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Title:
Cold war hothouses : inventing postwar culture, from cockpit to Playboy

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Summary:
The technological innovation and unprecedented physical growth of the cold war era permeated American life in every aspect and at every scale. From the creation of the military-industrial complex and the beginnings of suburban sprawl to the production of the ballpoint pen and the TV dinner, the artifacts of the period are as numerous and diverse as they are familiar. Over the past half-century, our awe at the advances of postwar society has softened to nostalgia, and our affection for its material culture has clouded our memories of the enormous spatial reorganizations and infrastructural transformations that changed American life forever. "Cold War Hot Houses" casts a clear, even playful, eye on this pivotal time in history, examining topics as diverse as the creation of the interstate highway system and the shopping centre, and the domestication of the national parks as well as the production of such seemingly mundane products as the drive-in theater, aluminum foil, and the king-size bed. The result is a vivid snapshot of American culture that still resonates today.

Title:
Rachel Whiteread : transient spaces

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Rachel Whiteread (b. 1963) creates spare, poetic sculptures that challenge perceptions of the commonplace. Working from everyday domestic items, she casts - in rubber, concrete, plaster, and polyester resin - the negative spaces inside closets and underneath beds, sinks, bathtubs, and chairs. Now, in what may be her most personal project to date, the Turner Prize-winning artist has been commissioned by Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin to make two large-scale casts from distinct spaces in a London building that she recently purchased to become her home and studio. Although the building has a history as both a synagogue and a factory, it is a product of austere postwar architecture, lacking many of the traditional embellishments associated with such structures. This fully illustrated volume documents Whiteread's process as she creates casts from this religious-cum-industrial-cum-personal space, which blurs boundaries between the spiritual and secular, as well as the public and private.

Title:
Clip stamp fold: The radical architecture of little magazines

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An explosion of little architectural magazines in the 1960s and 1970s instigated a radical transformation in architectural culture, as the magazines acted as a site of innovation and debate. Clip, Stamp, Fold takes stock of seventy little magazines from this period that were published in over a dozen cities. Coined in the early twentieth century to designate progressive literary journals, the term little magazine was remobilized during the 1960s to grapple with the contemporary proliferation of independent architectural periodicals. In addition to short-lived radical magazines, this book includes pamphlets and building instruction manuals along with professional magazines that experienced moments of littleness, influenced by the graphics and intellectual concerns of their self-published contemporaries.

Title:
Are we human? The design of the species: 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200,00 years. Istanbul Design Biennal 2016

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$45.00
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The question Are We Human? is both urgent and ancient. Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley offer a multi-layered exploration of the intimate relationship between human and design and rethink the philosophy of design in a multi-dimensional exploration from the very ?rst tools and ornaments to the constant buzz of social media. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outside space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Colomina’s and Wigley’s field notes offer an archaeology of the way design has gone viral and is now bigger than the world. They range across the last few hundred thousand years and the last few seconds to scrutinize the uniquely plastic relation between brain and artifact.

Title:
Are we human?: notes on an archaeology of design

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$27.95
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Summary:
The question "Are we human?" is both urgent and ancient. Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley offer a multi-layered exploration of the intimate relationship between human and design and rethink the philosophy of design in a multi-dimensional exploration from the very ?rst tools and ornaments to the constant buzz of social media. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outside space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Colomina’s and Wigley’s field notes offer an archaeology of the way design has gone viral and is now bigger than the world. They range across the last few hundred thousand years and the last few seconds to scrutinize the uniquely plastic relation between brain and artifact. A vivid portrait emerges. Design is what makes the human. It becomes the way humans ask questions and thereby continuously redesign themselves.

Title:
L'univers Playboy

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Né en 1926, Hugh Hefner est à l'origine du magazine Playboy et de sa compagne indissociable : la playmate. Pourtant, en dépit d'un tirage centuplé entre 1953 et 1973, il faut se défaire de ce storytelling de banal self-made-man. Car à mi-chemin de Walt Disney et d'Albert R. Broccoli (le principal producteur des films de James Bond), Hefner est d'abord un authentique créateur d'univers. Sexy pour les uns, sexiste pour les autres, l'excentricité érotique de ses penthouses cache en réalité une cosmétique bien plus vaste. Avec son jet privé Big Bunny, ses hôtesses, ses clubs, ses Manoirs Est et Ouest, sa Grotte, son zoo, son lit connecté et ses filiales multimédias, Hefner a finalement inventé un monde illusoire à l'image de l'Amérique : le sien.

Title:
Das Andere (the other)

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In 1903, Adolf Loos edited the journal Das Andere – Ein Blatt zur Einführung abendländischer 'Kunst in Österreich', in which he expressed his thoughts on, and theories of, contemporary architecture, fashion, and design. The publication was born out of Loos’ aversion to a superficial aestheticization of life in Austria, which he saw embodied by the “Wiener Secession” and later on “Wiener Werkstätte” and “Werkbund”. As a counterbalance, in Das Andere he showed his admiration especially for the fashion and culture of England and America. Contemporary advertisements on these subjects were included in the journal, which ran for just two issues. Beatriz Colomina supplements the reprint of Das Andere with an extensive commentary.

Title:
La publicité du privé : de Loos à Le Corbusier

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À travers l'oeuvre de deux figures majeures du mouvement moderne, Adolf Loos et Le Corbusier, Béatriz Colomina analyse cette architecture qui ne devient moderne que dans sa confrontation avec les mass médias. Au lieu d'aborder l'architecture moderne comme une pratique artistique en opposition à la culture de masse, Colomina considère les systèmes émergents de communication, qui définiront la culture du XXe siècle, comme le lieu véritable de production de l'architecture moderne. Elle déplace ainsi le discours architectural vers l'intersection de nombreux systèmes de représention (dessin, maquette, photographie, livre, publicité). Avec la modernité, le lieu de la production architecturale s'est littéralement transféré de la rue vers les photographies, les films, les publications ou les expositions - déplacement qui présuppose un nouveau sens de l'espace, défini par des images plutôt que par des murs. Colomina nous retrace ces modifications radicales dans l'expérience de l'espace à travers les incarnations modernes de l'archive, de la ville, de la mode, du tourisme, de la guerre, de la sexualité.

Title:
Domesticity at War

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In the years immediately following World War II, America embraced modern architecture--not as something imported from Europe, but as an entirely new mode of operation, with original and captivating designs made in the USA. Beatriz Colomina shows how postwar American architecture adapted the techniques and materials that were developed for military applications to domestic use. Just as manufacturers were turning wartime industry to peacetime productivity--going from missiles to washing machines--American architects and cultural institutions were, in Buckminster Fuller’s words, turning "weaponry into livingry." This new form of domesticity itself turned out to be a powerful weapon. Images of American domestic bliss--suburban homes, manicured lawns, kitchen accessories--went around the world as an effective propaganda campaign. Cold War anxieties were masked by endlessly repeated images of a picture-perfect domestic environment. Even the popular conception of the architect became domesticated, changing from that of an austere modernist to a plaid-shirt wearing homebody. Domesticity at War itself has a distinctive architecture. Housed within the case are two units: one book of text, and one book of illustrations--most of them in color, including advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles, architectural photographs, and more.

Title:
Dan Graham

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Dan Graham is among the most influential of the Conceptual artists who emerged in America during the mid 1960s. A pioneer in performance and video art in the 1970s, Graham later turned his attention to architectural projects designed for social interaction in public spaces, among them The Children’s Pavilion (1989) with Jeff Wall. Writing has always been a major aspect of Graham’s work. His texts range from early Conceptual art pieces inserted in mass-market magazines, to writing on his fellow artists, to analyses of popular culture, from Dean Martin to the post-Punk era. Well-known also among architects and urban theorists, during the 1990s Graham has been offered major public commissions throughout North America and Europe. London-based curator Mark Francis discusses with the artist how his public participation-based work has evolved. Brussels-based critic Birgit Pelzer draws on her extensive knowledge of Graham’s work and writings. New York-based architectural theorist Beatriz Colomina focuses on Graham’s Alteration to a Suburban House (1978). The artist has chosen an extract from the science fiction novel Ubik by Philip K Dick, whose writings were a formative influence. A substantial Artist’s Writings section, key to understanding Dan Graham, completes the book.