Search results for ""Lars Muller Publishers""

Peter Eisenman-world-famous for his Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (2005)-confronts historicism with theory and the analysis of form, whose distinguishing features he regards as the foundation of architectural composition. The architect illustrates his observations with numerous, extremely precise hand drawings. Eisenman wrote The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture, his dissertation, in 1963 at the University of Cambridge. The dissertation was first published as a facsimile edition by Lars Muller Publishers in 2006. The original content of the publication is now available again-the book is reprinted in a smaller format. "I knew what I wanted to write," Eisenman says of the dissertation. "An analytic work that related what I had learned to see, from Palladio to Terragni, from Raphael to Guido Reni, into some theoretical construct that would bear on modern architecture, but from the point of view of a certain autonomy of form." Hence the title of his research.

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Karl Gerstner’s work is a milestone in the history of design. Designing Programmes is one of his most important works: in four essays, the author provides a basic introduction to his design method- ology and suggests a model for design in the early days of the computer era. The book is especially topical and exciting in the context of current developments in computational design. With many examples from the worlds of graphic and product design, music, architecture, and art, it inspires the reader to seize on the material, develop it further, and integrate it into his or her own work. Designing Programmes was first published in 1964; in 2007 Lars Müller Publishers launched a re-designed version. This year’s release of Designing Programmes corresponds with the original edition of the book, designed by Karl Gerstner.

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At its presentation in 1955, the Citroën DS was a sensation and a magnet for designers, philosophers, and politicians alike. No other automobile was able to combine form and technology so coherently and seemingly effortlessly. Radical in its implementation and revolutionary in terms of comfort and safety, the DS is one of the most innovative design icons of the 20th century. In collaboration with Lars Müller Publishers, the Swiss architect Christian Sumi published the new edition of AS in DS by Alison and Peter Smithson in 2001. In this new book, he now analytically examines the characteristics of this classic vehicle, which he documents in carefully arranged picture series and with drawings by Flaminio Bertoni and the Citroën design team, such as of the body, the chassis, or the legendary hydraulics. Using image essays from advertising campaigns for the Citroën DS, Sumi critically examines its iconization and reception, along with theories that discuss the phenomenon in both a contemporary and philosophical context.

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Life in the digital economy of information and images enriches us but often induces a sense of being overwhelmed. Sensing the Future: Moholy-Nagy, Media and the Arts considers the impact of technology by exploring ways it was addressed in the practice of the Hungarian poly-math artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), a prominent professor at the Bauhaus and a key figure in the history of Modernism. Moholy-Nagy felt that people needed guidance to cope with the onslaught of sensory input in an increasingly technologized, mediatized, hyper-stimulating environment. His ideas informed media theorists such as Walter Benjamin, John Cage, Sigfried Giedion and Marshall McLuhan, who anticipated digital culture as it emerged. Should we then regard Moholy-Nagy as a pioneer of the digital? His aesthetic engagement with the technology/body problematic broached the notions of immersion, interactivity and bodily participation, innately offering a critique of today’s disembodiment. Was he then both a pioneer and a proto-critic of the digital? This book is intended to introduce this seminal figure of post-medial practices to younger generations and, by including responses to his work by contemporary artists, to reflect on the ways in which his work is relevant to artistic practice now. Having been highly praised by experts, this classic receives a second and slightly revised edition.

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“My own use of the camera began in 1954 as I started to think about what a new building in New York – the Seagram building – could be. While in Rome during Easter, through the lens of a camera I had hardly used, I began to observe the quality of buildings: how they sat on the land, their articulation, and how architectural details related to a building as a whole.” – Phyllis Lambert This curiosity is a constant in the work of Phyllis Lambert, who has devoted her career to studying and engaging with the changing conditions of urban landscapes. In this collection of personal photographs taken over several decades during her daily routines, her travels, or at work, obser- vation turns into a quest to understand and reveal what might otherwise remain overlooked.

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If metropoles were the 20th century’s favorite playground, borders are the laboratory for globalized phenomena in the 21st century. Hot spots for migrants, barbed wire, Green borders, checkpoints, go slow for cross-border workers, crypto-currency mining farms, casinos, brothels, tax havens, condominiums, principalities, white elephants, and so on: such places, residues of nation states, are all to be found on borders. Border inhabitants are often left to their own device. To date, borders lack a political project. In order to realize this project, the editors have worked in-situ with those living in border regions in Switzerland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Liechtenstein, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Eritrea. They have started to imagine, describe and model the real territory and a potential project for it. A collective intelligence – a res publica – is taking form. Oræ, plural of the Latin noun ora, translates as “borders” in English. Figuratively speaking, it signifies “the beginning of something.” Oræ is a project of a territory, whose setting is its borders and whose authors are its inhabitants. Its political and poetic program consists of experiencing the world from its margins. This guide invites readers to an unplanned journey inside oræ. It is a non-hierarchical succession of fragmentary narratives coming from borders and the imaginations of those living in their vicinity. The project “oræ – Experiences on the Border” was conceived as Switzerland’s nominated National Participation in the 17th Venice architecture biennial, commissioned by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.

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Bad news about climate change, shrinking resources, global health crises, species extinction and growing inequalities cause consternation and insecurity for many people, especially since the Covid pandemic. The ambition of this book is to explain in simple but precise terms and by means of Ruedi Baur’s concise illustrations what “finance” is, and how its most innovative form, sustainable finance, can reconcile the well-being of mankind with the capacities of our planet. Is there a way to convince society that a fundamental transition is necessary, even more: that it is possible? Can sustainable finance help? Financing Our Common Future offers encouraging perspectives by showing how little-known groups of financial stakeholders, such as development banks, are actively working to make sustainable finance happen. The book invites you to enjoy a journey through multitude situations, to question our preconceptions and to open our mindset to a deeper thought, so we can envision ways of moving forward.

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Published in 1929, From Material to Architecture contains the main features of László Moholy-Nagy’s teaching program at the Bauhaus. With its focus on the preliminary course and its training of finer sensory perception, this last title of the 14-volume series explains how students “develop towards practice from day to day.” The educational principle behind it, Jedermann ist begabt (everyone is talented), was central to teaching at the Bauhaus.

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Point and Line to Plane can be seen as a continuation of Wassily Kandinsky’s seminal treatise On the Spiritual in Art. Kandinsky’s thesis is that different constellations of point, line and surface have different emotional effects on the viewer. Starting from the point (which represents the most concentrated and minimal graphic form), he understands all painterly forms as being a play of forces and counterforces: of contrasts.

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In the context of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an absurd practice has emerged in Davos over the last few years: for the short time of the event, the main street is almost entirely rebuilt. Thus, a pop-up industry has grown up that generates an enormous short-term demand for reusable spaces, blank walls and empty rooms. The street scene of the alpine city is altered in favor of the self-representation of companies, corporations and organizations. The existing infrastructure is transformed, at horrendous prices, into a space of communication for the respective agenda. In his most recent series Davos Is a Verb, the Swiss photo artist Jules Spinatsch focuses on something that is typical of events around the world: the temporary appropriation of local spaces and infrastructures by major international corporations. In view of the debates over the WEF’s future, this photobook gains its relevance and presents itself as a contemporary witness of the WEF in Davos. By using photo-essayistic, conceptual and investigative artistic strategies, Spinatsch documents the aesthetics and actions of the financial, technological and new media industries as well as the various political agents. The British ecological economist Tim Jackson, known for his critical attitude towards growth, comments on the hegemonic practices in Davos and the world in an extensive essay.

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The Bauhaus sought to unite life, craftsmanship, and art under one roof. In this volume, Walter Gropius provides a comprehensive overview of the Bauhaus workshops. He explains the basic principles guiding the teaching, describes contemporary developments in architecture, and illuminates the Bauhaus point of view on household utensils, which was geared toward finding the most suitable form for the respective object. Here, Gropius presents the Bauhaus workshops in Weimar devoted to furniture, metals, textiles, and ceramics, among other subjects.

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When in 2014 Swiss people voted in favor of a federal popular initiative “against massive immigration,” Salvatore Vitale, an immigrant living in Switzerland felt the need to research this phenomenon in order to comprehend where the motives for this constant need for security originate and how they became part of Swiss culture. In How to Secure a Country Vitale explores this country’s national security measures by focusing on “matter-of-fact” types of instructions, protocols, bureaucracies, and clear-cut solutions which he visualizes in photographs, diagrams, and graphical illustrations. The result is a case study that can be used to explain the global context and the functioning of contemporary societies Essays by political scientists Jonas Hagmann (ETH Zurich) and Roland Bleiker (University of Queensland, Australia) provide an analysis of the structure of the Swiss security system and a view on the politics of photography. Lars Willumeit, curator and social anthropologist, will discuss attitudes, behaviors, and codes in 21st Century statehood.

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In what he called his “illustrated guide to modern architecture,” which starts off the Bauhausbücher series, Gropius gives an overview of the international architecture of the mid-1920s. A preface by the author explores, briefly but in detail, the guiding principles that unite the avant-garde in all countries. This statement is followed by an extensive illustrated section showing examples of architecture from around the world. According to Gropius, these illustrations bear witness to the “development of a consistent worldview” that disposes of the prior role of the architect and expresses itself in a new language of shapes.

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The Greek island sequence montaged by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy into his legendary documentary Architects' Congress can be interpreted, like his provocative photoplastiks, as a "message in a bottle" thrown into the sea that "might take decades for someone to find and read." Capturing the incomparable Greek light, it presents a compelling glimpse of the four days and nights in August 1933 when the elite of the European architectural and artistic avant-garde-in Greece for the 4th International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM)-took to the Aegean in a barely-seaworthy "nut shell" that would bring them close to the brink of disaster. The "motley crew" included Le Corbusier, Fernand Leger, Amedee Ozenfant, Sigfried Giedion, Cor van Eesteren, and Otto Neurath. Crucial to the success of the surreal odyssey were members of the Greek avant-garde. Drawing on previously unpublished material-Moholy's poetically ironic letter to his wife Sibyl, Ghika's candid Memoirs of Le Corbusier, and forensic examination of the architect's sketchbooks-the authors reconstruct the epiphanies, debates, and, inevitably, estrangements at this critical moment in European history.

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Power and architecture are fundamental to the question of how contemporary society and archi- tecture work together. Since power lacks a comprehensive logic, coherence, and instrumentalization capability, the question refers both to the autonomous powers of the architectural forms and toa set of external powers represented through architecture. The presented series of projects based on current and extreme syntheses of comprehensive and complex world-views enables mappinga network of powers that align, intersect, in ect, and diverge from each other: collective power, ordaining power, economic power, technological power, ritual power, cultural power, media power, and domestic power. The issue of counter power is then discussed against this background.Through eight essays by contributors, along with images, drawings, and documents, the book renders visible a set of entities, informal conventions, stakeholders, and means involved in the creation of architecture; that is, the dynamics of the collective that ceaselessly tests the architectural composition of the common world.

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'City Riffs' traces the changing perspectives of urban design within an ever-changing global context. Moving between sixteen cities, the book also considers trans-disciplinary aspects of urbanism; formal and informal growth in Kumasi and Caracas, post-colonial structures in New Delhi and Prague, post-urban phenomena in Detroit and Brussels; cultural transitions in Antwerp and Salzburg; the changing nature of place in Seoul and Mostar; and new ecological realities in New York and Rome. Urbanism is viewed as the production of space-integrating aspects of design, ecology, and engineering, as well as other influences on urban cognition such as social, economical, and psychological interactions. As it covers a wide range of places and methods, this book will be an asset to anyone who works on, lives in, or thinks about cities. AUTHOR: Richard Plunz is Professor of Architecture and Director of the Earth Institute's Urban Design Lab at Columbia University, where he has also chaired the Division of Architecture and directed the Urban Design Program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. SELLING POINTS: . Interlinks various disciplines of urbanism 30 illustrations

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The publication explores the different yet corresponding architectural concepts of Umberto Riva and Bijoy Jain. On the basis of building visits and ongoing conversations, the author Mirko Zardini interprets Umberto Riva's and Bijoy Jain's motivations and inds unlikely resonance in their complementary approaches. The publication accompanies the exhibition held under the same name at the Canadian Centre for Architecture.

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For most people locations that hold a particular importance for the development of our society and for the advancement of science and technology often remain hidden from view. They are separate and protected, such as CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, close to the city of Geneva. CERN is best known for its giant particle accelerator. Here researchers from around the world take part in a diverse array of fundamental physical research, in the pursuit of knowledge that will perhaps one day revolutionize our understanding of the universe and life on our planet. The Swiss photographer Andri Pol mixed with this multicultural community of researchers and followed their work over an extended period of time. In doing so he created a unique portrait of this fascinating underworld.A" The cutting-edge research is given a human face and even if we don't fully understand the processes at work, the pictures allow us to perceive how in this world of the tiniest particles the biggest connections are searched for. With an explanatory text and scientific-philosophical essay.

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The history of posters is rich in variations on the hand. In consumer posters, a hand presents desirable products. But the hand can also take the form of a symbolically charged gesture in the political poster. In cultural posters, the hand then becomes the emblem of the creative individual. Just as versatile as the rhetoric of the hand are its diverse uses as a design element. In this volume, photographic, illustrative and abstract graphic images add up to a small cultural history of the hand as an eloquent conveyor of messages.

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The Austrian typographer Helmut Schmid was a master of his craft. He put his own spin on Emil Ruder’s teachings at the Basel School of Design while remaining faithful to the principles of clarity, simplicity and elegance. Blending eastern and western influences, Schmid honed his skills and put them into practice in the fields of editorial design, packaging of ethical drugs and visual identity of brands such as Pocari Sweat sports drink (Otsuka Pharmaceutical), Maquillage (Shiseido) and IPSA. He also produced independent publications in parallel, such as Typographic Reflections. Helmut Schmid Typography explores the typographer’s oeuvre in its entirety. The book’s generous design allows each image to breathe, and the accompanying texts narrate Schmid’s life and career in an informative but pleasant manner. Complementing the publications Weingart: Typography and Ruder Typography, Ruder Philosophy, this bilingual monograph completes the Basel school of typographic thought.

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Cleanliness is a core value of societies around the globe. So much so that cleaning seems to be an inherent part of human nature and how we interact with and domesticate our environment. This book explores the concept of cleaning in all its various aspects and illustrates each cleaning method, thus expanding our conception of an activity that is such a big part of our daily lives. From a child sorting its toys, to the meticulous work of a clockmaker and an impressive deep-clean of a ship, each process is treated with the same gentle fascination. Short texts add a semi-poetic dimension. The portable book format invites readers to take this publication out into the world with them as they look at everyday processes with fresh eyes. Flipping through the pages of Cleaning is as enlightening as it is entertaining.

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The Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa (1919–2003) fused sensitivity for local context with the technological discoveries and design principles of modernism in his work. Accordingly, Bawa often incorporated materials (local stone and timber) and layouts (high roofs, cross-ventilation, vast overhangs) specific to Sri Lanka’s monsoon climate and storied architectural history – from the cave monasteries of the Anuradhapura period to the feudal Walauwa style of manor houses – into his modernist designs. Gathering essays by scholars and writers across a multitude of disciplines – including architecture, photography, geography, urban design and art history – this volume spotlights Bawa’s exceptionally beautiful architectural drawings, delving into the central, multipronged role of the medium in his practice, from ideation to instruction to post-construction review. The anthology also explores the identity of post-independence Sri Lanka, which Bawa helped to shape – aesthetically and, less overtly, ideologically. Featuring over 200 lush drawings and photographs, many of which have never been published before, the book promises to engage both general and scholarly audiences with interests in architecture, drawing and archives.

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In the 1890s, Berlin artist, sculptor and teacher Karl Blossfeldt started to photograph plants, seeds and other illustrative material from nature for the purpose of teaching his students about the patterns and designs found in natural forms. His close-ups of the smallest plant parts, magnified up to thirty times their natural size, are startling as the plants appear geometric and sculptural. Published in 1928, his first collection of photographs Urformen der Kunst (later translated into English as Art Forms in Nature) became an international bestseller and remains one of the most significant photo books of the twentieth century. Karl Blossfeldt: Variations is the first book-length monograph to examine the reception of Blossfeldt’s work. Drawing on unpublished materials, it analyzes the photographs’ replication in teaching mate- rials, pattern books and art books, and also in the pages of the illustrated press. The six chapters of the richly illustrated study trace the paths Blossfeldt’s legendary plant motifs described as specimens, illustrations, patterns, analogues, models and abstractions from 1890 to 1945. Thematic excursions into the present, illustrating the rediscovery of Blossfeldt’s motifs in design and architecture over the past twenty years, offer a contemporary perspective on the famous German photographer.

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'Designing Japan' presents renowned designer Kenya Hara’s vision of how his industry can support Japan in crafting a future founded on a unique philosophy of beauty as well as crowd-sourced wisdom from around the world. A master collaborator, meticulous organiser, and globally conscious innovator, Hara draws on more than three decades of participations in design work and exhibition curating, as well as deep professional interaction with creators from many fields. In 'Designing Japan' Hara reveals methods that make publicly accessible aesthetic inquiries of how this island nation will proceed as its population ages, other nations take over manufacturing, and technology develops. Illustrations and examples recognise successful problem-solving through design, proving that it is a living, changing industry that remains relevant not in spite of, but as a partner to, advancing technology.

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What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each is con- ceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy. Contemporary discussions about global warming, recycling, and sustainability have emerged as direct conceptual constructs related to the study and analysis of closed systems. From the space program to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living, this publication documents a discipli- nary transformation and the rise of a new environmental consensus in the form of a synthetic naturalism. It presents an archive of 39 historical living prototypes from 1928 to the present that put forth an unexplored genealogy of closed resource regeneration systems. Prototypes are presented through unique discursive narratives with historical images, and each includes new analysis in the form of a feedback drawing that problematizes the language of environmental representation by illustrating loss, derailment, and the production of new substances and atmospheres.

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The celebrated and much sought-after issue of the magazine idea focusing on a towering gure in Swiss graphic design is now in print again.idea is a renowned Japanese magazine on international graphic art and typography. Its 333th edition lent 226 pages to Emil Ruder, showcasing his work, in uence, and legacy in the world of typography and beyond-yielding a comprehensive survey of Ruder's accomplishments. It brings together essays, discussions, and appraisals from fellow designers, typographers, and artists.It engages with Ruder's many years of work and teaching in Basel, his thirty years as publisher of the famous Typographische Monatsblatter, as well as his posters, fonts, and philosophy.The extraordinary and comprehensive presentation of the life and works of Swiss typographic legend Emil Ruder sold out shortly after coming off the press and will now be available in a facsimile reprint.

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This comprehensive volume documents the work of the Argentine architect, graphic designer, and industrial designer Emilio Ambasz. Ambasz's main concern is to integrate nature and construction into architectural design, which is why he is regarded as one of the most important pioneers of Green Architecture. In his work a combination of landscape and architecture emerges, in which his respect for the environment and ecological sustainability becomes clear. A prime example of this is the Fukuoka Prefectural International Hall in Japan: a building that houses more than 100,000 m2 of exhibition spaces, theaters, and offices is also an open green area in the form of a hanging garden.In addition to the documentation of Ambasz's architectural, graphic, industrial, and exhibition design, this publication contains essays by Barry Bergdoll, Kenneth Frampton, and Peter Buchanan, as well as three interviews with Emilio Ambasz, conducted by Michael Sorkin, James Wines, and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

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In contrast to tabula rasa urbanism, this book considers strategies for tabula plena-urban sites that are full of existing buildings of multiple time periods. Such dense sites prompt designers to work between the fields of architecture, historic preservation, and urban planning, developing methods for collaborative authorship and interlocking architectural forms. The book grew from a collaboration between the Oslo School of Architecture and Design and Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation on the planning of the government quarter in Oslo. Emerging from this process, the book asks larger questions about how we practice, teach, and theorise engagement with existing architecture on an urban scale. It contains a compilation of short essays addressing theoretical questions, a sampling of design projects offering different formal strategies for architectural design, and a series of discussions about pedagogical strategies.

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Old things, historic things, smelly dirty things, all the things that were considered the very opposite of "contemporary," have suddenly irrupted forcefully into architecture and art, blurring their bound- aries. This book takes stock of the emerging generation behind this turn, and examines their experimental engagements with the preservation of culturally charged objects. Structured around a series of interdisciplinary dialogues among practitioners and thinkers, and illustrated with recent projects, the book provides a window into the unfolding intellectual frameworks, aesthetic modes, cultural ambitions, and political commitments that are the basis of experimental preservation.

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Through a series of photographs, Ahmed Mater charts the city's origins to its more recent history over the last 5 years. It is a study of the site's recent transformation - Makkah, until recently, embodied a unique urban tapestry, layered with histories that are stitched together by an abundance of organically rooted communities and cultures. It is a place that accommodated not only sacred structures and sites but also huge fluctuations in population during Ramadan (up to 3 million visitors a year travel to Makkah for Eid and Hajj). More recently, these sites and communities have been eradicated and are being replaced with five-star-studded high rise developments, transforming it from an active metropolis to the world's most exclusive, yet most visited religious tourist destination, reflective of an unprecedented experimentation with architecture and its possible impact on social stratification. This photographic essay is a celebration of Makkah's real and projected or imaginary states. It provides singular access to this site and its associated social and religious rituals, along with its architectural urban planned and proposed development.

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Sutnar's brilliant structural systems for clarifying otherwise dense industrial data placed him in the pantheon of Modernist pioneers and made him one of the visionaries of what is today called "information design." Visual Design in Action is a snapshot of Sutnar's American period (1939-1976), and includes graphics for Carr's Department Store, advertisements for the Vera Neumann Company, identity for Addo-X, and other stunningly contemporary works. He is best known for his total design concept for the Sweets Catalog Service and lesser known for introducing the parenthesis as a way to typographically distinguish the area code from the rest of a phone number. Visual Design in Action is a testament to the historical relevance of Modernism and the philosophical resonance of Sutnar's focus on the functional beauty of total clarity. This reprint of Visual Design in Action (originally published in limited quantities in 1961) is as spot-on about the power of design and "design thinking" as it ever was.

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With Apple, Ken Miki playfully presents a complete basic course in visual communication - all based on a simple and familiar object: the apple. First, all five senses are activated in a step-by-step analysis of the apple by touching, looking at, smelling, tasting and listening to the sound of eating it. The apple is then used to illustrate the topics of form, color, size, surface, texture, writing, line, body and text - the fundamental elements a designer works with. Addressing each theme based on this everyday object enables a playful approach that also makes for highly effective learning. A unique textbook that offers inspiration and food for thought for both experienced graphic artists and those less familiar with the world of design.

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The works of Sou Fujimoto resist any form of conventional categorization. This young Japanese architect stands for unconventional buildings that cannot be described by standard criteria and definitions such as inside/outside or public/private. Clear divisions such as between floor levels and rooms are shattered by his complex ground plans and interlocking structures which - in a reference to the idea of the cave - he describes as "primitive future." With this approach he creates forms that are committed to a playful interaction between user and space. Alongside private residences, such as the well-known N House, his library for Musashino Art University has achieved particular recognition. In addition he was represented at the 2010 Venice Biennale with a design for a house. In his personal sketchbook Sou Fujimoto offers insights into his design process. Through the sketches, drawings, and notes readers can trace how his complex concepts are made manifest and develop on paper.

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Photographs, newspaper cuttings, postcards, drawings, and slides: on entering the studio of Eduardo Souto de Moura, winner of the Pritzker Prize 2011, one is confronted with a variety of images on the walls that engage in a dialogue. How do these photos, drawings, and illustrations impact his design practice? What is the relationship between the image and the completed building? Floating Images: Eduardo Souto de Moura's Wall Atlas uses this question as an opportunity to examine the architect's visual universe. He has added images from his extensive collection of drawings and project sketches and reorganized them in this atlas. Complex relationships are formed between the individual illustrations and projects. Essays by Pedro Bandeira, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Diogo Seixas Lopes, and Philip Ursprung round off the publication and provide a contextualization in terms of the history of art and images.

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Helvetica is a sans-serif typeface. It is simple and clean, and commonly seen in advertising, signage, and literature. The R has a curved leg, and the i and j have square dots. The Q has a straight angled tail, and the counterforms inside the O, Q, and C are oval. It is an all-purpose type design that can deliver practically any message clearly and efficiently. It is one of the most popular typefaces of all time. Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface presents 400 examples of Helvetica in action, selected from two diametrically opposed worlds. Superb applications by renowned designers are juxtaposed with an anonymous collection of ugly, ingenious, charming, and hair-raising samples of its use.

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Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was an architect, engineer, geometrician, cartographer, philosopher, futurist, inventor of the famous geodesic dome, and one of the most brilliant thinkers of his time. For more than five decades, he set forth his comprehensive perspective on the world's problems in numerous essays, which offer an illuminating insight into the intellectual universe of this renaissance man. These texts remain surprisingly topical even today, decades after their initial publication.While Fuller wrote the works in the 1960's and 1970's, they could not be more timely: like desperately needed time-capsules of wisdom for the critical moment he foresaw, and in which we find ourselves. Long out of print, they are now being published again, together with commentary by Jaime Snyder, the grandson of Buckminster Fuller. Designed for a new generation of readers, Snyder prepared these editions with supplementary material providing background on the texts, factual updates, and interpretation of his visionary ideas.Initially published in 1969, and one of Fuller's most popular works, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth is a brilliant synthesis of his world view. In this very accessible volume, Fuller investigates the great challenges facing humanity, and the principles for avoiding extinction and "exercising our option to make it." How will humanity survive? How does automation influence individualization? How can we utilize our resources more effectively to realize our potential to end poverty in this generation? He questions the concept of specialization, calls for a design revolution of innovation, and offers advice on how to guide "spaceship earth" toward a sustainable future.And it Came to Pass - Not to Stay brings together Buckminster Fuller's lyrical and philosophical best, including seven "essays" in a form he called his "ventilated prose," and as always addressing the current global crisis and his predictions for the future. These essays, including "How Little I Know," "What I am Trying to Do," "Soft Revolution," and "Ethics," put the task of ushering in a new era of humanity in the context of "always starting with the universe." In rare form, Fuller elegantly weaves the personal, the playful, the simple, and the profound.

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The designers Jasper Morrison and Naoto Fukasawa have compiled 204 everyday objects in search of "super normal design": alongside examples of anonymous design like the Swiss Rex vegetable peeler or a simple plastic bag, there are design classics like Marcel Breuer's tubular steel side table, Dieter Ram's 606 shelving system, or Joe Colombo's Optic alarm clock of 1970. With products by Newson, Grcic, the Azumis, and the Bouroullec brothers, it also represents the generation to which Morrison and Fukasawa belong. The phenomenon of the super normal is located, as it were, beyond space and time; the past and present of product design both point to a future that has long since begun. The super normal is already lying exposed before us; it exists in the here and now; it is real and available: we need only open our eyes; Fukasawa and Morrison make it visible for us. 264 illustrations

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How does light transform the objects it shines upon? What are the consequences of such meta- morphoses on architectural thought? Book of Hours seeks to answer these questions. To this end, it presents the architect Frida Escobedo's research on the transformative effect of light on matter. Time lapses show the process in action and translucent paper mimics the permeable barrier between light sources and objects and enacts the mutability of matter.

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Wolfgang Laib (born 1950 in Germany) is considered to be one of the most important artists of today. His work is characterized by a profound relationship with nature and a declared belief in simplicity. Eastern philosophies from India have also shaped his life and his artistic practice since the 1970s. The artist continues today to concentrate on just a few cyclical groups of work. Ever since his journeys to India as a young man, Wolfgang Laib has been inspired by the idea of seeing humans as part of a larger whole. He also follows this way of life in his art: he tracks down the universal, the eternal, and works with natural materials such as pollen, rice, milk or bees wax. At the Bündner Kunstmuseum, he presents an extensive, room-sized installation made up of thousands of tiny rice mountains. An important foodstuff, rice symbolizes vitality and is fundamental for our earthly existence. The process of creating this work of art is revealed in the book and is related to a conversation between Wolfgang Laib and the internationally renowned Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. With this book, Wolfgang Laib reveals the spiritual dimension of art and leads us directly to the sources of his poetics.

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A doomed painter on his last walk, a barefoot girl in front of a school blackboard, a charismatic politician as an advocate for the simple life: 99 Photographs presents images that touch, seduce or confuse. Since 1971 the Fotostiftung Schweiz has been collecting archives of photographers and outstanding works of photographic history. Now its 50th anniversary gives rise to a curated look at this collection – an invitation to discover the rich language of photography and to see the world through different eyes. Well-known icons stand next to unknown trouvailles, pioneers of color photography next to Netcam photographers. The short accompanying texts point to a reality that lies behind the facts and beneath the surface. Ninety-nine times, editor Peter Pfrunder stops time to look inward and outward at once – until the invisible emerges in the visible and images turn out to be a wondrous mixture of facts and fantasies.

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The Alpine region is characterized by a great diversity in all spatial dimensions and qualities. This circumstance is not to be read primarily as the result of administrative drawing of borders, but first of all as an expression of the alpine topography, determined at the same time by intensive cultivation by humankind. However, the assumption that this configuration, seen against a background of massive rocks and steep ridges, is a steady formation would be misleading. For the Alps are not a stable structure, but a dynamic and sensitive organism. Here, boundaries are ceaselessly overcome and continuously shifted. This goes hand in hand with a change in perception and is conditioned by natural dynamics, transforming cultural practices and the bridging of topographical obstacles, whereby the Alps are not only opened up internally, but at the same time integrated into an overall European context. Thus, over a long period of time, a space was created in which the most diverse things came together and were interwoven with the local. However, this principle of interaction is increasingly giving way to a one-sided claim from the outside. At the same time, the nature and manner of human access have themselves taken on geological dimensions. In the context of the 17th Venice architecture biennial, contributions by Vogt Landscape Architects and the Chair of Günther Vogt at ETH Zurich, Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies illuminate individual manifestations of this dynamic landscape with a view to hydrological, biological and geological aspects. Moving Borders documents the contributions at the Biennale and complements them with scientific essays, artistic works and comprehensive photographs taken during fi eld trips to the Alps.

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