Search results for ""Edition Axel Menges""

Text in French. Depuis plus de 350 ans les Parisiens ont conçu mais aussi préservé de phénoménaux espaces en plein air, ouverts au public. Dans son livre Jacqueline Widmar Stewart suit le tissage de la tapisserie des parcs de Paris et ses environs. LIdentification de lépoque á laquelle il a été construit peut donner á chaque parc des qualités multidimensionnelles et permet aux lecteurs de découvrir ces grands espaces verts tout comme les Parisiens. De nombreuses couches déléments et de thèmes tissent les parcs français. Aussi loin que lon remonte dans lhéritage ancien, les vestiges de lhistoire de Paris apparaissent dans tous les parcs, quelque soit leur taille. La répartition équilibrée des espaces verts dans la ville reflète une époque majeure du 19ème siècle; les parcs contemporains maintiennent ces traditions. Un certain nombre de parcs et jardins français du 17ème siècle ont appartenu initialement aux domaines royaux, mais maintenant accueillent le public. En aparté il convient de noter que le premier parc de Paris, le Jardin des Tuileries, a ouvert ses portes au public en 1667. Soigneusement conçus et méticuleusement adaptés aux besoins de lépoque, certains parcs ont camouflé le délabrement urbain inesthétique avec splendeur; dautres ont converti des sites industriels á un usage récréatif, tout en maintenant des liens culturels avec le passé. Beaucoup de merveilles invitent tous ceux qui pénètrent dans les sphères magiques de Paris: une promenade paysagère de plusieurs kilomètres au-dessus de rues animées; un jardin moderne suspendu au-dessus dune gare de train; un parc sur la rive dun canal avec ses grandes curiosités architecturales rouges; une allée au milieu dune île de la Seine; un marais récemment construit qui abrite déjá des canetons colverts; des nuages de parfum émanant des roses de la collection originale de Joséphine Bonaparte; au moins deux jardins ayant appartenu au célèbre sculpteur Auguste Rodin. Depuis ses études secondaires dans lIndiana, la langue et la littérature françaises ont fasciné Jacqueline Widmar Stewart, qui a étudié aux Universités du Colorado et du Michigan et qui a obtenu son doctorat en droit á lUniversité de Stanford á Palo Alto. Son premier livre, The Glaciers Treasure Trove: A Field Guide to the Lake Michigan Riviera, se penche sur les histoires géologiques et philanthropiques de cinq parcs au sud du lac, près de Chicago. Son deuxième livre, Finding Slovenia: A Guide to Old Europes New Country, met en valeur les merveilles de la terre natale de ses grands-parents. En 2011 Edition Axel Menges a publié Parks and Gardens in Greater Paris, maintenant aussi disponible en français. Champagne Regained, publié par Edition Axel Menges en 2013, raconte lhistoire de la boisson et du commerce du Champagne, depuis la période médiévale.

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The Königstein Fortress, located not far from Dresden on a rocky plateau high above the Elbe River, is considered one of the most interesting and best preserved fortifications in Europe. It has a long eventful history dating back to the Bronze Age. Königstein was first mentioned in documents in 1241. It was not until the end of the 16th century that the former castle began to be expanded into a fortress, which was then constantly adapted to new conditions. However, it was spared from warlike destruction over all the centuries. Instead, it was sometimes used as a prison camp in times of war, for example during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 and for the last time during the Second World War. In 1949, the then GDR set up a youth workshop in the fortress based on the teachings of Soviet pedagogue Anton Semyonovich Makarenko. In 1955, the GDRs Ministry of Culture finally converted Königstein into a museum and since 1991, now owned by the Free State of Saxony, it has undergone extensive structural renovation. The managing director of Festung Königstein gGmbH, Angelika Taube, became aware of Hans Dieter Schaal as early as 1997, and in the following years established an intensive collaboration with him, which has now resulted in six permanent and twelve temporary exhibitions. They illustrate the multifaceted history of the fortress in a way that clearly stands out from pure documentation and always creates something new and original from the factually given. This book presents these exhibitions in large-format colour illustrations. In addition, it contains descriptions and comments by Schaal that clarify the history of the exhibitions and also give the reader insights into the creative processes. Hans Dieter Schaal, born in Ulm in 1943, architect, stage designer, exhibition and landscape planner, makes the complexity of reality visible through his analytically differentiated stagings and brings its background into the field of vision of the attentive viewer. His works, the majority of which have been published by Edition Axel Menges, have since found an audience far beyond the borders of his native country. The author lives and works in a village near Biberach an der Riss.

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Since the end of the 20th century, an unprecedented number of remarkable museums have been built. None have had bigger worldwide implications than Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (199197). Until, that is, the new Musée des Confluences in Lyon was opened to the public, in late 2014. It was created by Wolf D. Prix of the Coop Himmelb(l)au team, which was founded in the 1970s. Many avant-garde groups from those wild years such as Archigram, Superstudio, Archizoom, Haus-Rucker-Co, and the Japanese Metabolists are now consigned to the past, but the Coop Himmelb(l)au architecture firm, whose special aspiration was always to bring into the world buildings that overcome the pull of the earth buildings 'to float on the horizon like clouds' is more in demand than ever. The finest demonstration of this endeavour to date can now be admired in Lyon. Functioning as a museum of human history, this impressive concrete, metal and glass colossus truly does appear to float above the peninsula at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône. Like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, this new building, so impossible to overlook, is an inspiration for the revita-lisation of disrupted urban areas and the valorisation of derelict industrial areas within the city precincts, but also far beyond Lyon. This Opus volume deals with the origins, construction, function and formal appearance of the Musée des Confluences, and also offers a preliminary theoretically based evaluation of the architecture of the building. Frank R. Werner was professor of history and architecture theory at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart from 1990 until 1994 and director of the Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal from 1993 until his retirement in 2012. He studied painting, architecture and history of architecture in Mainz, Hanover and Stuttgart. Christian Richters studied communication design at the Folkwang-schule in Essen. He is one of the most sought-after architecture photographers in Europe. To date he has been represented in the Opus series by 14 volumes, including ones about the embassies of the Nordic countries and the Bode Museum in Berlin, the Nieuwe Luxor Theater in Rotterdam and the BMW Welt in Munich. See also: Opus 66. Coop Himmelb(l)au, BMW Welt, München, Edition Axel Menges 2009.

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Text in English & German. Cosmetically-enhanced beauty is something that has existed for decades. Over the course of the last century, however, a cosmetics industry has arisen that is worth millions. Its products claim to optimise visual appearance, to bestow inner and outer health and to delay aging, under a veneer of medical credibility and reliable results. Cosmetics deals in alleged 'deep-acting' substances, which are supposed to detoxify and to purify the body from within. However, the whole arsenal of cosmetic ingredients is founded more on persuasion than conviction. Cosmetics is always a matter of mimicking an ideal. To this extent, cosmetic discourse deals in what might be described as an iconography of hunger -- it requires and is predicated upon a feeling of lack. At the same time, it promises to remedy that lack. The referential frame for cosmetics is constituted by cultural history and iconology, by semiotics and sociology, by psychology and rhetoric. Like fashion, it has called into being a linguistic system of considerable depth and complexity; one that draws its subtexts from futurology and history, from medicine and alchemy, from nostalgia and from heritage preservation. Cosmetics are supposed to make one more attractive and more seductive -- to make one positively irresistible, in fact. Cosmetics hold out the prospect of sexiness to women and men alike. All that one has to do is to acquire the right creams and lotions, the right palette of powders and rouges, of lipsticks and mascara, and one has a form of beauty that can be bought! The persuasive power of cosmetics is as dominant as it is irresistible. All of us could resist it if we wished to. And yet we don't wish to. This book exposes the rhetorical system behind the promises of cosmetics in terms of the histories of cultures and of mentalities, analysing the verbal/visual messages of selected examples. The internationally known architecture and design historian Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. Since 1995 he has built up a new design department in the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt; in addition to his museum work he teaches history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Volker Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Wewerka, Richard Meier, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt am Main by Nicholas Grimshaw, and the design activities of Lufthansa.

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Play-acting but above all the opera have only seemingly little to do with our everyday life. In fact opera is a very artificial work of art in which reality is nevertheless present, but condensed in such a way that it touches us throughout the ages. In experiencing opera performances, we thus become companions of the bard Orpheus in Monteverdis opera L'Orfeo, who mourns the death of his beloved nymph Eurydice with his laments. We transform ourselves into sympathetic and compassionate brothers and sisters of Orpheus, Wozzeck, Tosca, Tristan, Isolde or Jenufa and are thus directly referred to the perils and also pleasures in our own lives. In order to make the visual and sound dimensions of an opera tangible for the audience, a close interaction of dramaturges, actors, singers, dancers, directors, stage designers and technicians is necessary. What role do stage designers play in this? Dont some performances owe their success primarily to the work of the set designer? The stage settings created by Hans Dieter Schaal, who has worked on almost all German stages, but also in many important international theatre venues, including Vienna, Salzburg, Zurich, Brussels, Paris, Moscow and San Francisco, have, over and over again, such a lasting effect due to their visual power that they remain in the memory of the audience for a long time. The first volume on Hans Dieter Schaals stage settings covered the years 1982 to 2000, and this book now brings out a further volume dedicated to the works from 2001 to 2021. The book is captivating not only because of its abundance of mostly large-format photographs and many design drawings, but also because of the detailed texts written by Schaal himself, which reveal how intensively the artist deals with the respective work. As a result he invents images that often trigger a completely new perspective on the works. Hans Dieter Schaal, born in Ulm in 1943, is an architect, landscape designer, stage designer, exhibition designer and artist. His works, the majority of which have been published by Edition Axel Menges, have found an audience far beyond his home country. The author lives and works near Biberach an der Riß.

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Text in English & German. The inhabitants of our cities have undoubtedly come down with a gardening virus. Gardening is being propagated as the new sex. Wherever one looks, a gardening euphoria is in bloom. We only have to think of the riverbanks restored to their natural state, the urban gardening and urban farming projects springing up all over the world, the green skyscrapers (prospective and actually built) such as, for instance, the utopian farmscrapers of Vincent Callebout, the conversion of former high rail lines into green recreation spaces, the meditation gardens of Piet Oudolf, and the vertical gardens of Patrick Blanc. We dwell on the growing and sprouting, on the sowing and harvesting, with a kind of covert pleasure and sublimated erotic desire. These days, we feel close to greenery, just as we feel close to our pets. We tend and nurture the seeds and stalks, the leaves and flowers, the shrubs and grasses, the bushes and trees, with a matchless solicitude. These culturally coded natural phenomena also have therapeutic qualities, because they offer us self-determination and the possibility to share in social development. This is nothing less than the reintegration of the first, primal nature into the context of the conditions that have become ubiquitous today into the context of what has, today, become 'second nature'. For some people, such as the campaigners of 'Guerilla Gardening', these plants, wild and domestic, provide a way of criticizing the system; others, such as vertical planners of wall gardens like Ken Yeang, utopia-infatuated and bitten by the green bug, presumably see themselves as an avant-garde working in harmony with the system. All of those coming down the garden virus, however, have in common that they see themselves as reformers, as campaigners and as voices arguing for a reconciliation the first and the second, ubiquitous urban, nature, but also between the ecology and the economy. Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. From 1994 to 2012 he has built up a new design department at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt. At the same time, he taught on the history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Heiliger, Richard Meier, Stefan Wewerka, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt by Nicholas Grimshaw, on 'beauty design' as well as on the design activities of Lufthansa and Apple.

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Text in German. The theme of this book is nutrition: the manufacture and availability of foodstuffs, and their preparation and presentation in the context of a societys social and cultural development. Nutrition and physical wellbeing are closely linked. Human beings and animals alike need to eat in order to survive. In our rich industrial nations, where the availability of food is taken for granted, attitudes towards food tend toward extremes: asceticism on the one hand, and overindulgence and excess on the other. Over the centuries, methods of food consumption and food preparation have become refined in tandem with the ever more differentiated organisation of human coexistence between these two poles. Regional and social differences in taste-related culture have arisen, each representative of the lifestyle of their time. Today, cooking and the arranging of food may have an almost artistic form, with high expectations for the quality of the product and its preparation. The fact is, however, that we live in a society in which almost all products are industrially produced. We have no power to influence the production process, and the lists of ingredients on the packaging that provide information on the composition of individual foods are puzzling, and make us doubt whether the product is really what it pretends to be. In a wide-ranging tour dhorizon, this book investigates the complex contemporary semantic fields of foods, their production and preparation, their presentation in a commercial context, and their marketing in the media. The author also takes a critical look at the new enthusiasm for DIY food production, baking, and even livestock slaughter, and examines the star system way cooking is presented in the media. The resulting book is a cultural history of food and of eating from a cultural history, sociology, psychology, economy, and media perspective, as they exist within the contemporary discourse on nutrition with its extremes of hype and hubris. Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. From 1994 to 2012 he has built up a new design department at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt. At the same time, he taught on the history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Heiliger, Richard Meier, Stefan Wewerka, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt by Nicholas Grimshaw, on "beauty design" as well as on the design activities of Lufthansa and Apple.

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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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We live in a visual age where everyone considers him- or herself to be a photographer, and 1.8 billion images are posted online each day. User-generated content has been used in a myriad of high-profile advertisements. Like a lottery winner, the amateur photographer may achieve a one-off lucky shot by being in the right place at the right time. This feeds the illusion that professional photographs can be achieved without any great effort and that anyone can do it. Arcaid Images is a world-leading resource for imagery of the built environment and is used globally by advertisers, architects, publishers and educators. It represents a diverse range of photographers worldwide who focus their cameras on architecture, homes, heritage and destinations. Arcaid images was founded on the work of architect-turned-photographer Richard Bryant, making the photography of architecture of particular interest. The Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards aims to draw attention to the expertise of this specialist, architectural, area of photography. And the World Architecture Festival exemplifies the need for the best architectural photography. Over 2000 professionals from more than 145 countries gather annually to show and appraise each others work. The overriding common language is the photographic image. Projects with better images make strong initial impact, and the more prosaic the building type, the more important it is to capture the essence of the scheme and not merely record it. Photography has long been the means of communicating architecture. The earliest known photograph by French scientist Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, taken with a camera obscura in the late 1820s, was architectural. This photograph, taken from an upstairs window of the family home, was a record of the courtyard and outbuildings an architectural subject. The medium may have changed from a bitumen-coated plate to a memory card, but the technology is only a means to an end. It is the interpretation, the eye and the creativity of the photographer that the Arcaid Images Architectural Photography Awards are focusing on. The World Architecture Festival had the vision to see the value of the awards by giving it a platform, and working with the Sto company has extended the overall visibility of the awards. This book seeks to record, celebrate and give a permanence to the first four years of the Arcaid Architectural Photography Awards. Whilst attending an exhibition of images from the awards offers members of the public a time-limited opportunity to share in appreciation of the selected images, the physicality of a book extends that opportunity both temporally and geographically. Lynne Bryant is director of Arcaid Images, Amy Croft is curator of Sto Werkstatt and Paul Finch is editorial director of the The Architectural Review and programme director of the World Architecture Festival.

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Two main types of residential architecture have dominated the architecture in the Fujian region in China. Known as tulou and weiwu, they have been developed in parallel. Both are designed for communal living, but are distinct from each other in terms of setting, layout, form and size. A good deal is known about tulou which has been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage in 2008, but existing scholarship on weiwu is lacking. The weiwu at Dafuzhen in central Fujian is of particular interest because of its architectural and planning sophistication and its commoners status. It is the Family Xiaos estate built during 1870 to 1885. Our tasks were: first, to survey in situ each building part of the complex in the current situation with attention to details; second, to portray what was hidden from view using masterly "x-ray" eyes; third, to convey the information in measured drawings at technological and design levels. Our work is graphic and analytical in nature, ranged within a series of research questions: What was the planning made to suit the hillside setting? What was the architectural arrangement made to accommodate the community living? To what extent do water supply and drainage design serve as a planning strategy? This study suggests that water management was a key issue which was not a topic of great interest in traditional scholarship. The book offers students and professionals an expert introduction to Chinese vernacular that has been termed the essence of architecture, with the Dafuzhen weiwu as a case study. It describes characters and structures, discusses functions and rationales, and investigates methods and techniques at design and construction levels.

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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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The ongoing paradigm change in regard to the use of energy, its efficient usage and the consumption of resources is giving rise to new light systems and lighting appliances. This development might also lead to the use of light as a building material in its own right, comparable to traditional building materials, making it possible to create light space productions something that did not seem feasible up to now due to the high cost of energy and of light systems. The goal of this book is to develop temporary light spaces that re-interpret the existing urban environment on a seasonal basis or over a cycle of several years. As a result, the city will literally appear in a new light. Strollers in the city streets will experience their familiar environment in a new way. Illuminated planes interlacing with planes made by linear fields of light beams will create immaterial material space experiences: still lifes of light within which one can move about and light choreographies that move barely noticeably, creating still lifes in motion. Current research aims at exploring, imagining and inventing stand-alone spatial structures of light, adding on to and transforming existing spaces, creating a new spatial awareness that may enable people to experience urban space in a different way. Similar to the process of architectural design, where haptic built volumes create interspaces, the light spaces that are presently being designed make these interspaces visible and allow urban dwellers to experience unexpected spatial constellations. The discourse in this book starts with essays introducing aspects of light spaces, including the following: Christian Bartenbach on the perception of light as something that creates space; Niels Gutschow on the ritual dimension of light, an element in the history of creation; Samuel Widmer on light in near-death experiences; Aldous Huxley on light as the messenger from a world we perceive on an unconscious level; Jun'ichiro Tanizaki on the world of the shadow and Tadashi Endo on movement as a relation between time and space in Butoh, the Japanese dance of darkness. The discourse concludes with documents on light spaces by Wolfgang Rang collected over a period of 30 years showing how these light spaces were regarded in the writings of con-temporaries, including Max Bächer on the dawn of a new era; Hans-Peter Schwarz on the deconstruction of space by light; Jürgen Hasse on light as a discourse fragment of public space; Manuel Cuadra on red luminescence; and Antonio de Campos on shadow as an expression of light.

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Book & DVD. Text in English & German. Friedrich Christoph Wagner spent the years between 1965 and 2002 with few interruptions lecturing students of architecture on the basics of design. In this book he spreads out a summation of his teachings. Thereby he presents an insight into his working methods, a definition of the position of the basics of design, a practical didactic system for creativity, perception and aesthetics as well as a large number of examples of his students' work. A first block about creative training is followed by a broad selection of sculptural themes by means of study pieces based upon "body space" and "the logic of the form". Then the author is moving along with studies of the phenomenon of space with its basic topological and geometrical patterns as well as the primal images and primal acts in architecture. This is followed by a discussion of the surface and of surface structures as well as of the line, with the concomitant topics of sequences and proportions. Under 'Elements of architecture' the author presents students' projects and findings, with an emphasis on proxemics, locations, situations, the ways in which people behave and the corresponding forms in architecture. In connection with this, a number of excursions were undertaken to the island of Sifnos in the Cyclades, where students assisted in making measurements and conducting research at the Kato Petali site. The book contains a DVD with sound samples and films concerned with 'space and light'.

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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. 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 how his twin passion for fine art and architecture emerged. Born into a household of gifted artists and craftsmen, he came into contact with art and architecture as a very young boy and took his own first steps in painting and sculpture in his early years. His enthusiasm for the architecture of Rome cemented his determination to become an architect. Krier tells of his grammar-school years in Echternach and his university studies in Munich in words just as enthralling as his first taste of professional life with Oswald Mathias Ungers and Frei Otto. His autobiographical notes are accompanied by numerous sketches, drawings and sculptures, which were produced during this period and in which the author's multifaceted experiences find artistic manifestation. 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 & 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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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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Text in English and German. Gunter Rambow (b.1938) is one of the most prominent designers in the area of visual communication and cultural advertising. He produced numerous photo books and outstanding posters at the Rambow & Lienemeyer graphic design studio (1961-86), and is now carrying on his work at the Rambow, van de Sand studio. Particularly with his posters for the Schauspiel Frankfurt under the direction of Peter Palitzsch, Rambow succeeded in creating symbols for theatre's claim to political involvement and effectively introducing them into the urban environment. From 1974 to 2003 Gunter Rambow taught at the Universität Kassel and the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe as a professor of visual communication. In 2007, the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt is following the example of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, the Shanghai Art Museum and many other institutions and dedicating a major solo exhibition to his work. The show is an encounter between more than one hundred posters by Gunter Rambow -- dating from 1962 to the present -- and Richard Meier's museum architecture. The publication appearing in conjunction with this exhibition documents the dialogue between Rambow's poster art and Meier's museum building. Authors Eva Linhart, Anita Kühnel and Volker Fischer acquaint readers with Rambow's poster oeuvre -- far beyond the limited number on exhibit -- and his aesthetic strategies. Not only is light shed on the latter from the art-historical perspective, but a sense is conveyed of Rambow's innovative achievement in using the medium of the poster to create unmistakable corporate designs for a spectrum of widely differing institutions. The catalogue moreover provides an analytical appraisal of Rambow's ability to trigger insights about the environment and human relationships in those who view his posters.

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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 German & English. Dahlem has developed in two different ways since the early years of the 20th century. An important scientific centre emerged on the site of this former royal territory south-west of Berlin, alongside a suburban villa colony. Elite research institutes were established in Dahlem, with the intention of creating a "German Oxford", including the first institutes for the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, founded in 1911. Then Dahlem was chosen as the location for the Freie Universität Berlin after the Second World War. The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft commissioned a new building in these surroundings in order to provide the Institute for the History of Science, dating from 1994, with accommodation appropriate to its needs. The building was erected in 2004/5 to a competition design by the Stuttgart architects Marion Dietrich-Schake, Hans-Jürgen Dietrich and Thomas Tafel (who left the team after drawing up the planning application). The buildings adjacent to the plot, which is bordered by streets on three sides, date mainly from the 1930s. Alongside the institutional buildings detached homes determine the local character. The Max-Planck-Institut reflects the dimensions and structure of its surroundings. Its height relates to the two-storey homes; the building masses were structured as eight connected, pavilion-like sections, which means that, despite its size, the institute is reticent in its impact on the urban space. The symmetrical complex is built around a spacious courtyard with old chestnut trees. The library is the key element of the building, and so was arranged around all four sides of the inner courtyard. Extensively glazed internal and external walls afford a wide range of views into the library rooms. This ensures a constant presence for the institute's most important set of working tools, and at the same time makes it accessible over very short distances from various parts of the building.

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In their sculptural works, artists have always broken out of the workshop or studio and into open-air spaces. After all, the place where sculptures are best able to show their three-dimensionalquality is in an open space not enclosed by walls and ceiling, in which all flows of power and movement can have free rein. However, because public spaces offer only very limited possibilitiesfor sculpture development, sculpture parks have been developed almost everywhere in the world where invited artists can work without restrictive conditions. During his search for a place in France where he could present his large sculptures, Erich Engelbrecht discovered in 2000 the open, meadow-like land, with the château tucked into a piece of forest behind it. This open space, picturesquely framed by groups of trees, was precisely what he had imagined. And the fact that a château was waiting for its new owner at the end of this tract of land made this discovery a stroke of luck rarely experienced by anyone in general, and almost never by artists in particular. His monumental sculptures that dominate the landscape have given Erich Engelbrecht a place in the history of modern sculpture. His method of drawing images plastically in the space, and of using these drawings transformed into solid bodies to occupy whole landscapes, is unparalleled. The enigma balanced between representationality and the abstract, the multiplicity of meaning, which invites freely poetic titles, is essential to the unique charm of Erich Engelbrecht's visual work. In the park of Château des Fougis, 29 of these artworks, at once plainly revealing and mystifying, communicate with each other in such a relaxed way that visitors are prompted to think and to enjoy. One strolls through a garden of poetic artworks, through a park of beautiful riddles and silent secrets. There has been nothing comparable to this in Europe since the Mannerist gardens, conceived by poets andequipped with creatures of the imagination by inspired sculptors.

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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 English and German. This monograph describes the construction of reality through the cognitive subject, and, associated with this, potential ways for producing space. The book studies methods for exposing, through indeterminacy, the definition of space to a larger field of possibility within personal interpretation, and thus virtually de-bordering space. Against a historical background of past attempts to de-border space visually, new possible ways of indeterminately defining space through the modulation of light are shown. The analysis of various modulation phenomena is illustrated with references to works of art, and the phenomena are studied with a view to integrating them in the actual production of space. The modulation of light has the potential of creating diffuse and ambivalent characteristics on space-defining surfaces. This fuzziness offers an opportunity for a freer interpretation of spatial definition and thus also for de-bordering space due to the process of perception. New materials and technologies can be used to create spatial worlds that open up genuine, hitherto unknown realms of cognition and experience. Based on multilayered, ambiguous spatial situations, according to the author, new open spaces of perception are possible and thus an expansion of human consciousness as well with respect to the world around us.

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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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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. 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 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. What links film and architecture? Above all it is 'Metropolis', the film that Fritz Lang made in the Babelsberg studios in 1925/26. Its extravagance created enormous financial difficulties for Ufa, the biggest German film concern, but it had a brilliant premiere in Berlin in January 1927, went on to enjoy unparalleled success world-wide -- and then came to symbolise (film) architectural design for the future. 'Metropolis', internationally renowned as a major piece of German film culture, represents film art in the Weimar Republic in an artistically unique and yet unusually popular way, but it also contains one of the first fully-formulated 20th-century city fantasies. Fritz Lang, stimulated by a journey to New York, had his architect Erich Kettelhut build a city of the future in the Babelsberg Studios outside Berlin, which, as a vision, went far beyond the real skyscraper silhouette. Luis Bunuel wrote the following about 'Metropolis' as early as 1927: Henceforth and for ever more the scenic designer has been replaced by the architect. The cinema will serve as a faithful interpreter of the architect's boldest dreams. The Tower of Babel from 'Metropolis' has been a piece of urban fantasy that has inspired architects of every colour right down to the present day. American urban visions in films of the 80s and 90s, like for instance the cult film 'Blade Runner', would be inconceivable without Lang's 'Metropolis'. Now as then the Metropolis designs are considered to be highly-developed examples of a Modernist laboratory for film and architecture. All the surviving scenic architectural designs, over 200 working, factory and set photographs as well as numerous other documents, including the film architect's hitherto unpublished memoirs and working reports had been placed at the authors' disposal. In addition, other photographs from the Cinematheque Francaise and a bundle of over 300 hitherto unpublished photographs from the estate of a German emigrant to Australia have been included.

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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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"This book is an attempt at architectural criticism" that is how Robert Venturi opened the discussion on Post-Modernism in architecture in Complexity and Contradiction in Architecturea generation ago. And this was a typical beginning. Criticism of the Modern movement by architects like Le Corbusier Mies van der Rohe and to extent Frank Lloyd Wright as well that had preceded it was central to Post-Modernism. Soon the architectural historians joined in with the architects, particularly Charles Jencks in the English-speaking world and Heinrich Klotz in Germany. Here too Post-Modern-ism was the start, with three fundamental critical points about Modernism: fundamental emptiness of its architecture, its lack of relation to its surroundings and its overemphasis of functionalism against decoration. And so, even if one does not use pamphlets like Tom Wolfe's or Jencks' early work as a yardstick, the image of the buildings by what are still the best-known architects of our century is strongly overshadowed. The truth is that the International Style reflects the basic forces that architecture can express extraordinarily impressively and al-ways with decided interplay, and thus also with a pronounced unity of effect; and additionally it develops these formal values especially intensively from content. Traditionally such things are called classical. What followed this, the whole spectrum of styles from late Modernism via High-Tech and Deconstructivism to Post-Modernism is all a reaction to the unity of the International Style: either one point in terms of form or content is taken out, exaggerated and thus made into its opposite, or such a point is consciously negated. Until now this phenomenon has been known as Mannerism to art historians. What is characteristic of Baroque as the period after High Renaissance Classicism and Mannerism is less clear; in any case, entirely positive aspects of both found their way into Baroque, and undoubtedly the latter is closer to High Re-naissance Classicism in spirit than to Mannerism. Cannot similar things be seen in the last bare decade of architectural develop-ment? The foundations for this book were laid during a good year's re-search at the University of California in Berkeley. The author now holds a chair at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.

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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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There is no doubt at all that Gehry's Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is one of the most spectacular buildings of recent years. As the central element in Bilbao's comprehensive urban renewal programme the building raised high expectations from the outset. Its site between river, railway, bridge and new town makes it a symbol of the Basque metropolis that can be seen from a considerable distance. It is both the heart of the city and a test bed for the arts, representing both public presence and artistic change. The process by which it was created demonstrates the most recent advances in computer aided design and in material manufacture. For a long time design and building were broken down into a large number of individual components, Gehry's museum unifies this process and is thus able to create fluent links between architectural detail and urban impact. But the innovations do not stop at technology, they also extend to the way in which the interior spaces are shaped. These are extremely varied in form, as the museum is not so much designed to house a permanent exhibition of the collection, but to enable artists to create installations. In contrast with the usual neutral gallery spaces, Gehry offers a whole variety of stages for artistic presentation. His artist friends have risen to the challenge of his architecture and are experimenting very successfully with this new way of showing their work to the public.

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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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When the Forth Bridge opened on 4 March 1890, it was the longest railway bridge in the world and the first large structure made of steel. Crossing the wide Firth of Forth west of Edinburgh in Scotland, it represents one of the greatest engineering triumphs of Victorian Britain, man's victory over the intractable topography of land and water. Not surprisingly, such a vigorous rebuff of the natural order was condemned at the time by those late Victorians who resisted the march of technology, and William Morris described the Bridge as the "supremest specimen of all ugliness". In response, Benjamin Baker insisted that its beauty lay in its functional elegance. Contrasting the bridge with the only comparable structure of the period, the Eiffel Tower, he concluded: "The Eiffel Tower is a foolish piece of work, ugly, ill-proportioned and of no real use to anyone." But the beauty and fascination of the Forth Bridge lies not simply in its functional performance, but in its scale and power. Over a mile long and higher than the dome of St. Peter's in Rome, it rivals the natural phenomena that the philosophers of the 18th century identified as sources of sublime beauty. Immanuel Kant pointed to hurricanes, boundless oceans and high waterfalls as objects of sublime contemplation, "because they raise the forces of the soul above the heights of the vulgar commonplace, and discover within us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature". In the 19th century the awe-inspiring feats of nature were rivalled by the inventions of the engineers, and the thrill of the waterfall or the lightning flash was eclipsed by the sight of the roaring locomotive dashing across the majestic span of the Forth Bridge.

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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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The condition of "fake" and "real" in architecture is rarely publicly discussed nor has it encountered broad journalistic or scholarly attention. This book explores the realm of truth, authenticity and fakery in architecture, providing a timely collection of analytical essays and projects. Photographers, writers and architects share their understanding and speculations about a broad range of spaces and concepts all searching for common ground between real and imagined, function and story. The authors challenge our perception of "authenticity " through the examination of built and simulated environments, architectural fiction, theatric illusions and mannerist trickery. They examine the notion that the principle of Sullivans "form follows function" contains a paradox caused by the ambiguity and complexity of architectural expression. Buildings are perceived through an individuals personal experiences while also being interpreted along broader cultural values. The works shown reveal that under scrutiny, any built environment harbors both, reveals moments of truth, deception and ambiguity all of it partially in the eye of the beholder.The diverse contributions shed light on unexpected identities in architecture inviting criticalthought about our built environment analog and digital. The goal of this publication goes beyond unmasking deception in architecture, it aims at unfolding time-lines and revealing the layerednature of people and places. The images and essays reveal our contemporary condition and let collective and individual narratives unfold, a range of truths in themselves. Expanding from the discussion about truthful materiality and tectonics, this book provides an understanding ofreal, authentic, and fake in urbanism and architecture. Anne-Catrin Schultz studied architecture inStuttgart and Florence. Following post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technoloyin Boston, she worked for several years with Turnbull Griffin Haesloop and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in San Francisco. While developing her own practice, she has taught at the University of California in Berkeley, the California College of the Arts and the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco. In 2013 she joined the Department of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.

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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 & German. The German Chancellor's former residential and reception building in Bonn is one of the German post-war period's most significant high-profile buildings. The "Kanzlerbungalow" was built 1963/64. The idea was Ludwig Erhard's, and it was planned by Munich architect Sep Ruf. Along with the buildings by Hans Schwippert, Egon Eiermann and Günter Behnisch, it is among the most outstanding architectural reminders of Bonn's time as the Federal Republic's capital. Situated in the park of Palais Schaumberg close to the Rhine's banks, the building could not be seen by the general public and therefore remained comparatively unknown. The Kanzlerbungalow combines its function of representing the state with that of a home. It shows classical modern influences -- primarily that of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe -- extending to the contemporary Californian "Case Study Houses". The building speaks volumes about the early Federal Republic's sense of its own identity. The question of how the still young democracy should represent itself in its architecture after the years of National Socialism found its answer with a design that combined the need for an appropriate setting for a high public function with an explicit desire to make use of the tools created by the International Style, rather than resort to outmoded formal gestures which had additionally been politically discredited by recent history. The reaction to Sep Ruf's building reflects the often undecided attitude to questions of appropriate state representation of the time. Much praised by architectural experts, the Kanzlerbungalow did not appeal to a number of Erhard's successors. It did however have a not insignificant influence on West German architects in particular, in spite of its very specialised function. It is presently undergoing extensive renovations, and is to be used for exhibitions and other purposes from 2009 onwards.

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Even though he had made a name for himself in the 1930s with his Berlin single-family homes, Eiermann later on found it difficult to accept commissions for this building type when, during the period of the 'economic miracle', he was approached by numerous people interested to get a design by him. Only the Hardenberg House in Baden-Baden satisfied him, but above all his own house, which he also built in Baden-Baden in 195962. This house in particular, built after his success with the German Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Worlds Fair and at the same time as the Berlin Gedächtniskirche and the German Embassy in Washington, was to become one of the main works of his post-war creative output. As a builder in his own right, he was able here to uncompromisingly realise his ideal image of living for himself and his family in architecture. Eiermann himself tried to explain the house, which only crystallised in a longer planning genesis, primarily from the functional side: main house and annexe, the latter for garage, studio and guest apartment, the elongated main house in bulkhead construction under a flat sloping roof. In fact, the house is convincing in its sophisticated functionality. But it does not stop there. The complex group of buildings on a steep hillside site with its stagelike terraces, the staged interplay of views from the inside to the outside and, at night, also from the outside to the inside, is an extremely artificial structure even from its basic disposition. The Eiermanntypical façade, with its exterior walkway and white linkage as well as the corrugated Eternit roof provide a ponderous contrast. Together with echoes of traditional Japanese houses and gardens, but above all with the adoption of motifs from sailing- ship building give this house an unmistakable character. Since 2020, the house has new owners, on whose behalf the Stuttgart architects 'no where' (Henning Volpp and Karl Amann) have undertaken an extremely careful renovation. Eiermann's estate, which is kept at saai, the Archive for Architecture and Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), provided the historical drawings and photographs for this volume. The photographs were primarily taken by Horstheinz Neuendorff, an architectural photographer who was on friendly terms with the architect. Since the early sixties, Neuendorff had been commissioned by Eiermann to capture his new buildings in black-and-white photographs of a high artistic standard. Color photographs of the current condition were newly made by Olaf Becker from Munich. Gerhard Kabierske is an art historian specialising in architectural history and monument preservation. 19932020 he worked at the saai in Karlsruhe where he was responsible, among other things, for the Eiermann archive.

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