text in English and German. An urban quarter with an identity of its own has come into being by the Bavariapark in Munich. It is based on an urban-development design by Steidle+Partner and involved various architects. Otto Steidle interpreted the Munich town-planning motto 'compact -- urban -- green' by logically taking up the grid of the Westend area in the northern part of the quarter: the city is to continue to be built as a metropolis here. The 'esplanade', on a surprising large scale for this part of the city, along Ganghofer-Straße fulfils two functions: with its large office buildings flanking the block periphery it forms the urban spine of the new quarter, and at the same time creates a connection with the surrounding 1920s and 1930s housing. The architects have realised a paradox in the internal park of the Munich exhibition centre, which used to be only partly accessible: they create a sense of spaciousness by extreme compression. The point buildings, exposed on all sides, stand at the edge of the park in two rows; views through dominate the scene, with glimpses of the old trees and the three old, listed halls which are becoming the new cultural centre of Munich's west end because the transport museum is moving in.

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Text in English and German. Erich Engelbrecht (19282011) called his pictures "introspective". He remarked on this: "The introspective image inspects the arena of the soul, the field of operation of archetypes, which constitute the fundamental pattern of our behaviour." We are indebted to C.G. Jung for providing especially deep insights into the nature of archetypes. According to him, they constitute, in their totality, the collective human unconsciousness, and determine our actions. These archetypesbecome visible only in symbolic images. For Werner Haftmann such images are the works of symbol-forming artists of all times. The works of Erich Engelbrecht, whether graphics, oil pictures, gobelins, or wooden and steel figures, appear planimetric and abstract. In his steel figures, for instance, the third dimension exists only in the thickness of the steel plates. This makes his artworks akin to folk tales. In his book The European Folktale, Max Lüthi describes the style of the folk tale as "planimetric and abstract", with projecting all happenings on the level of plot. When the sister cuts her little finger off and uses it to open the door to the glass castle to free herimprisoned brothers in the folk tale The Seven Ravens, no blood flows and we hear no cry of pain.Both the folk tale and the "introspective image" tell a story and use primal images in order to do it. This mode of action of creating a coherence of meaning through a narrative of archetypalimages such as forest, cavern, or sea that rests upon primal human experience is described by C. G. Jung as an "archetypal programme ", a primal behaviour pattern that all human beings follow,regardless of race, culture, or epoch. With the introspective image, as with the folk tale, the creative process must be intuitive and meditative, an immersion in the unconscious. Erich Engelbrecht had no plan or idea for an artwork, merely an empty sheet of paper or canvas in front of him; he made himself receptive, waited, and allowed himself to be guided by the images, a process that he experienced very much as an ordeal and even as a threat to his existence. He did, however, have a sense for when his process of searching was at an end, albeit without understanding the meaning of a picture created in this way. His wife Waltraud Engelbrecht would then try to "read" these images and to derive a coherence of meaning from correspondences of form and colour.

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Text in English & German. The architect is at all times also an artist. How otherwise would he be able to tame the three-dimensionality of space and subdue the urges of physics and structural mechanics with the creations of his fantasy? This creativity is however mostly restricted purely to its own field. Rob Krier, is an exception. Since the beginning of his career in construction, he has always seen his love of art as a vocation -- one which he nurtures parallel to his work. Fine art should stand in dialogue with architecture and it is Krier's ambition to have iconographic themes brought into the latter, so that they might speak equally to both the occupants of a building and to bystanders, moving them to thoughtful reflection. In his Pictorial Journal 19541971, Rob Krier describes in compelling words and pictures how he came to have a twin passion for fine art and architecture and told of his grammar school years in Echternach, his studies in Munich and his first taste of professional life with Oswald Mathias Ungers and Frei Otto. In his Pictorial Journal 19541971, which covers the period of Krier's work as a lecturer and assistant to Prof. Johannes Uhl at Stuttgart University, the text is restricted to a minimum. The pictures are less colourful, more composed. The 'daily scribbles' dominate -- mainly sketches and drawings of people and animals, buildings, landscapes, objects and also fantasies. The volume is rounded off with a detailed résumé. Born and raised in Luxembourg, Krier moved to Vienna after having studied in Munich and worked for Oswald Mathias Ungers and Frei Otto. After teaching posts in Stuttgart and Lausanne, he was a professor at the Technische Universität in Vienna from 1976 to 1998 and, in 1986, held a guest professorship at Yale University in New Haven, Mass. Krier has developed urban-design concepts for Stuttgart, Vienna, Berlin, Amiens, Montpellier, Leeds, Gothenburg, Lodz, Amsterdam, Den Haag and many other cities. Projects with which he was first able to translate his vision of a spatial concept, such as Rauchstrasse in Berlin, Breitenfurterstrasse in Vienna or Ritterstrasse with Schinkelplatz in Berlin, repeatedly found their place in international publications.

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Text in English and German. The distinguished architect and Pritzker laureate Richard Meier has attracted public attention mainly with his museum and cultural buildings including the Atheneum in New Harmony, Indiana, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Stadthaus in Ulm and the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. The book accompanies the exhibition of the same name at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt, which has recently been relaunched with differently conceived museum facilities and new service areas; these are addressed in detail in an appendix to the book.

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Text in English and German. The building has been totally restored for the 125th anniversary of the Museum's opening in 1876. Merz's basic idea was to reveal the various historic layers of this building.

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Test in German and English. The Embassies of the Nordic Countries in Berlin are political architecture of a particular kind, political architecture that does not assert a claim to power, but that is a self-portrait in the best sense of the word. The vision, which is already a reality on the level of architecture and design, aims to combine individual interests within a greater whole: the ancient democratic ideal that has perhaps never been expressed in a more beautiful and convincing gesture than in this combination of five countries, six buildings and six teams of architects, chosen in a European competition for the central design concept and in five national competitions for the individual buildings. It is certainly no coincidence that such convincing symbolism of joint responsibility and action is not a success due to one of the European mammoth institutions but to the comparatively small Nordic countries Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland. Perhaps it is not even a coincidence that the concept of the individual sections that form an individual whole and while doing so preserve their individual quality as well as the unity comes from a young Viennese architectural practice whose principal protagonists, the Austrian Alfred Berger and the Finn Tiina Parkkinen, think and work across boundaries. A crucial factor was the location in Berlin, because it was only here that the new buildings for all five embassies could be commissioned at once. Berger+ Parkkinen's architecture risks striking breaches of boundaries, not just between the countries involved but also between urban development and architecture, and technology and art. Urban space is an integral part of the embassy complex, to the same extent as nature. Materials and furniture indicate different cultures. And yet the composition, for all its openness and transparency, works to exact spatial sequences and precise external lines for the building, within the 226 metres long and 15 metres high band of meandering copper. The idea that the work of Alvar Aalto is being unexpectedly continued here comes involuntarily to mind.

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Situated at the intersection of public realm, urban design and site specific art, Martha Schwartz Partners has over 35 years of experience designing and implementing installations, gardens, civic plazas, parks, institutional landscapes, corporate headquarters, master plans, and urban regeneration projects. MSP works with city leaders, planners and builders at a strategic level so as to advocate for the inclusion of the public landscape as a means to achieve environmental, economic and social sustainability. With offices in London, New York and Shanghai, the practice is engaged in projects and consultation around the globe and has to date worked on projects in over 20 countries and five continents. This monograph is the first publication to document 55 built projects and a selection of master plans by this internationally acclaimed practice.

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The building of the National Library of Latvia is a landmark of the city of Riga, a spatial symbol and architectural icon, created by one of the 20th-century-renowned modernists the Latvian-born American architect Gunnar Birkerts. His metaphorically saturated and expressionist architecture has established its permanent place in the history of contemporary architecture. The unique creative style of Birkerts stems from his deep cultural roots in Latvia, his architectural studies in Germany after World War II and the first years of architectural practice in the USA learning from Eero Saarinen and Minoru Yamasaki. Birkerts was invited to Latvia to design the National Library as early as in 1988. Three years later, Latvia restored its independence and the formation of a new state delayed accomplishment of Birkerts' ambitious idea for 25 years. The idea, the design and technology changed as changed the times becoming a symbol of a new and free state. Thanks to its content and concurrent processes for reestablishment of the national state the building acquired a symbolic and meaningful name: the "Castle of Light". In 1999, the idea for construction of the library received the official UNESCO patronage and support, the design and construction of the building have been evaluated by a panel of prominent UNESCO experts. The pyramidal structure, which rises 68 m high, is a place of cognition equipped with state-of-the-art technology where up to 8 million units of national printed materials can be stored. It has been the most significant investment in cultural infrastructure since the establishment of the Latvian state and is one of the largest cultural buildings in Northern Europe in the 21st century. The library can serve simultaneously 1,000 visitors. A 400-seat concert hall/auditorium and transformable meeting rooms of various sizes are suitable venues for conferences, congresses and concerts. Taking advantage of modern technology, the National Library of Latvia and nearly 900 other libraries in Latvia are interlinked within the Network of Light a single network of digital resources available on the internet throughout the country which was set up with the support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Text in English & German. Manfred Sack, in an essay about bridges: The Latin word relegere' means to connect. The assumption is that this is the basis of the word religion. The chief priest in Rome was the pontifex maximus, the highest builder of bridges between man and god, between this world and the other world'. The Germanic tribes saw the bridge in the rainbow physically before them, it was their road of light to Valhalla. For those who are disheartened, drugs are the bridge of escape into other, very illusory, worlds of experience. Tradition builds bridges from yesterday to tomorrow. There are so many bridges: music, a letter, the sounds of a radio, phone conversations, light signals, Morse signals, calls. The building of bridges is thus not only a physical process, but a spiritual and emotional event, a longing felt by the soul. No wonder that those who design and calculate bridges, who build them and therefore take risks, at least subconsciously sense some of the extrasensory significance of their sensory activity. And this is all the more true when we are talking about the bridges across the Rhine, the most important European river, which is wreathed in myths and legends and has inspired poetry and music like no other. Until the 19th century it was crossed almost exclusively by means of ferries. With the onset of industrialisation, more and more goods had to be transported increasingly rapidly. Today, over 250 bridges cross the river. They too now shape the unsurpassed diversity of the Rhine landscape. Since 1987, Riehle has photographed some 150 Rhine bridges from the river's headwaters in Switzerland to the Rhine's delta in the Netherlands. The most interesting 100 bridges are published in this book.

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The Prussian gardens in Berlin, Potsdam and elsewhere in Brandenburg: for the first time, texts and photographs present an overall view of all the gardens and parks created under the Hohenzollerns over a period of more than three centuries. Only the cross-genre collaborative effort of garden designers, gardeners, architects, scenographers, sculptors, painters, and creative rulers, the most prominent of whom were Frederick II and Frederick William IV, made it possible "to turn the environs of Berlin and Potsdam step by step into a garden", as Frederick William IV put it in 1840. Figures such as David Garmatter, Friedrich Christian Glume, Siméon Godeau, Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff, Peter Joseph Lenné, Antoine Pesne, Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, Georg Potente, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, the Sello brothers, and Antoine Watteau -- picked from a whole cornucopia of names -- indicate the spectrum of artistic forces that created the Prussian garden realm. Impatient with his royal client, who had once again cut his funding, Lenné alluded to the high standard of princely landscape art: "Your Majesty still does not understand how ingenious my idea is". The present volume is an attempt to examine the "ingeniousness of the idea" specifically inherent in the gardens of the Hohenzollerns in Prussia.

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Text in English & German. "Poverty is the greatest plague, wealth is the highest good", Goethe wrote in his ballad "The Treasure Seeker". Over the course of the poem, however, it becomes apparent that this is a mistaken conclusion. The search for riches, fame and power often brings with it greed, inhumanity and violence, as Wilhelm Hauff shows us in this book of fairytales. The best known of these is The Cold Heart, in which the wish for a better life leads Peter Munk the charcoal-burner to seek the help of the spirits of the Black Forest. The first spirit he encounters is the kindly glass manikin, who makes him the owner of a glassworks, but, as he never wished for the necessary understanding, he cannot give the running of his glassworks the attention it deserves. He becomes idle, fails miserably and falls victim to Hollander Michael, the evil spirit, who demands Peter's heart in return for helping him and gives him a stone in return. With a heart of stone, Peter loses all his social competence, and is filled with avarice, which, however, does not prevent him from pursuing his new profession as a businessman and money-lender. Rather, it helps him to succeed. But when he kills his wife for showing kindness to a destitute man, he finally comes to his senses, with the assistance of the glass manikin, who helps him to recover his original heart. And so everything turns out for the best. Peter Munk becomes a charcoal-burner again, and lives humbly but happily with his mother and his wife, restored to life by the glass manikin, for the rest of his days. The Cave of Steenfoll has a less happy outcome. In this story, greed becomes an obsession and even a madness that finally leads to the death of William Falcon. Having found the long-sought treasure -- a little chest full of gold pieces -- he is still not satisfied, and he dives into the sea a second time, never to emerge again. The fairytale of Said's Adventures is the opposite of the other two. The hero, a man under the protection of a good fairy, embarks on a dangerous journey. The hero encounters greed and avarice everywhere during his adventures, but they have no place in his own character. He is a skilful fighter, but always guided by compassion. Finally, he is rewarded with wealth, good fortune and contentment.

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Text in English & German. In the area along the Weser, there was a great deal of building activity between the Reformation and the Thirty Years War which was helped along by economic prosperity. Little affected later by war or modernisation, high quality Renaissance castles, aristocratic estates, town halls and civic architecture have survived here in exceptional density. This facet of Central European Renaissance architecture started to be appreciated in the early 20th century. This led to the concept of the Weser Renaissance, oriented above all towards formal and regional history, and still popular today, like a kind of brand. The present volume offers a representative selection of the region's castles and palaces for the first time, dealing with both princely residences and seats of the nobility. Architecture and court culture are placed in a European context that goes beyond older approaches based on the stylistic history and shows that forms demonstrating princely prestige have qualities in common well outside the region. Michael Bischoff's introductory text provides an overview of Renaissance architecture in the Weser area. Uwe Albrecht and Julian Jachmann explain the terminology and function of princely architecture. Heiner Borggrefe analyses early Renaissance architectural ornamentation, G Ulrich Großmann covers the topic after the mid-16th century. Thomas Fusenig writes on the arts and sciences at the courts. Rolf Schönlau discusses aspects of building materials in terms of economic history. Hillert Ibbeken deals with the sandstone that is most frequently used from a geological point of view. The descriptive catalogue is by Katja Schoene and Michael Bischoff.

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The fact that there is Gypsy architecture may surprise quite a few people, for Gypsies are regarded as nomads who roam through the world and settle now here, now there, never stay long in one place, and consider everything that normal citizens find important to be an unreasonable restriction of their freedom. Nevertheless, in southeastern Europe, there exists a remarkable architecture created by Gypsies. It seems to have been created from a dream: Unreal, abstruse, and colourful, it is a composition of all the architectural styles of this world. Uninfluenced by any deeper knowledge of architectural culture, each family head chose the style, size and finishings on the basis of his own personal tastes or memories of travels, houses and things seen in other countries. The result has been the creation of bizarre and fantastic jumbles of buildings that it is hard to classify in terms of western stylistic features. Very often the houses are the result of enormous jigsaw puzzles created from an assembly of images or photographs of various different buildings, and their execution precisely follows these crazy guidelines, perhaps because they are incomprehensible to those carrying out the project. Otherwise, how could one possibly explain Indian-style roofs crowning neoclassical buildings, mansard roofs on structures of improbable style, Frenchified Chinese pagodas, heterogeneous assemblies of diverse and contrasting elements. The structures, the villas gradually soften their bizarre and fantastic imagery the closer they are built to European countries. Undoubtedly, the cultural influence of neighbouring countries already immersed in the culture and lifestyle of Europe has helped to 'contaminate' the owners and bring their dwellings, the expression of their wishes, more into line with the ruling culture. What, however, remains staggering is the quality of the execution of the complex decorations, of the architectural elements and buildings that are very often contrasting, of widely differing façades surmounted by steepling roofs of no practical use whose only function is to represent, through their lack of proportion and absolute needlessness, the financial and social power of the family. Besides pieces of sculpture that are undoubtedly ritual and symbolic and originating from Indian culture, suns with spiny rays, various forms of pinnacle, geometrical moons, zoomorphic decorations, the tops of the roofs bear metalwork inscriptions giving the date of building and the name of the family or that of the wife, symbolising a desire for display and the proclamation of ownership.

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Text in English & German. The challenges facing the 21st century are staggering: rapidly increasing population, mounting social instability due to global imbalances of wealth and welfare, resource scarcity and resulting conflicts related to their exploitation and distribution, and certainly the ongoing distress of the environment as a whole. Such severe conditions, including climate change, continue to become greater in number, complexity, and clarity, even though most of them had already been introduced as areas of concern in the 1970s and 1980s. Part I of the book describes potential strategies that will play an essential role in curbing carbon emissions, reducing -- or replacing -- fossil fuel usage. To better understand the current global energy industry, the book is unique in showing energy consumption data across the globe in comparable units, and it explains how fossil fuels could be replaced by renewable energy resources. Part II explains how the necessary significant reductions in energy consumption can be achieved by alternative means at reasonable cost for power generation to be maintained. A great number of projects are described in the book as case studies that fulfil the variety of international energy codes. Part III addresses the technological possibilities for energy savings and resource-sensitive solutions related to buildings. Here, the potential of building-integrated solar systems, wind-power generation, rain-water harvesting, and the use of geothermal energy, as well as their implementation in the architecture are presented in detail. On the one hand, the book presents the background for a broader understanding of the medium-range and long-range changes in our energy landscape, and on the other it provides the basis for avenues required to enable us to design strategies based on local conditions and individual geographical locations. Over the past 20 years, Klaus Daniels and the engineers of his engineering consultancy HL Technik have published four volumes of seminal work related to this subject, and their work is continuously being updated. In this series, the new book is an attempt to illustrate how modern architecture needs to be adaptive to energy conditions and how design and technology can be blended successfully.

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