Nightscapes
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This book shows how night redefines the framework of thought and action in the realm of the imaginary, of territorial planning and of the practice of landscape, the aim being to arrive at a contemporary urbanism based on perceptual experience. The book is structured in three parts: the first covers the originality and value of the experience of the nocturnal landscape(...)
Nightscapes
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This book shows how night redefines the framework of thought and action in the realm of the imaginary, of territorial planning and of the practice of landscape, the aim being to arrive at a contemporary urbanism based on perceptual experience. The book is structured in three parts: the first covers the originality and value of the experience of the nocturnal landscape for thought and creativity, the second defines infrastructure as the nocturnal landscape’s real scale and strategy, while the third illustrates examples of nocturnal contemporary architecture and landscape.
Urban Landscapes
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This publication is based on a thesis that studies global mobility and territories in dispersion. Based in Rotterdam, Diego Barajas concentrates his research on the urban dispersals shaped by migration, looking first at the Cape Verdean Diaspora and its territorial structure, and then focused on the case of the 'belhuis' - 'call-house'. By 'territories in dispersion',(...)
Dispersion : a study of global mobility and the dynamics of a fictional urbanism
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This publication is based on a thesis that studies global mobility and territories in dispersion. Based in Rotterdam, Diego Barajas concentrates his research on the urban dispersals shaped by migration, looking first at the Cape Verdean Diaspora and its territorial structure, and then focused on the case of the 'belhuis' - 'call-house'. By 'territories in dispersion', Barajas refers to social habitats that are no longer physically contained in geographically continuous areas, but have been spread out and re-articulated by artificial means. The de-territorialized condition created by increased mobility - particularly by migration - had led to an urbanism of artificial re-territorializaton. This is a functional urbanism - as based on mental constructions but tangible - that is manifested in the city as fragments, micro environments of global circuits, each of which establishes its own identity, time, rules and aesthetics - its own atmospheres. These fragments are globally connected and articulated by abstract infrastructures like telecommunication systems, as much as by physical places - ethnic shops, religious centers, et cetera - and by the imaginary and idealized realms through which dispersed societies operate. This is an urbanism ruled by traditional values, by intuitive and emotional forces, as much by efficiency and functionality. This research argues that as patterns of dispersion intensify, they generate not just fragmented societies, but a new territorial cohesion - a realm in which 'the collective' has gained a new dimension. Cultural identity is no longer necessarily linked to geographical place, or to traditional territorial structures like the nation-state, but has become a particular concept attached to individual imaginations though subjected to and conditioned by the contradictory pressures of self-determination and commoditization. This research is an attempt to trace the patterns of urban dispersals shaped by migration to the city of Rotterdam. A city whose harbour has made it one of the most concentrated points of settlement for Cape Verdean emigrants.
Urban Theory
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Over more than two decades of writing, Aaron Betsky has used his knowledge of architecture and urbanism to argue for the ways in which buildings, cities and landscapes help us understand where we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. He argues for modernist design as a way of making ourselves at home in the ever-changing world of modernity. In At Home(...)
At home in sprawl: selected essays on architecture
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Over more than two decades of writing, Aaron Betsky has used his knowledge of architecture and urbanism to argue for the ways in which buildings, cities and landscapes help us understand where we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. He argues for modernist design as a way of making ourselves at home in the ever-changing world of modernity. In At Home in Sprawl, using such disparate examples as California and the Netherlands, he offers possible building blocks for better sprawl. He also believes that buildings are no longer enough to make us at home in the modern world, and that architects must look beyond such structures to landscapes, interiors, and imaginary structures to find appropriate and critical architecture.
Urban Theory
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Like a journey into the heart of urban solitude and its periphery, Serge Clément’s work draws the viewer into an intimate relationship with the image. As the images accumulate, they create an imaginary density of timeless fragments. For Clément, photography has always been closely related to the book, particularly along the idea that an image refers to other images. On(...)
Contemporary Art Monographs
June 2015
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Like a journey into the heart of urban solitude and its periphery, Serge Clément’s work draws the viewer into an intimate relationship with the image. As the images accumulate, they create an imaginary density of timeless fragments. For Clément, photography has always been closely related to the book, particularly along the idea that an image refers to other images. On one hand, it signifies that an image is a leaky container with smoke, fog, streams and rivers, reflections, and streets running across the image. On the other, Serge Clément constantly questions the power of the photographic image to capture reality. A certain street, a certain perspective, this deserted place, the passers-by are not tied to a clearly identifiable world, but belong to the abstract universe of an essentially imaginary city. It is not important to know whether the place in question is Montreal or Tokyo, the viewer may rather lose himself between several places.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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'NOWHERE' shows a world in which Instagrammability is first and foremost, in which the new reality is dictated by the seductive image that may (later) be made from it. Architecture, design, and urban landscape are directed by the mechanisms of global big business, and the same antiseptic beauty exists all over the world. 'NOWHERE—Imagining the Global City' presents the(...)
Frank van der Salm: Nowhere: imagining the global city
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'NOWHERE' shows a world in which Instagrammability is first and foremost, in which the new reality is dictated by the seductive image that may (later) be made from it. Architecture, design, and urban landscape are directed by the mechanisms of global big business, and the same antiseptic beauty exists all over the world. 'NOWHERE—Imagining the Global City' presents the work of Dutch photographer Frank van der Salm from the past twenty-five years. Designed by Irma Boom, the book shows a consumer-oriented, imaginary metropolis. Images, sometimes deliberately upside down, challenge the reality they represent. Seen together they form the image of a city that suddenly seems to be simultaneously everywhere and nowhere: both here and now and nowhere. The essays by Shumon Basar, Aaron Betsky, and Urs Stahel link Frank van der Salm’s oeuvre to the world of design, architecture, urban development, art, and photography.
Photography monographs
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Following the success of "Archidoodle", this new title focuses on the city. Filled with an array of beautiful and fun drawings, it poses 75 architectural challenges for the user: from building an underground community or designing your own imaginary city to creating a new park for New York, plus many more. Aimed at at anyone who loves drawing buildings and cities, it(...)
Archidoodle city: an architect's activity book
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Following the success of "Archidoodle", this new title focuses on the city. Filled with an array of beautiful and fun drawings, it poses 75 architectural challenges for the user: from building an underground community or designing your own imaginary city to creating a new park for New York, plus many more. Aimed at at anyone who loves drawing buildings and cities, it encourages the users to imagine their own creative solutions by sketching, drawing, and painting in the pages of the book. In so doing, they will learn about a whole range of significant issues, such as the importance of transport, lighting and green spaces, the history of urban design and planning, and the use of monuments and symbols. The book also includes numerous examples of works and ideas by major architects to draw inspiration from and will appeal to everyone from children to students and professional architects.
activity books
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The design of imaginary, conceptual, or radical buildings is as old as the practice of architecture itself. For centuries, architects such as Piranesi, Ledoux, and Sant'Elia have drawn on their creative abilities to produce breathtaking works of imagination. Since World War II, technology has caught up with our imagination: there are few buildings that can be envisioned(...)
Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the modern imagination
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The design of imaginary, conceptual, or radical buildings is as old as the practice of architecture itself. For centuries, architects such as Piranesi, Ledoux, and Sant'Elia have drawn on their creative abilities to produce breathtaking works of imagination. Since World War II, technology has caught up with our imagination: there are few buildings that can be envisioned but not built. For the past six decades, architects have created an astonishing range of constructs and urban utopias that have influenced generations of practitioners. Architects such as Libeskind, Koolhaas, Eisenman, Hadid, and many others, whose works were once considered too experimental or controversial to construct, are creating cultural icons the world over. This definitive history of experimental architecture since 1945 provides a thematic overview of the most important and far-reaching work produced in the last sixty years; a survey of contemporary experimental practices, shown through case studies; and an illustrated glossary of ideas, movements, people, and terms. 450+ illustrations, 250 in color.
Modernism
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The widely known image of Lucerne is of the city on the Lake of Four Cantons, below Mt Pilatus, framed by snow-covered peaks and gentle hills, equipped with bridges and churches, mansions, grand hotels, lanes in the historical centre, and lakeside walks. This long overdue architectural guide also spotlights the city's notable 20th century architectural tradition,(...)
Strolls through space and time : architectural guide, Lucerne (with partial translation into English)
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The widely known image of Lucerne is of the city on the Lake of Four Cantons, below Mt Pilatus, framed by snow-covered peaks and gentle hills, equipped with bridges and churches, mansions, grand hotels, lanes in the historical centre, and lakeside walks. This long overdue architectural guide also spotlights the city's notable 20th century architectural tradition, including buildings by renowned European architects such as Jean Nouvel, Diener & Diener and Hans Kollhoff. In six "strolls through space and time" and a "detour" to eight neighbouring localities, the author and expert on 20th century Swiss and Lucerne architecture Otti Gmür systematically describes and documents the major buildings of the 20th century and the present. Descriptions of complexes, historical and new general plans and references to earlier buildings that are part of the complexes or that have been adapted and altered in recent times round off the image of the City of Lucerne and its urban development. The guide is intended to animate and accompany a real or imaginary visit to Lucerne.
City Guides
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Over the last decade, 'parametricism' has been heralded as a new avant-garde in the industries of architecture, urban design, and industrial design, regarded by many as the next grand style in the history of architecture, heir to postmodernism and deconstruction. From buildings to cities, the built environment is increasingly addressed, designed and constructed using(...)
The politics of parametricism digital technologies in architecture
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Over the last decade, 'parametricism' has been heralded as a new avant-garde in the industries of architecture, urban design, and industrial design, regarded by many as the next grand style in the history of architecture, heir to postmodernism and deconstruction. From buildings to cities, the built environment is increasingly addressed, designed and constructed using digital software based on parametric scripting platforms which claim to be able to process complex physical and social modelling alike. As more and more digital tools are developed into an apparently infinite repertoire of socio-technical functions, critical questions concerning these cultural and technological shifts are often eclipsed by the seductive aesthetic and the alluring futuristic imaginary that parametric design tools and their architectural products and discourses represent. The Politics of Parametricism addresses these issues, offering a collection of new essays written by leading international thinkers in the fields of digital design, architecture, theory and technology. Exploring the social, political, ethical and philosophical issues at stake in the history, practice and processes of parametric architecture and urbanism, each chapter provides different vantage points to interrogate the challenges and opportunities presented by this latest mode of technological production.
Digital Architecture
Notes on the Underground
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The underground has always played a prominent role in human imaginings, both as a place of refuge and as a source of fear. The late nineteenth century saw a new fascination with the underground as Western societies tried to cope with the pervasive changes of a new social and technological order. In Notes on the Underground, Rosalind Williams takes us inside that critical(...)
Notes on the Underground
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The underground has always played a prominent role in human imaginings, both as a place of refuge and as a source of fear. The late nineteenth century saw a new fascination with the underground as Western societies tried to cope with the pervasive changes of a new social and technological order. In Notes on the Underground, Rosalind Williams takes us inside that critical historical moment, giving equal coverage to actual and imaginary undergrounds. She looks at the real-life invasions of the underground that occurred as modern urban infrastructures of sewers and subways were laid, and at the simultaneous archaeological excavations that were unearthing both human history and the planet’s deep past. She also examines the subterranean stories of Verne, Wells, Forster, Hugo, Bulwer-Lytton, and other writers who proposed alternative visions of the coming technological civilization. Williams argues that these imagined and real underground environments provide models of human life in a world dominated by human presence and offer a prophetic look at today’s technology-dominated society. In a new afterword written for this edition, Williams points out that her book traces the emergence in the nineteenth century of what we would now call an environmental consciousness--an awareness that there will be consequences when humans live in a sealed, finite environment. Today we are more aware than ever of our limited biosphere and how vulnerable it is. Notes on the Underground, now even more than when it first appeared, offers a guide to the human, cultural, and technical consequences of what Williams calls "the human empire on earth."
Architectural Theory