Roman Signer
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Since the mid 1970s Roman Signer has examined the forces of the elements – air, fire, earth and water – in a combination of performance (documented by photography and video) and sculpture (the physical remains of his acts). With a Dadaist love for the absurd, his artworks include Race (1981), in which the artist races a rocket across a field (hopelessly behind from the(...)
Contemporary Art Monographs
June 2006, London
Roman Signer
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Since the mid 1970s Roman Signer has examined the forces of the elements – air, fire, earth and water – in a combination of performance (documented by photography and video) and sculpture (the physical remains of his acts). With a Dadaist love for the absurd, his artworks include Race (1981), in which the artist races a rocket across a field (hopelessly behind from the outset, the artist loses by nearly the entire length); Action at Hotel Weissbad (1992), in which an ordinary table is shot out a hotel window, the resulting photographs showing a table flying incongruously over a sleepy Swiss village; Power of Rain (1974), in which rainwater gathers slowly in a funnel until its force shatters a block of plaster; and Bicycle with Rockets (1991), the photographs of which show a fiery bicycle flying through the gallery like a demon comet. Often Signer will exhibit in the gallery the remains of an event not witnessed by the public, such as four empty barrels and a violently splattered wall, the remains of an explosion of paint in the gallery space (Portrait Gallery, 1993), or four sand piles with perfectly round craters on each, the neat result of four simultaneous explosions at their peaks (Cones of Sand, 1988). Roman Signer’s work has been exhibited at major venues across Europe and North America, as well as important international exhibitions such as Documenta 8 (1987), Skulptur Projekte in Munster (1997) and the 48th Venice Biennale (1999), in which he represented Switzerland.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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"Ulm design" is synonymous for clear, functional design of superior quality. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, this book issued by the Ulmer Museum and the HfG-Archiv pays tribute to the school's pioneering accomplishments. Just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Hochschule für(...)
Industrial Design
September 2003, Ostfildern
Ulm School of Design 1953-1968
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"Ulm design" is synonymous for clear, functional design of superior quality. On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm, this book issued by the Ulmer Museum and the HfG-Archiv pays tribute to the school's pioneering accomplishments. Just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (School of Design, known as the HfG) in Ulm in 1953, this publication honors the pioneering work of its founding members Inge Scholl, Otl Aicher, and Max Bill. Founded on an antifascist impulse, the HfG encouraged the development of a democratic consciousness which was to influence design in general. Products were meant to be as long lived and functional as possible, acceptable with respect to social and ecological criteria, and to take into account changing political conditions and production technologies. The school's pedagogical concept, the so-called Ulm model, was characterized by a new system- oriented design methodology and the encouragement of interdisciplinary teamwork. The Ulm School of Design played a decisive role in establishing the idea of the professional "designer" in the form still valid today, and many designers who graduated from the HfG before its closure in 1968 are still teaching design-related subjects, thus carrying on the specific fundamental principles that empowered the HfG. Examples from design schools in Asia, North and South America, and India illustrate the effects of the design methods developed at Ulm.
Industrial Design
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Room 4.1.3, an Australian landscape architecture firm, is renowned for producing some of the world's most finely tuned design work, striking a balance between theory and praxis, design and planning. The firm's projects engage visitors in a way that few public spaces have before. Founded in the 1990s by Richard Weller and Vladimir Sitta, Room 4.1.3 has received awards in(...)
Room 4.1.3 : innovations in landscape architecture
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Room 4.1.3, an Australian landscape architecture firm, is renowned for producing some of the world's most finely tuned design work, striking a balance between theory and praxis, design and planning. The firm's projects engage visitors in a way that few public spaces have before. Founded in the 1990s by Richard Weller and Vladimir Sitta, Room 4.1.3 has received awards in more than forty open design competitions and is currently at work on a new city in Singapore, "fusion-polis." Adopting a new proscriptive approach, the designs exhibit a strong theoretical base that extends into cultural studies, art, geography, anthropology, and psychology. For example, the controversial Garden of Australian Dreams at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra is a veritable playground of meanings, invoking events of such varying cultural significance as the birth of Australia as a nation and the work of Jackson Pollock. This lavishly illustrated volume features many other award-winning Room 4.1.3 designs, including Namesti Miru in Prague, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, and Gallipoli Peace Park in Turkey. Internationally renowned scholars and critics provide essays that contextualize each project and ultimately argue for the primacy and efficacy of poetic and subversive imagination in the formation of our environment. The works collected here, both built and unbuilt, will introduce Room 4.1.3's iconic style to an ever-widening audience in North America and open up an international discourse on new meanings of landscape architecture.
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January 2005, Philadelphia
Gardens
Manifestos
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"Manifestos" brings together for the first time in English the manifestos written by Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau between 2000 and 2009. Composed in part in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the texts resonate with the current context of divided identities and criticisms of multiculturalism. The individual texts grapple with concrete historical(...)
Environment and environmental theory
September 2022
Manifestos
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"Manifestos" brings together for the first time in English the manifestos written by Édouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau between 2000 and 2009. Composed in part in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s election in 2008, the texts resonate with the current context of divided identities and criticisms of multiculturalism. The individual texts grapple with concrete historical and political moments in France, the Caribbean, and North America. Across the manifestos, as well as two collectively signed op-eds, the authors engage with socio-political aspects of climate catastrophe, resource extraction, toxicity, and neocolonialism. Throughout the collection, Glissant and Chamoiseau engage with key themes articulated through their poetic vocabulary, including Relation, globalization, globality (mondialité), anti-universalism, métissage, the tout-monde ("whole-world") and the tout-vivant ("all-living," including the relationship of humans to each other and "nature"), créolité and the creolization of the world, and the liberation from community assignations in response to individualism and neoliberal societies. Translated as the first volume in the Planetarities series with Goldsmiths Press, the themes of "Manifestos" resonate with the planetary as they work in response to contemporary forms of (economic) globalization, western capitalism, identity politics, and urban, digital and cosmic ecosystems, as well as the role of the poet-writer. A distinguishing feature of this publication is its interventional aspect, which prioritizes engaged scholarship and practice while demonstrating the relevance of the poetic in response to the urgencies of planetary crisis.
Environment and environmental theory
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Post, ex, sub and dis - these are but a few of the prefixes that have been used to compose neologisms for describing the contemporary cityscape in Western Europe and North America. Terms such as posturban space, postsuburbia, exurbia, exopolis, suburban downtown and disurbia are part of a dizzying collection of often hotly contested labels. The plethora of neologisms(...)
Post ex sub dis : urban fragmentations and constructions
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Post, ex, sub and dis - these are but a few of the prefixes that have been used to compose neologisms for describing the contemporary cityscape in Western Europe and North America. Terms such as posturban space, postsuburbia, exurbia, exopolis, suburban downtown and disurbia are part of a dizzying collection of often hotly contested labels. The plethora of neologisms demonstrates how difficult it has become to name, map and analyse the contemporary cityscape. To many observers, urban environments and urban society have come to evince a radically chaotic and fragmented structure. This book explores how in recent decades the notion of fragmentation - a mainstay already of reflections on urban modernity - has acquired new meanings and how, within the current decentralized and centrifugal context, the urban landscape is constantly being deconstructed and reconstructed, both materially and discursively. Richly illustrated with works by artists and photographers who have visualized various new kinds of urban fragmentation, the volume brings together a series of essays on spatial, social and cultural issues written by distinguished scholars and practitioners from an unusual variety of disciplines. It will be especially useful to students of urban planning, architecture, sociology, literature and the arts. With text contributions by Aaron Betsky, Sophie Body-Gendrot, Stefano Boeri, Lizabeth Cohen, Rosalyn Deutsche, Bart Eeckhout, Adriaan Geuze, Paul Gilroy, Steven Jacobs, Regine Leibinger, Scott Malcomson, Peter Marcuse, Bruce Robbins, Luc Sante, William Sharpe, Edward W. Soja and Mark Wigley.
Urban Theory
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Since they were first established in the 1880s, children’s summer camps have touched the lives of millions of people. Although the camping experience has a special place in the popular imagination, few scholars have given serious thought to this peculiarly American phenomenon. Why were summer camps created? What concerns and ideals motivated their founders? Whom did they(...)
A manufactured wilderness: summer camps and the shaping of american youth
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Since they were first established in the 1880s, children’s summer camps have touched the lives of millions of people. Although the camping experience has a special place in the popular imagination, few scholars have given serious thought to this peculiarly American phenomenon. Why were summer camps created? What concerns and ideals motivated their founders? Whom did they serve? How did they change over time? What factors influenced their design? To answer these and many other questions, Abigail A. Van Slyck trains an informed eye on the most visible and evocative aspect of camp life: its landscape and architecture. She argues that summer camps delivered much more than a simple encounter with the natural world. Instead, she suggests, camps provided a man-made version of wilderness, shaped by middle-class anxieties about gender roles, class tensions, race relations, and modernity and its impact on the lives of children. Following a fascinating history of summer camps and a wide-ranging overview of the factors that led to their creation, Van Slyck examines the intersections of the natural landscape with human-built forms and social activities. In particular, she addresses changing attitudes toward such subjects as children’s health, sanitation, play, relationships between the sexes, Native American culture, and evolving ideas about childhood. Generously illustrated with period photographs, maps, plans, and promotional images of camps throughout North America, A Manufactured Wilderness is the first book to offer a thorough consideration of the summer camp environment.
Architectural Theory
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When architect Rafael Vinoly was commissioned to design a major new centre for the arts at Duke University, he set about creating his first museum in North America and the first stand-alone museum in Duke's eighty-year history. The resulting 65,000-square-foot building has changed the cultural landscape of the university and indeed the Southeast. This book(...)
Architecture Monographs
October 2005, Durham, North Carolina
The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University : Rafael Vinoly Architects
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When architect Rafael Vinoly was commissioned to design a major new centre for the arts at Duke University, he set about creating his first museum in North America and the first stand-alone museum in Duke's eighty-year history. The resulting 65,000-square-foot building has changed the cultural landscape of the university and indeed the Southeast. This book documents the genesis and design of the new museum, which opens on October 2, 2005. The building is named in honor of the family of Raymond D. Nasher, an internationally prominent art collector who graduated from Duke in 1943. The brilliant core of the Nasher at Duke is a 13,000-square-foot glass and steel canopy rising to a height of 45 feet above the central gallery space. The faceted roof soars above the irregular pentagonal great hall, where five concrete pavilions fan out at different angles. The pavilions will house three large gallery spaces, an auditorium, offices, university and community classrooms, a museum shop, and a café with outdoor seating overlooking a sculpture garden. Set in the forest on Duke's campus, the museum's full-height glass walls and green slate floor connect the pavilions and further blur the division between building and nature. With an essay by art historian Annabel Jane Wharton, a design statement by architect Rafael Vinoly, a foreword by museum namesake Raymond D. Nasher, and photographs by Brad Feinknopf and Jerry Blow, this book documents the building that will become a cornerstone for cultural activities for the university and the public.
Architecture Monographs
Ed Ruscha, photographer
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Although known for his paintings and drawings, California artist Ed Ruscha has also attracted critical attention for his photography. A new exhibition and accompanying catalogue, "Ed Ruscha, photographer", depart from earlier books to explore how the artist’s different disciplines — painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography — are guided and shaped by a single(...)
Ed Ruscha, photographer
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Although known for his paintings and drawings, California artist Ed Ruscha has also attracted critical attention for his photography. A new exhibition and accompanying catalogue, "Ed Ruscha, photographer", depart from earlier books to explore how the artist’s different disciplines — painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography — are guided and shaped by a single vision. Ruscha’s relationship to photography is complex and ambivalent, and the work is difficult to define. He has referred to his photography as a “hobby” but from the outset it has drawn considerable critical interest. The small books of photographs that Ruscha produced in the sixties and seventies earned him a reputation as an underground artist among his peers, and have influenced subsequent generations of artists in Europe and North America. The photographs were snapshot size, with an amateurish quality that intrigued his contemporaries. Neither purely documentary nor solely artistic, their subject matter was stereotypical and banal, with motifs drawn from sites in Southern California or the western United States. This, combined with their serial presentation, created a mythical road-movie or photo-novel effect with Beat Generation innuendos and inspired interest among artists at a time when serial logic was prominent in Pop art and Minimalism, and later in Conceptual art. This volume is produced in conjunction with a traveling exhibition to be shown in Europe in 2006, organized by The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. The exhibition photographs have been selected from the collections of the Whitney and the artist by independent curator Margit Rowell.
Contemporary Art Monographs
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This book examines the development of Vancouver’s unique approach to zoning, planning, and urban design from its inception in the early 1970's to its maturity in the management of urban change at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By the late 1990's, Vancouver had established a reputation in North America for its planning achievement, especially for its creation(...)
The Vancouver achievement : urban planning and design
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This book examines the development of Vancouver’s unique approach to zoning, planning, and urban design from its inception in the early 1970's to its maturity in the management of urban change at the beginning of the twenty-first century. By the late 1990's, Vancouver had established a reputation in North America for its planning achievement, especially for its creation of a participative, responsive, and design-led approach to urban regeneration and redevelopment. This system has other important features: an innovative approach to megaproject planning, a system of cost and amenity levies on major schemes, a participative CityPlan process to underpin active neighbourhood planning, and a sophisticated panoply of design guidelines. These systems, processes, and their achievements place Vancouver at the forefront of international planning practice. "The Vancouver Achievement" explains the evolution and evaluates the outcomes of Vancouver’s unique system of discretionary zoning. The introductory chapters set the context for the study: they cover the invention and refinement of this system in the reform movement, its development of policies, guidelines, and control processes, and its translation into official development plans and neighbourhood design in the 1970's. Subsequent chapters focus upon the downtown, waterfront megaprojects, single-family neighbourhoods, the city-wide strategic planning programme (CityPlan), pressures for reform of control processes, and current downtown and inner city developments, especially issues of affordable housing, social exclusion, and multiple deprivation. The concluding chapter summarizes "The Vancouver Achievement," explains the keys to its success, and evaluates its design success against internationally accepted criteria.
Architecture in Canada
For the temporary accomodation of settlers: Architecture and immigrant reception in Canada 1870-1930
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For immigrants making the transoceanic journey from Europe or Asia to North America, the experience of a new country began when they disembarked. In Canada the federal government built a network of buildings that provided newcomers with shelter, services, and state support. "Immigration sheds" such as Pier 21 in Halifax – where ocean liners would dock and global migrants(...)
For the temporary accomodation of settlers: Architecture and immigrant reception in Canada 1870-1930
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For immigrants making the transoceanic journey from Europe or Asia to North America, the experience of a new country began when they disembarked. In Canada the federal government built a network of buildings that provided newcomers with shelter, services, and state support. "Immigration sheds" such as Pier 21 in Halifax – where ocean liners would dock and global migrants arrived and were processed – had many counterparts across the country: new arrivals were accommodated or incarcerated at reception halls, quarantine stations, and immigrant detention hospitals. For the Temporary Accommodation of Settlers reconstructs the experiences of people in these spaces – both immigrants and government agents – to pose a question at the heart of architectural thinking: how is meaning produced in the built environments that we encounter? David Monteyne interprets official governmental intentions and policy goals embodied by the architecture of immigration but foregrounds the unofficial, informal practices of people who negotiated these spaces to satisfy basic needs, ensure the safety of their families, learn about land and job opportunities, and ultimately arrive at their destinations. The extent of this Canadian network, which peaked in the early twentieth century at over sixty different sites, and the range of building types that comprised it are unique among immigrant-receiving nations in this period. In our era of pandemic quarantine and migrant detention facilities, ''For the temporary accommodation of settlers'' offers new ways of seeing and thinking about the historical processes of immigration, challenging readers to consider government architecture and the experience of migrants across global networks.
Architecture in Canada