The metabolist imagination: visions of the city in postwar Japanese architecture and science fiction
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The devastation of the Second World War gave rise to imaginations both utopian and apocalyptic. In Japan, a fascinating confluence of architects and science fiction writers took advantage of this space to begin remaking urban design. In 'The Metabolist Imagination', William O. Gardner explores the unique Metabolism movement, which allied with science fiction authors to(...)
The metabolist imagination: visions of the city in postwar Japanese architecture and science fiction
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The devastation of the Second World War gave rise to imaginations both utopian and apocalyptic. In Japan, a fascinating confluence of architects and science fiction writers took advantage of this space to begin remaking urban design. In 'The Metabolist Imagination', William O. Gardner explores the unique Metabolism movement, which allied with science fiction authors to foresee the global cities that would emerge in the postwar era. This first comparative study of postwar Japanese architecture and science fiction builds on the resurgence of interest in Metabolist architecture while establishing new directions for exploration. Gardner focuses on how these innovators created unique versions of shared concepts—including futurity, megastructures, capsules, and cybercities—making lasting contributions that resonate with contemporary conversations around cyberpunk, climate change, anime, and more.
Architectural Theory
Bartlett designs
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The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL is one of the world’s leading places at which to study and teach architecture. This book is a collection of the very best of student work from the last decade. Through a detailed presentation of over 170 student projects, each succinctly explained by the individual tutors concerned, the book shows how architectural designs and(...)
Bartlett designs
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The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL is one of the world’s leading places at which to study and teach architecture. This book is a collection of the very best of student work from the last decade. Through a detailed presentation of over 170 student projects, each succinctly explained by the individual tutors concerned, the book shows how architectural designs and ideas can creatively address some of the world’s most pressing urban and social problems through buildings and other forms of architectural invention. The wide range of projects on show deal inventively with such important issues as cultural identity, housing, climate change, health and public space, as well as architectural concerns with the imagination of exciting forms and aesthetic languages.
Architecture Monographs
Return of landscape
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Until recently, the construction of the cityscape tended to entail the subjugation of nature and landscape; the consequences of this approach have been climate change, water shortages and the loss of biodiversity. The twenty-first-century city must abide by a new model that deploys creative, sustainable solutions and a more holistic approach to urban development. Return(...)
Urban Landscapes
November 2010
Return of landscape
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Until recently, the construction of the cityscape tended to entail the subjugation of nature and landscape; the consequences of this approach have been climate change, water shortages and the loss of biodiversity. The twenty-first-century city must abide by a new model that deploys creative, sustainable solutions and a more holistic approach to urban development. Return of Landscape probes the future of the city, not only as a living space but also as the creative center of tomorrow’s society. Through spectacular aerial photographs by Alex S. MacLean, it compares the two extreme examples of Las Vegas and Venice--two very different cities currently struggling with similar ecological problems. In addition to these case studies, the book includes articles by leading experts in architecture and urban development.
Urban Landscapes
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Over the past two decades, artists and writers have increasingly used science fiction as a lens through which to search for fragments of truth emerging from the past or the future. The proliferation of science fiction in contemporary art practice and discourse reflects an increased understanding of how this narrative field continues to grow in relevance. This book is the(...)
Science fiction: Documents of contemporary art
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Over the past two decades, artists and writers have increasingly used science fiction as a lens through which to search for fragments of truth emerging from the past or the future. The proliferation of science fiction in contemporary art practice and discourse reflects an increased understanding of how this narrative field continues to grow in relevance. This book is the first major anthology to focus on relationships between science fiction and contemporary art, and offers an essential read for all those exploring this vital genre. Organizing its contributions according to four distinct approaches—"estrangement,” “futures,” “posthumanism,” and “ecologies”—this unique collection gathers key examples of the influence of science fiction in recent cultural development. It considers topics that include the integration and acceleration of technological change, global urbanization and concepts of futurity, the boundaries of social structures and nonhuman life, and the threatening evidence of climate change. Writers include Peio Aguirre, Margaret Atwood, J. G. Ballard, Tiffany E. Barber, Jean Baudrillard, Franco 'Bifo' Beradi, Rosie Braidotti, Rachel Carson, Jeffrey Deitch, Donna Haraway, Cathy Lane, Amna Malik, Tom McCarthy, Alondra Nelson, Gwyneth Shanks, Jan Tumlir, Xin Wang, Gilda Williams
Art Theory
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Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City asks the questions that are important inside and outside the built environment professions: what are climate change, urbanisation and ecology doing to the theory and practice of urban design? How does Ecological Urbanism figure in this change? What is Ecological Urbanism? In answer, this book is neither definitive – impossible(...)
Ecological urbanism: the nature of the city
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Ecological Urbanism: The Nature of the City asks the questions that are important inside and outside the built environment professions: what are climate change, urbanisation and ecology doing to the theory and practice of urban design? How does Ecological Urbanism figure in this change? What is Ecological Urbanism? In answer, this book is neither definitive – impossible when a subject is still in motion – nor encyclopaedic – equally impossible when so much has been written on almost every aspect of these essays. Instead, it seeks to rebalance the ecological narrative and its embryonic modes of practice with the narratives of urbanism and its older, deeply embedded modes of practice. It examines the implications for cities and the designers of cities now we are required to again address their metabolic as well as social and formal dimensions, and it explores the extent to which environmental engineering and natural systems design can and should become drivers for the remaking of cities in the 21st century. Above all, it argues that sooner rather than later, urbanism needs to become environmentally literate, and environmental design needs to become culturally literate.
Urban Landscapes
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The rural, remote, and wild territories we call "countryside", or the 98% of the earth's surface not occupied by cities, make up the front line where today's most powerful forces-climate and ecological devastation, migration, tech, demographic lurches-are playing out. Increasingly under a 'Cartesian' regime-gridded, mechanized, and optimized for maximal production-these(...)
Koolhaas. Countryside, A Report (US edition)
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The rural, remote, and wild territories we call "countryside", or the 98% of the earth's surface not occupied by cities, make up the front line where today's most powerful forces-climate and ecological devastation, migration, tech, demographic lurches-are playing out. Increasingly under a 'Cartesian' regime-gridded, mechanized, and optimized for maximal production-these sites are changing beyond recognition. In his latest publication, Rem Koolhaas explores the rapid and often hidden transformations underway across the Earth's vast non-urban areas. This book gathers travelogue essays exploring territories marked by global forces and experimentation at the edge of our consciousness: a test site near Fukushima, where the robots that will maintain Japan's infrastructure and agriculture are tested; a greenhouse city in the Netherlands that may be the origin for the cosmology of today's countryside; the rapidly thawing permafrost of Central Siberia, a region wrestling with the possibility of relocation; refugees populating dying villages in the German countryside and intersecting with climate change activists; habituated mountain gorillas confronting humans on 'their' territory in Uganda; the American Midwest, where industrial-scale farming operations are coming to grips with regenerative agriculture; and Chinese villages transformed into all-in-one factory, e-commerce stores, and fulfillment centers.
Architecture Monographs
Metropolis: reflection
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There's no getting around it anymore. We are in an age of globalization, and cities around the world are being challenged in brand new ways with no historical precedents to guide them. The highly anticipated international building exhibition IBA Hamburg 2013 is preparing to tackle the many challenges that apply to metropolises around the world in our era, asking difficult(...)
Metropolis: reflection
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There's no getting around it anymore. We are in an age of globalization, and cities around the world are being challenged in brand new ways with no historical precedents to guide them. The highly anticipated international building exhibition IBA Hamburg 2013 is preparing to tackle the many challenges that apply to metropolises around the world in our era, asking difficult questions and soliciting innovative responses. Socially and geographically, how can we bring peripheral districts back into the city? How can we tap the full potential of international urban society? How can we cope with the requirements of climate change? This first installment of a ten-volume series leading up to the 2013 conference features retrospective documentation of former German building exhibitions, an outlook to the IBA Hamburg and complex considerations of the metropolis phenomenon.
Urban Theory
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“The North” has long held powerful sway in Western culture. Often seen through contradictions —empty of life yet full of promise, populated by indigenous communities yet ripe for conquest, pristine yet marked by a long human history —the North has moved to the foreground of contemporary life as the most dramatic stage for the reality of climate change. This book(...)
Critical norths: space, nature, theory
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“The North” has long held powerful sway in Western culture. Often seen through contradictions —empty of life yet full of promise, populated by indigenous communities yet ripe for conquest, pristine yet marked by a long human history —the North has moved to the foreground of contemporary life as the most dramatic stage for the reality of climate change. This book brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to ask key questions about the North and how we’ve conceived it—and how conceiving of it in those terms has caused us to fail the region’s human and nonhuman life. Engaging questions of space, place, ingenuity, identity, nature, the environment, justice, narrative, history, and more; it offers a crucial starting point for an essential rethinking of both the idea and the reality of the North.
Architectural Theory
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In "Neighbourhood: Designing a Liveable Community", renowned architect, professor and urban planner Avi Friedman describes the planning of a new neighbourhood in Middlesex Centre, a rural municipality in southern Ontario. Friedman explores how good and bad design affect our homes and civic life. In his quest to build a new kind of neighbourhood, Friedman talks about(...)
Neighbourhood: designing a livable community
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In "Neighbourhood: Designing a Liveable Community", renowned architect, professor and urban planner Avi Friedman describes the planning of a new neighbourhood in Middlesex Centre, a rural municipality in southern Ontario. Friedman explores how good and bad design affect our homes and civic life. In his quest to build a new kind of neighbourhood, Friedman talks about personal architectural and community touchstones that have informed his work through the years. Over the past decade or more, worrisome signs—climate change, depletion of natural resources, unrelenting urban sprawl, the tyranny of the automobile, the decline of face-to-face human contact—have motivated us to radically rethink home and community design. In Avi Friedman’s view, these issues have combined to force us to question fundamental practices and come up with better solutions.
Urban Theory
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In response to climate change, architects have been seeking a contemporary expression for durable, solid and homogeneous wall structures made of clay, wood, brick, concrete and recycled materials. This book follows 25 projects to analyze construction methods that predominantly involve materials that have a single origin and can be easily dismantled. It looks at a variety(...)
Mono material: monolithic, homogenous, and circular construction
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In response to climate change, architects have been seeking a contemporary expression for durable, solid and homogeneous wall structures made of clay, wood, brick, concrete and recycled materials. This book follows 25 projects to analyze construction methods that predominantly involve materials that have a single origin and can be easily dismantled. It looks at a variety of different ways and scales in which architects have dealt with issues of mass and materiality, both in terms of design and construction. Structured according to the specific materials, the book allows direct comparisons, and renders visible solid building typologies and forms. Numerous drawings, developed especially for this book, document the projects. Two essays as well as interviews with Pepe Marquez and Arno Richter examine the strategies and background of monolithic architecture and solid construction methods.
Materials and Lighting