Search results for ""Oro Editions""
Oro Editions Architecture Stuff, More Stuff
Architecture Stuff is about a way of looking at architecture. It examines 7 seminal projects and shows how they might have been conceived with or without the design architect's awareness. More a working method than a theory, the book deals with questions pertinent to designers as well as to critics of buildings. More Stuff then illustrates how the same sensibility and working method can be used in the design of buildings as a tool for creating architecture. The 7 buildings featured are chosen for their breadth of styles and approaches to architecture, demonstrating that this approach to architecture can be applied to any building. Presented in reverse chronological order, the first project, Grace Farms, is a building by SANAA. Noted for its meandering river form and minimalist detailing, it is seen to be - among other things - a juxtaposition of orthogonal and sinuous forms. The second project is Villa Dall Ava by Rem Koolhaas/OMA. Located in the suburbs, the house is a transition from city to country. The third project is the Neue Staatsgalerie by James Stirling. The analysis shows how the 'bad boy' of architecture subverts conventional architectural tropes. Robert Venturi's Mother's House is shown to be a compressed stately manor and an architect's conceit. The Kimbell Art Museum by Louis Kahn can be understood as simple repetitive forms with elaborated elements that organize a diverse collection of spaces. Pierre Chareau's Maison de Verre is much more than types of transparency and mechanisation. One of its major themes is the use of 'L' shaped spaces. Finally, St George's Bloomsbury by Nicholas Hawksmoor is a parish church swallowed by a classical temple. The critique exposes how the architect used that idea to juxtapose the clerical and the civic to develop all of the details in the building. These are not singular idea buildings and, as a way of seeing architecture, there are overlapping themes in this collection. The history of architecture of specific periods is a common theme, as is architecture's stasis with spaces expanding or contracting. A dry sense of humour is always appreciated. What separates these buildings from any other building is the density of ideas presented. More Stuff accounts for the same working methods as a way to make architecture. Here the author illustrates eleven projects across the span of his career. Though often done in collaboration with others, in all cases the author generated the design ideas. One of the key aspects of architecture stuff is that it is unpretentious and accessible and these projects are meant to illustrate that quality. Architecture can be serious and playful at the same time.
£26.96
Oro Editions Dalvey 7: Houses by 7 Singapore Architects
It is by no coincidence that another collaborative project is spear-headed by K2LD. Following the success of the Lien Villa Collective at Holland Park, Singapore in 2009, Ko Shiou Hee was asked to look at a similar concept for the Dalvey Estate property and to select and lead a group of architects in the making of a unique architecture expression and yet functional outcome, suitable for contemporary living and fit for rental. It was learning from Game Theory that Ko Shiou Hee succeeded in persuading his clients to adopt this sharing strategy both in the Lien Collective and the Dalvey 7 group. The selected architects must all adhere to the rules of the game and work on the same fees and briefs. All have to consider each other's placements and planning to maximise the benefit for all parties as a whole and eventually benefit the client. As architects, each firm, and their practicing architects, has been educated to work with social, economic, and environmental sensitivity. The world that architects operate in is driven by developers and stakeholders who maximise their gain through development strategies, but leave little chance to be true to the architectural profession. It is perhaps even more pressing for architects to address this issue of true collaborative spirit in this increasingly distortive egocentric world. Through this Dalvey 7 project, there is hope in the idea outlined in Game Theory to perpetuate and flourish in this profession to encourage sharing and collaboration. Perhaps more form of joint venture in various scales like big firm-small firm, local firm-foreign firm, developer-architect venture, design-built etc, will begin to surface.
£17.95
Oro Editions McIntyre House: UBC SALA: West Coast Modern House Series
The genesis, development and life-long occupation of the McIntyre house, built in 1972 as part of a multiple-dwelling subdivision, provides possible answers to some very pressing contemporary design questions. How might one live near the city and be respectful of nature? How might efficiently built dwellings also be spacious and dense site occupation still allow for privacy? This history is recounted through text augmented by photographs and site diagrams, house sections and plans. They reveal a modern architecture on the west coast that resulted from an interplay of both the physicality of the land and a culturally imbued landscape.
£17.95
Oro Editions Triangle Modern Architecture
The Triangle region of North Carolina is a little-known hotbed of outstanding modern architecture with roots that trace back to the Bauhaus and has helped to shape the history of modern American architecture. While the Triangle has seen a great increased interest in modern architecture, the understanding of this design and the reasons and history behind it, have not been shared in a clear and meaningful way. There is an information gap between what is appreciated by architects and by the general public.
£35.96
Oro Editions Ideal Landscapes and the Deep Meaning of Feng-Shui: Patterns of Biological and Cultural Genes
This is a book about ideal landscapes and Feng-Shui. Using evolutionary and anthropological approaches, Peking University professor Kongjian Yu - who holds a doctorate degree in Design from Harvard - explores the origin, structure, and meanings of Feng-Shui in juxtaposition to the ideal landscape models in Chinese culture. Using illustrative site observations and literature, Yu argues that Feng-Shui landscapes share similar structures with other Chinese ideal landscapes - the implications of which are deconstructed into terms of geography, anthropology, ecology, and philosophy. As a landscape architect and urbanist, Professor Yu respects the role of Feng-Shui in the making of places, yet still is in opposition to its superstitious nature. Well illustrated and poetically written, this book is a must-read for those who are interested in Feng-Shui, as well as those who care about their daily living environment - especially those who practice architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism.
£22.46
Oro Editions LA+ Iconoclast
Issue 10 of LA+ Journal brings you the results of the LA+ Iconoclast open design ideas competition, in which we asked designers to reimagine New York's Central Park, fictionally devastated by eco-terrorists protesting the loss of the world's forests. See what designers did when faced with the opportunity to challenge this icon of landscape architecture. LA+ Iconoclast also features interviews with jurors Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG), Jenny Osuldsen (Snohetta), Charles Waldheim (Harvard GSD), Beatrice Galilee (The Met), Lola Shepard (Lateral Office), and Richard Weller (PennDesign), as well as a critique of competition entries by Julia Czerniak.
£14.36
Oro Editions Every Last Jew: A Teenage Boy's Story of Survival
It's 1939 and Hitler just invaded Poland. Henry is 13 years old, and unbeknownst to him or his family, his life is about to change forever. Soon he is torn from his siblings and parents and finds himself packed into a covered truck with dozens of desperate strangers. He doesn't have any idea where he's going or when he'll be let out, if ever. Henry is now struggling for his life in one of the most diabolical and murderous events in human history - the Nazi plan to exterminate every last Jew in Europe. Travel with him to a munition's factory in his home town of Radom, where he is forced to labour 12 hours a day with barely enough rations to keep him alive. Discover how he manages to obtain extra food through ingenuity and a willingness to risk his life. Would we have the courage to do the same? Follow Henry to an airstrip in Unterriexingen where he is put to work in the freezing cold with barely any clothes and no shoes to protect him from the elements. Learn how, during an Allied air strike, he escapes to a nearby farmhouse where he pleads with the owner to take him in after he's caught eating with the swine. Feel what it's like to hold a Luger for the first time while Henry struggles with the idea of killing the Nazi officer who allows him to clean his pistol and shine his boots, when he is not forced to work building what would someday become his own prison. Would you pull the trigger? Walk with Henry on a 'death march' through the streets of Germany with no end in sight, having to endure the taunts of passersby who yell nasty epithets and throw stones at him while he reaches for a discarded apple core and is stabbed in the back by a Nazi soldier's bayonet. How many of us would have the strength to continue in such circumstances? This true-to-life story shines as a beacon of hope and perseverance and serves as a backdrop-narrative to remind us that racism and hate can lead to murderous behaviour and the rapid destruction of civil society. Every Last Jew is a beautifully written memoir by Henry's son Mark Koperweis that will take you on a journey that is up-close, personal, and in full living horror. When you emerge, you will never again see the world or your life in the same way. It will change you, as it did Henry, forever.
£8.95
Oro Editions Erdy McHenry Architecture
Rooted in the modernist tradition, Erdy McHenry Architecture brings uncommon rigour to their work. Recognised for their uniquely diverse portfolio of mixed-use, institutional, office, agricultural, and residential design, Erdy McHenry Architecture presents this monograph as a window into projects developed throughout the firm's twenty-year history. With an appreciation for place and creative constraints, Erdy McHenry Architecture considers each project challenge as an opportunity: how can architecture make great places? How can design elevate the human experience? How can a project team address the realities of construction without sacrificing programmatic intent? For each case study presented in this monograph, Erdy McHenry Architecture provides a brief narrative of the project's design intent and evolution. Whether it is a tower, a school, or an office headquarters, Erdy McHenry Architecture leverages the challenges and opportunities of site, scale, and social context to reveal solutions that enable design as an outcome more than an objective.
£29.25
Oro Editions An Enterprising Path to Barrio Chino: A Story of Barcelona
In 1925 a journalist on the Barcelona newspaper El Escandalo used the term Barrio Chino in a somewhat derogatory way to describe part of the older city. While the area in question represented a dystopian underbelly of the city, known for its impoverished living and working conditions together with its 'red-light' subcultures, it never existed as a 'Chinatown' in either a physical or social sense. However the name of this mythical community stuck from the 1920s onwards, appearing on maps and descriptions of the inner city but devoid of any hint of Chinese inhabitants or their culture. The book takes this as a starting point to chart the development of Barcelona over two hundred years using a series of 'diaries' and drawn images. These are set around four generations of a fictional Chinese dynasty and their imagined architectural participation in some of the major events in Barcelona's modern history. As residents of the Barrio from the mid-nineteenth century, they individually document diverse contributions to the city during periods of dynamic growth. This is set against a backdrop of cataclysmic political change and exemplary forms of urban regeneration which have provided Barcelona with its contemporary 'World City' status as it plans for the future.
£22.46
Oro Editions Nature Site Restraint: Thorbjörn Andersson Landscape Architect
This is a book about contemporary Swedish landscape architecture, reflected through the work of the country's leading landscape designer Thorbjorn Andersson. Three essays by international writers open the book, elaborating on the concepts of Nature, Site, and Restraint. The essays are followed by the project section, including photographs, drawings, and descriptions. The projects are in the public realm; mainly squares and parks in Sweden. Swedish landscape architecture stands firm in the world, directed towards social use and careful design. Sweden has developed a tradition built on human values, selective design, and an urge to work in a resourceful way. The book covers a selection of recent projects by Thorbjoern Andersson, who is one main interpreter of contemporary Swedish landscape design. Essays are by Annemarie Lund of Denmark, critic, editor and author, Marc Treib, professor emeritus of UC Berkeley and prolific author, and Udo Weilacher, chair of Landscape department at TU Munich and author.
£17.95
Oro Editions Pressing Matters 8
Pressing Matters is an exciting design and research compilation from PennDesign's Department of Architecture, featuring recent student work, news, important symposia and lectures. Society faces many challenges: global warming and environmental change, pollution and waste, transition to new energy and resource economies, the redistribution and reorganisation of political and economic power worldwide; globalisation of the construction and development industries, population growth, shrinkage and migration; urban intensification and attrition; privatisation of public sector activities; and the transformation of cultural identities and social institutions. We seek to bring the expansion of expertise and creativity in architecture to bear on these challenges with a goal to be at the forefront of advanced research and design by creating an advanced research institute that focuses on new design methodologies and future manufacturing through the interlinked intelligence of digital design, scripting and robotics. Printed on recycled paper with non-toxic inks, Pressing Matters focuses on social awareness and responsibility, and endeavours to be a think-tank for critical exchange and advanced debate within and across disciplinary boundaries. We are a connective device linking invited experts for ongoing lectures and publications to a growing international audience and an increasing network of experts. Approximately 310 graduate students, the Graduate Architecture Department is comprised of design studios, exhibition spaces, classrooms, and offices, a facility that includes state-of-the-art laboratories for computing and fabrication and two advanced research labs: the Digital Design Research Lab and the Building Simulation Group. PennDesign has also introduced 3-D printers in the newly renovated studio spaces and a brand new Robotic lab.
£27.90
Oro Editions Library as Stoa: Public Space and Academic Mission in Snohetta's Charles Library
Library as Stoa is a reflection on the building design and construction in essays and photographs of Snøhetta's Charles Library at Temple University. The library demonstrates the role of public space and innovation in architecture. By using an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) for the storage of Temple's entire collection which includes two million books on site, the Charles Library was designed to balance the amount of space for books vs. people, and significantly increase the social spaces to accommodate student and faculty research and collaboration. Using the models of library as studio and creative commons, it is a place for discovery, creation, preservation, and sharing of knowledge. The library includes university partners and important library functions in strategic locations for improved support services for the university community. University Special Collections, an important institutional asset for the university and the city of Philadelphia, is visible and accessible for visitors from the city community. Snøhetta's design approach took into account the diversity of the university community, the site conditions and the university's aspirations. The design process included collaboration with the campus community to fully understand the social aspects and future needs of the university. Sited in a prime location on the university's campus, the library is an inspirational destination for the campus and city communities and serves as a change agent, reflective of the future direction of the university.
£26.96
Oro Editions Linear Thought Condensation
Condensed thoughts transformed to matter with sequence of drawings. With exceptions of the author's other books, no similar published case studies exist. Uniquely relevant in both the education and practice architecture. This book aims to unify knowing and feeling with drawing. Since this process is influenced by the memory of our body, the outcome could be unpredictable, mysterious and timeless. If the drawn investigation questions the fundamentals of knowledge, existence and truth, then the resulting architecture might embody a new branch of philosophy. It will affect simultaneously our cerebral, tactile, and spatial perceptions and appear as a circumstantial singularity.
£17.95
Oro Editions LA+ Tyranny
From the first utopian impulse of Plato's Republic to today's global border controls and public space surveillance systems, there has always been a tyrannical aspect to the organisation of society and the regulation of its spaces. Tyranny takes many forms, from the rigid barriers of military zones to the subtle ways in which landscape is used to 'naturalise' power. What are these forms and how do they function at different scales, in different cultures, and at different times in history? How are designers and other disciplines complicit in the manifestation of these varying forms of tyranny and how have they been able to subvert such political and ideological structures?
£15.75
Oro Editions Timber in the City: Design and Construction in Mass Timber
As synthetic materials, mutant and hybrid concoctions attain prominence in our daily lives - in our handheld devices, cooking utensils, vehicles, even things as simple as our shopping bags - the design and construction industries have instead reembraced the familiar, the conventional - wood, which has regained prominence through innovations in engineering and construction methodologies. Technology is now commonly used and often (though not always) affordably used - to cut, perforate, assemble, erect, and even fabricate materials in a manner not previously possible. Wood is one such material, and Timber in the City documents both the imaginings of those in the nascence of their education and practice and the executed work of design professionals at the leading edge of architecture. These designers, regardless of the duration of their immersion in the field, have imaginatively rethought the means by which we build and the methods by which we define space merely through differing deployments of a familiar building material.
£20.66
Oro Editions Lunch 13:: Mischief
Lunch is an annual, student-edited design research journal at the University of Virginia School of Architecture that aims to facilitate conversations across disciplines and communities, publishing articles, research, interviews, and projects that critically engage with contemporary design topics. Schools of Architecture; Design Academic Community; Student-run Journals; Architecture and Design Journals; Students of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design and Design-related fields; Design Research. Throughout history mischief-makers have plagued the over-powerful, puncturing the smug assumptions of Fat Cats, Big Cheeses, and High Muck-a-Mucks. From Coyote to Anansi to Shakespeare's fools, the trickster holds the trump card when the chips are down, the stakes are high, and the owner of the casino is the President of the United States. We posit the wicked pleasures of the trickster tale as an enticing alternative to dreary disaster-capitalist narratives, technocratic solutionism, and universalist fictions of Authority, Progress, Unity, and Truth. This issue of Lunch (13: Mischief) is a collection of articles, letters, manifestos, anti-manifestos, graphics, games and narratives that approach design more impishly than urgently, that uproot assumptions that solutions are the solution, that wiggle under the garden fence and leave the farmer with a fistful of fur - but no bunny.
£17.95
Oro Editions Places: Public Architecture
In its considered response to the globalisation of culture, HCMA has consistently achieved an architecture that is expressive of time and place, and uniquely interprets Canadian values of openness and inclusivity. The firm's concentration on civic buildings denotes a deeply-rooted concern for community, and recognition that in contemporary pluralistic society's schools, libraries and community centres are both symbolically and literally, the meeting places for all sectors of our communities regardless of demography, faith or ethnicity. What distinguishes HCMA's design approach is its conceptual shift from the traditional departure points of form or function, to a more organic and humanist approach by which inhabitation of the building and its surroundings mediate the interface between these two opposing forces. While function implies an empirical definition of purpose, and form a pre-occupation with sculptural abstraction, inhabitation connotes an understanding that buildings should embrace the richness and diversity with which our lives unfold. Places: Public Architecture explores a selection of key projects by HCMA which offer insight into the firm's specific approach to community building through public architecture. Featured projects many of which have been challenged by contemporary advancements in technology, include schools, libraries, fire halls, childcare centres, and more. Through the practice of architecture HCMA asks what is the future of the library, of education, and of public space in an increasingly online age? The book features critical text by accomplished writer Jim Taggart, professional photography, lucid architectural drawings, and details, as well as a look at the firm's design process of iterative modelling/diagramming and research on contemporary topics.
£22.50
Oro Editions Basically Modern: Los Angeles Houses
For this Los Angeles firm, modernism is not a matter of style or ideology, but rather a commonsense approach to contemporary living. Their goal is to create a composite portrait of each client and their own response to the site and the benign climate of southern California. A few materials, impeccably crafted, provide a serene backdrop for living and entertaining. Photographs, plans, and sketches illustrate ten exemplary houses in great detail, and the text illuminates the creative process and the ways in which it has enriched the lives of fortunate owners.
£22.50
Oro Editions Increments of Neighborhood: A Compendium of Built Types for Walkable and Vibrant Communities
ntended as a comprehensive resource, Increments of Neighborhood is a compendium of recent built work for urban neighbourhoods, encompassing the spectrum of building types financed/built by today's American real estate industry - from single family and townhouses, through 'missing middle' stacked housing, stick-built housing, large multi-family, and high-rise buildings. This publication is the only resource in the marketplace that tabulates market-rate products that fill America's cities, as well as being a comparative resource that shows how these types can be deployed in a way befitting smart-growth using sustainable principles. The only resource of its type, Increments of Neighborhood will demystify the understanding of costs and type, contribute to the public realm for the non-architectural professional, and provide a breadth and range of significant new information for experienced architects who typically specialise in a particular segment of building products such as hospitals or single-family houses, information with which they are frequently unacquainted.
£54.00
Oro Editions Yoga and the City
Yoga and the City photographically documents a variety of people who are committed to yoga philosophy and yoga lifestyles in big cities - people, who live in the middle of hustle and bustle, but manage to maintain their harmony and happiness. It doesn't matter what is surrounding them, what really matters is how they look at everything around them. Possibly, when people see this photography, they will decide to try yoga or meditation. Yoga and the City combines art, spirituality, and sport. It is a reflection of strength and power - strength to overcome adversities and to find balance while living in a fast paced environment. Yoga is a way to find alignment, to become closer to your spiritual core.
£14.50
Oro Editions Seeking Savannah
A disparate but exuberant group of scholars are brought together in Savannah by an eminent professor to explore and debate the history and characteristics of the city and its implications for a twenty-first century urbanism. This narrative represents a forceful and humorous interplay between formal discussion, informal interludes, irreverent comments, and less than academic relationships. Its serious purpose is to identify the urban challenges facing America in terms of containing and consolidating growth within livable communities. However like all such participatory events it is also an opportunity for informal personal agendas set against a backdrop of real life events. The text is interspersed with 90 drawings of Savannah, illustrating its unique and multilayered identity as a potential urban paradigm for the future.
£19.35
Oro Editions Ennead Architects 8: Profile Series
This is the eighth set in an ongoing series of books. Each of the titles tells the story of a single building. It is our hope that as these books accumulate alongside our body of work, they, in their aggregate, will form a profile of our design intentions.
£25.65
Oro Editions Houses for Aging Socially: Developing Third Place Ecologies
By 2030, 79 million baby boomers will have turned 65 at a rate of 10,000 per day. While more than 85 per cent will age in place, a tsunami of challenges and opportunities will compel this cohort to embrace more cooperative structures of living, given their explosive increase in single-person households. The nation's housing stock and neighbourhoods are not equipped to serve the common mobility, access, and social needs of seniors. Many who now age in place experience greater social isolation and loss of purpose than residents of nursing homes. What is the shape of housing that accommodates retirement lifestyles for the 85 per cent who do not live in the nation's top 50 urban cores, yet desire greater cooperative structures of living in low-density housing? This book reworks components of the familiar single-family home to promote new levels of connectivity in neighbourhoods once resistant to sharing. The traditional individual porch is rescaled to serve multiple units as a hyper-porch; garage galleries hybridize car parking to become mixed-use neighbourhood workspaces; and patio mats offer live-work venues within a compact footprint. All three strategies revitalise neighbourhoods through the return of informal economies and social networks.
£21.15
Oro Editions Joy Ride
Joy Ride is a simple book on the surface. A collection of renowned architect-come-artist David C. Martin's sketches, watercolours, photography, and observations, as recorded over an extensive cross-Mexico sojourn, it has all the aesthetic gaiety and light-heartedness of a typical travelogue. However, there is something deeper at work. Martin's multi-media evocation of Mexican scenery and buildings speaks to his extensive experience in art and architecture, and this book will be of mutual interest to students of both - as well as those who want to explore Mexico through the eyes of a truly unique traveller. Innovative, fresh, and evocative, this book will take you on the 'Joy Ride' that its title promises.
£20.66
Oro Editions Experiences of Art: Reflections on Masterpieces
Experiences of Art: Reflections on Masterpieces is a book that explores the history of art through the insights of students and critics. It engages with challenging, thought-provoking themes such as the origins of creativity in prehistoric art, the meaning and significance of the classical paradigm in art history since antiquity, the actual application of Renaissance art theory to an examination of famous masterpieces, and the tradition of individual subjectivity and expression in modern art reaching back to Van Gogh. In addition, one of its special features is an exploration of a new area of philosophical inquiry, which re-examines the 18th century as both a period of rationalism and anti-rationalism (rather than the "Age of Reason", as it is commonly referred to). With its focus on well-known and often-discussed masterpieces, this work is adept at including both the mandatory framework of current critical thought and introducing fresh ideas and perspectives.
£15.50
Oro Editions Urban Hallucinations
In Urban Hallucinations, architects Koning Eizenberg take on the idyll of local and neighbourhood through the design of recent projects in the Los Angeles region. They bring a fresh eye to placemaking and community building in an urban area that is ambivalent about development, yet conscious of regional issues - notably sustainability, affordability, and housing shortage. Believing opportunities hide in plain sight, the architects sift through the context of increasing regulation, differing opinions on responsible growth, and priorities for quality of life to extract their own unexpected and compelling approach to the architecture of the day to day.
£15.75
Oro Editions Chandigarh ReThink
Focus on the continuing work for the development of the Global South.
£22.49
Oro Editions Nirvana: The Spread of Buddhism Through Asia
"From crimson robes to golden temples: Stunning photos capture the colourful and spellbinding worship of Buddhism across Asia...Horner's breath-taking collection...captures aspects of each country on his exploration." MailOnline. From its origins at Bodh Gaya on the plains of northern India, we travel up into the Himalaya of Ladakh, where Buddhism thrived and split in the five different sects. Our journey takes us to Nepal, historically a receptive home for Buddhism, to Tibet in Exile in Dharamshala, and to Sikkim and Bhutan paying homage to the sacred sites of Mahayana Buddhism along the way. We venture along the silk route into the mountainous region of Xinjiang in China, and to the largest monastery in the Buddhist world at Labrang in Gansu Province, home to the Yellow Hat sect. We visit the Longman Caves and the legendary Shaolin Monastery, with its extraordinary Kung Fu monks, before eventually embarking for Korea and Japan to trace Tantric Buddhism. There we sample the tranquility of Zen temples and the fresh mountain and sea air of the most sacred pilgrim sites.We follow the story of how the once precarious belief emerged as Theravada Buddhism and found a haven in Sri Lanka before progressing eastwards to Burma, and on into southeast Asia, as far as central Java. We explore the exquisite temples of Luang Prabang in Laos, Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Sukhothai in Thailand where Buddhist art reached a certain zenith. This is journey of spiritual as well as visual enlightenment, as we meet Theravada Buddhist pilgrims along the way. Finally we traverse the Tibetan plateau to reach the fabled capital of Lhasa, with its spiritual centre of the Jokhang Temple and the iconic Potala Palace, the abandoned home of HH the Dalai Lama. Maps with reference to the photographs will guide you along the routes. The illuminating text by Denis Gray provides an authoritative perspective of Buddhism in 21st century Asia and assists in navigating the reader through the book's journey.
£31.50
Oro Editions Architecture as a Living Act: Leonardo Ricci
This book, the first monograph on Leonardo Ricci’s oeuvre, uses archive materials, some of which have never been published, to investigate the entire range of Ricci’s work, by examining some of his most interesting projects and putting them into the context of the current architectural panorama. His professional activity in the passionate climate of post-war reconstruction in Italy, his communitarian projects and experimental family residences, his book Anonymous (20th Century) in which he defined with an “existentialist” approach his theories of painting, architecture, and urban planning, his visionary projects for “Earth-City” macrostructures, his innovative approach to the spatial organisation of public institutions in his last projects, every step of Ricci’s work was always coherently connected to a basic aim: to translate into an architectural form the dynamism of phenomena and the incessant flow of life. The book investigates Leonardo Ricci’s practical and theoretical approach to architectural design, giving this exceptional figure the recognition he deserves within the panorama of Italian and international architecture following the Second World War.
£26.96
Oro Editions A Solution to Homelessness In Your Town: Valley View Senior Housing, Napa County, California
Close to one million people are unhoused in the United States today. Millions and millions are ill—housed - people living in shanties or leaky, mouldy trailers. And millions more are mis—housed - in houses that are abusive in their loneliness, forlorn and empty at so many levels. We can do something about it. Actually, it’s low hanging fruit, should we choose to do something; impossible, if we do not. And it’s essential, not only for the wellbeing of the individual, but also for the wellbeing of the State, and the society. Current studies are overwhelmingly show that it is more cost effective, in terms of tax dollars earmarked for city, county, state, and federal governments, to house people than it is to just leave them outside. About $20k to $40k cheaper for each person per year. In the case of the unhoused, it also taxes our psyches and our emotions to see our neighbours sleeping on the sidewalk. It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain to our children and grandchildren how we Americans leave people outside in the cold — mentally challenged or not. Then, there is the moral issue. If you are motivated to get a new homeless housing project moving in your town, this book is the best place to start.
£14.36
Oro Editions Architecture as Material Culture: The Work of Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp with Kenneth Frampton
Australian architecture practice Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp's work varies in scale, yet it's all unified by an intuitive sense of place and an elaboration of the tectonic. This book presents FJMT's work in detail and places it within the emerging culture of Australian architecture. It documents FJMT's contribution to the wider culture of place and of architecture. A place acquires meaning through human intervention and transformation. Raised to the level of architecture these transformations interpret and represent society's values and aspirations. FJMT has a reputation as an ideas-driven practice with an agenda for strong public engagement and resolution of tectonics. Architecture as Material Culture documents this ability to uncover the real and often contradictory issues and potentials of a project through a very careful analysis of purpose and place.
£27.00
Oro Editions Monsterpieces
This collection of kids' bestiaries is a critique of Monster Contemporary Architecture. It is a reinterpretation of contemporary iconic forms and the contemplation of the future states of these masterpieces, or more fittingly, Monsterpieces. Two Harvard architecture graduates challenge their to minds "un-learn" architecture history. They speculate on the future state of post-occupancy of contemporary architectural icons, creating a retrospective of future archeological studies. A response and critique of iconic perFORMance -- the current architectural trend in competing for attention -- this fiction tells the story of building forms that do follow function. In this book, each eccentric form finds its justification in a speculative function, with surreal and dystopian connotations. The Casa da Musica is now a swimming pool, and Selfridge Birmingham is a prison for TV addicts, nothing more, nothing less.
£11.95
Oro Editions Stephan Jaklitsch: Habits, Patterns & Algorithms
Habits, Patterns, Algorithms presents a diverse selection of projects by Stephan Jaklitsch, the New York-based architect behind all Marc Jacobs retail locations worldwide. Encompassing realized commissions as well as proposals, this volume presents a range of projects, from small-scale retail constructions to freestanding residential works that engage the surrounding landscape. Illustrated with 425 color images and 140 black-and-white images, this history of Jaklitsch's work covers every stage of his projects--from sketch to model to completed structure. It provides a glimpse into the rarely discussed intricacies of the design process, from land site and building code limitations to client-imposed conditions. Exceptional photography and text make this book a valuable resource for the architectural audience, as well as a visually stunning collectible work. AUTHOR: Stephan Jaklitsch received his BS in Architecture from the Georgia Institute of Technology and M-Arch from Princeton University. As Principal of Stephan Jaklitsch Architects since 1998, he has taken the firm from a small design studio focused on residential and commercial projects in New York City to a 12-member architectural firm with a diverse, international portfolio of work. Today, with several hundred completed projects around the world, his firm has received numerous awards, including two Merit Awards from the American Institute of Architects. Stephan Jaklitsch has seen his work exhibited in New York, Chicago, and London and featured in prominent publications throughout the world. Through his work, Jaklitsch seeks to explore the poetry of architecture using the manipulation of space and light to create rigorously detailed spaces that convey a sense of meaning and purpose to their respective contexts. ILLUSTRATIONS: 280 colour & 140 b/w photographs
£40.50
Oro Editions Speaking of Architecture: Interviews About What Comes Next, with Mark Foster Gage
What ideas are currently energising your architectural work and explorations? Why did these ideas become impactful while others did not? What role did mentors and peers play in the development of these ideas? What were your breakthrough insights or aha moments? What is next for you, and for the discipline and discourse of architecture? For this book, Mark Foster Gage has selected 11 of the most noteworthy and fascinating conversations from his year-long project of documenting the ideas of the next generation of designers who are revolutionising the nature of architectural practice and theory today. This remarkable collection of casual, informative, and personal interviews engages 15 architects as they reveal what made them who they are, what propels their architectural work forward, and what they anticipate comes next. A noted practitioner, tenured Yale professor, CNN design contributor, and respected insider of the international architectural scene, Mark Foster Gage has spent his professional life with many of the most important figures in architectural discourse and practice. With this book he focuses on an emerging generation of practitioners — approaching his subjects with a characteristic mix of insight, wit, and humour in a book that is consistently entertaining and informative as the architects open up in unexpected ways about their beliefs, work, lives and thoughts about where architecture, and they, are headed next.
£22.50
Oro Editions Designing-Women’s Lives: Transforming Place and Self
Designing Women’s Lives calls for a place-making revolution based on women’s culturally nurtured “feeling” sensibility. Women too often have had to repress that sensibility in order to become designers. Now, rather than struggle to fit-in, women can break new ground by using Design Psychology as the foundation for creating emotionally satisfying place. To encourage such a heart/mind shift, the author discusses how she took architecture Gold Medalist Denise Scott Brown and interior design legend Margo Grant Walsh through a series of Design Psychology exercises. The process revealed ways these renowned women unconsciously embedded their heroic struggles as minority females in their designs: Grant Walsh’s journey from her Chippewa childhood home with only one green couch to her plush NYC residence reflected her embrace of her Native American + designing-woman’s identity. Scott Brown grew up in a more privileged South African household, yet she translated the oppression she witnessed during Apartheid and the bias she experienced as a Jewish woman into the inclusive approach to architecture that made her famous. Interweaving such designing-women’s stories, feminist design thinking and her personal vignettes, the author inspires readers to “design from within” their personal psychology as a form of personal liberation. Project case studies further demonstrate how Design Psychology helped women create a nurturing - even transformative - home during life-passages such as partnering or grieving. Such case studies provide inspiring examples of how colour, shape, texture, space layout, and special objects can be catalysts for such personal evolution.
£22.50
Oro Editions Architectural Principles in the Age of Fraud
Philosophy exercises a massive influence on contemporary architectural culture and the understanding of the built environment. Discussions of architects and architectural academics are heavily loaded with theoretical ideas, concepts and views imported from the works of philosophers. At the same time this architectural employment of philosophy rarely goes beyond the tendency to mine philosophical works for ideas, words and phrases and use them, often without much understanding, in order to promote architectural agendas and embellish theoretical claims made by architects and academics. The book presents the history of this phenomenon for the past 100 years. It describes and analyses numerous, often funny, entertaining as well as embarrassing, examples of false intellectual pretence and pompous but incompetent philosophical posturing by prominent architects and architectural academics of the era and their efforts to bamboozle readers, colleagues and the general public. The book presents a powerful criticism of modernist views on architecture and argues that the rise of obfuscation and philosophical posturing among architects and architectural academics is a defensive strategy intended to draw attention away from the failure of Modernism in architecture.
£17.06
Oro Editions Uncertainty
Working in rural China is unlike other countryside: it is full of contradiction, neither rural nor urban, both traditional and modern, abandoned in some areas and yet others are becoming cities overnight. It is in fact a laboratory for new ways of living. And it has become our laboratory for new ways of making architecture. Whereas contemporary architecture since the advent of modernism has developed increasingly controlled, prototypical, and standardised mechanisms for building, our experiments embrace the opposite: a lack of control, taking place within the flux of political, social and economic uncertainties. The experiments presented here are examples taken from a series of design and build projects conducted from the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong over the past 10 years. They are remarkable in their diffuse explorations and situations. Some were urgent post-earthquake reconstructions, often adapting to extreme topographies or taking place in the midst of major urbanising transformations, whereas other experiments occurred in forgotten villages with left-behind craftspeople and their disappearing building cultures. These forays and what can be best described as adventures in building, left us with varied and novel (sometimes failed) experiments with structure and program. But they are presented here for the trait they have in common: an exploration of the limits of material, geometry, construction methods, and even historical context. The diversity manifested in this collection of projects is a direct reflection of the incredible diversity of climates, locations, and conditions that underlie the ongoing Chinese urbanisation experiment. The focus here is not on the what but the how, as each project engages with its own set of limiting factors or unideal conditions. They are stories of design, overcoming and even embracing adverse situations in order to discover some hidden advantage. Each chapter explores a different attempt to revert seemingly challenging limitations (particularly those which the architect cannot exert control over) and turn these into novel building approaches. As often occurs for architects working in a foreign landscape, the differences in language and culture have proven to be a source of constant miscommunication and surprising discovery. The lack of a common spoken language—these remote areas speak their own dialects—has placed an emphasis on drawing as another means of communication. Through drawing we have explored a means of design and a means of building. Therefore, this is also a book about ways of drawing that represent ways of control and, inversely perhaps, what not to control.
£23.36
Oro Editions Blank: Speculations on CLT
This book weaves a much needed and transformational narrative about making architecture through paying close attention to cross-laminated timber as a material for today. The material becomes the site of experimentation, innovation, and research in search of specific meanings of CLT in architecture at various scales by selecting the “CLT Blank” as the building unit. The structure of the book brings together work and texts from a diverse group of theorists and practitioners, who make material central to their inquiry, to suggest design approaches that will broaden the cultural, spatial, and technological significance for architecture, education, engineering, and industry. The outcome focuses on materiality through fast slippages between art, architecture, and science, that we hope will invigorate and expand new discourse to act as an antidote to the current conversations about the material, that is fixated on its making and mass production, disappointingly portraying it as a bland and lifeless product—a notion we want to be distant from in preference to seeking areas we feel were not yet conceptualised or theorised. The potential to see the spatial properties of its use and what kind of world that might suggest is shown in the book, with selected striking visual materials, to reposition its architecture though new forms of representation and responses that continue to stay in touch with pragmatics. Aesthetics of CLT with a connection to wood and art practice is a central thread though the book.
£33.30
Oro Editions City of Immortals: Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris
This first-person account of a legendary necropolis will delight Francophiles, tourists and armchair travelers, while enriching the experience of taphophiles (cemetery lovers) and aficionados of art and architecture, mystery and romance. Carolyn Campbell's evocative images are complemented by those of renowned landscape photographer Joe Cornish. City of Immortals celebrates the novelty and eccentricity of Pere-Lachaise Cemetery through the engrossing story of the history of the site established by Napoleonic decree along with portraits of the last moments of the cultural icons buried within its walls. In addition to several 'conversations' with some of the high-profile residents, three guided tours are provided along with an illustrated pull-out map featuring the grave sites of eighty-four architects, artists, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers and actors, including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison of the Doors. Frederic Chopin, Georges Bizet, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Isadora Duncan, Eugene Delacroix, Gertrude Stein, Amedeo Modigliani, Sarah Bernhardt, Simone Signoret, Colette and Marcel Proust.
£17.95
Oro Editions Archive, Matrix, Assembly: The Photographs of Thomas Struth 1978-2018
Archive, Matrix, Assembly: The Photographs of Thomas Struth 1978-2018 presents the first comprehensive, systematic theory of contemporary German artist Thomas Struth's main body of photographic work from its beginnings in the late 1970s until his most recent work in 2018. The book presents a unique, evolutionary understanding of the work, proposing that it has established three stages of production: archive, matrix, and assembly. Together the three stages form a developmental system that characterises the individual photographs, their relation to their subject matter, and how they form larger, significant collections of images. In covering all phases of the artist's work, it also develops a comprehensive critical reading of the work, serves as a monograph of the artist, and provides an extensive analysis of the photographs at all stages, including the less discussed, more recent photography, which is placed on par with his earlier work for which Struth first became internationally renowned.
£26.96
Oro Editions HOK Design Annual 2018
The HOK Design Annual 2018 highlights this leading global design firm's most exceptional recent work in architecture, interior design, planning, urban design, and product design. The projects featured demonstrate the intersection between HOK's thought leadership in specialty areas - including aviation + transportation, tall buildings, sports, healthcare, science + technology, urbanism, workplace, and sustainability - and its firm-wide commitment to design excellence. Geographically diverse, these projects represent a variety of scales, and are technologically advanced examples of how great design can bring significant benefits to clients and the people who experience these spaces. The HOK Design Annual 2018 is a valuable global trends reference source for design professionals, students, and architecture enthusiasts. It provides insight into the creative process of the teams that are creating society's next generation of buildings.
£33.75
Oro Editions The Work of Machado & Silvetti
The Work of Machado and Silvetti presents the projects designed in the last four decades by these two architects. As active participants in the architectural scene of the '70s and '80s, they were intensely engaged in the origins of the debate that changed the course of architectural thinking, and of its pedagogical and professional practice implications. At the emergence of postmodernism, being considered as "outsiders," they escaped from the reductionist attitudes that either took historical forms for legitimizing architectural practice, or renounced to accept that a tabula rasa as unthinkable. They confront the practice of architecture with realism and from a cultural perspective that engages the multiple social and technical practices that bear on the creative process of making architecture: they consider typologies as indifferent to function or to iconographic definition, and defend the potential of architectural language and of architecture as a discipline. Machado and Silvetti have coined the idea of unprecedented realism to describe their distinctive design strategies and techniques of assemblage, personal interpretation, the production of meaning and the creation of emerging typologies. Their work pays attention to the culture, site, market, material detailing and architectural composition.
£31.50
Oro Editions Ecologies of Prosperity For the Living
Ecologies of Prosperity for the Living City is a collection of writings, interviews, and projects exploring themes introduced during the 2016 Woltz Symposium: Novel Synergies, the Instrumental Commons, and Dispersed Concentrations. With new material from speakers Philippe Rahm, Nina-Marie Lister, Marina Alberti, Paola Vigano, Niek Hazendonk, Albert Cuchi, and Jedediah Purdy, the dialogue is framed by a series of seminal texts from the 20th century and reimagines existing urban challenges through exemplary design projects of today. Structured as a reader for students and design practitioners, it promotes urban design as a catalyst for cultural, social, and environmental transformation within cities, towns, communities, institutions, and individuals faced with today's most pressing urban challenges.
£27.00
Oro Editions Rurality Re-imagined: Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers and Wild Things
urality Re-imagined is divided into four loosely-themed sections: Villagers, Farmers, Wanderers, and Wild Things. Each comprises five or six diverse chapters of varied length. In the Villagers section rural communities are considered as assemblages and spaces of vernacularity, as dark settings for TV dramas, new wave photography, and as sites for community arts projects. The Farmers section critically re-invigorates the historical fascination with peasantry and farming in the arts, through essays, painting, and photography that collectively place the agency of the artist under as much scrutiny as images of agricultural space and people. Stereotypically, the word 'Wanderers' conjures images of gypsy caravans, or country ramblers, but in this section the term is stretched to include not only the traditional migrations of reindeer herds, but also that of the motorway driver, and migrations of cultural forms too, such as that of hip-hop from the clubs of New York to the fields of rural Devon. In the essays and images in the Wild Things section the wilderness emerges as a highly contested cultural terrain, far from any state of purity, as it manifests itself in the behaviours of people, flora, and fauna in cultivated and uncultivated landscapes and parks.
£27.00
Oro Editions The Venetian Facade
There are no books that focus on the unique artistic characteristics of the Venetian facade and its potential relevance to contemporary architectural and urban issues, as this book intends. This book is about architecture. It is not about history, although a bit of history is necessary to set the context. It is not about theory, although, again, a bit is necessary to connect the facade with urbanism. It is also not about structure and technology. And, most definitely, it is not about the plan. All of these topics are well-covered elsewhere. This book is about the facade. It explores the art and typology of the Venetian facade, not only as a high point of architectural literacy and achievement, but as a potentially useful contemporary stimulant.
£29.25
Oro Editions House Precinct Territory
The book departs from a reflection on contemporary issues of environmental and social sustainability. With buildings and cities being one of the primary accelerators of climate change, the tightening of urban environments is one of the mechanisms by which architects and urban planners can affect change. To date, models of urban densification and compact cities have been focused on sites of urban consumption residential, commercial, civic and social spaces. Little thought has been given to the vast productive hinterlands around the world that support cities, through the growing of food, generation of power, production of goods and disposal of waste.Working through three scales of analysis, across three cities in the Asia Pacific Region, and deploying varying design research techniques ranging from critical observation to speculative scenario modelling, the book presents a series of projects that seek to retro-fit an existing urban environment with a productive program.
£26.96
Oro Editions Legacy
David C. Martin was the third-generation design partner for AC Martin Architects. This is a portfolio of significant projects that were designed during the period of 1970s to the 2010s. It includes a number of unpublished photos of award-winning architecture. The treatise includes many of David's conceptual sketches, his thoughts about design philosophy and describes working relations with his partner Chris Martin and other team members within the dynamics of a large architectural firm. He describes the culture of the firm and how the practice evolved through the generations. The scale of the work ranges from individual houses to 75-story towers from houses, churches, aerospace, universities to corporate towers.What differentiates this monograph from most is that it is a personal expression, illustrated by lush photographs from LA's best architectural photographers, and includes personal sketches and watercolours that chronical the design process. It deals with teamwork, fam
£49.50
Oro Editions Drawing Codes
Emerging technologies of design and production have transformed the role of drawings within the contemporary design process from that of design generators to design products. As architectural design has shifted from an analogue drawing-based paradigm to that of a computational model-based paradigm, the agency of the drawing as a critical and important form of design representation has shifted. Drawing Codes: Experimental Protocols of Architectural Representation examines the effects of this transformation on the architectural discipline and explores how architects have critically integrated procedural thinking into their drawing process. The book contains 96 commissioned drawings by a diverse range of architects that investigate how rules and constraints inform the ways architects document, analyse, represent, and design the built environment. The publication features essays by architects and theorists offering diverse perspectives
£37.80