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Today, architecture in China is at a watershed. Over the last decade, rapid urbanisation and the burgeoning economy turned the country into a playground for the world’s signature architects, making it possible to realise extravagant forms and structures at a vast scale. The Chinese government has now drawn a line under this phenomenon by issuing a directive calling an end(...)
AD 88:6 China homegrown: Chinese experimental architecture reborn
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Today, architecture in China is at a watershed. Over the last decade, rapid urbanisation and the burgeoning economy turned the country into a playground for the world’s signature architects, making it possible to realise extravagant forms and structures at a vast scale. The Chinese government has now drawn a line under this phenomenon by issuing a directive calling an end to the ‘oversized, xenocentric, weird’ buildings devoid of character or cultural heritage that have sprung up across the country, requiring that urban architecture be 'suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye'. This government directive comes at a time when homegrown architecture has become increasingly self-assured and reflective in its approach. A new generation of architects in China in their 30s and 40s are emerging, and in a wholly contemporary way they are exploring local responses to often bewildering urban and rural conditions and serious social and environmental challenges
Magazines
Brian Rose: Atlantic City
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Atlantic City was born in the mid-nineteenth century and grew so big, so fast, that it captured the American imagination. It was "the World's Playground". Its hotels were the largest and finest, its nightclubs legendary, its boardwalk an endless promenade. And then, as it began to fade, the casinos came. And instead of reviving the city they killed it. Chief among the(...)
Brian Rose: Atlantic City
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Atlantic City was born in the mid-nineteenth century and grew so big, so fast, that it captured the American imagination. It was "the World's Playground". Its hotels were the largest and finest, its nightclubs legendary, its boardwalk an endless promenade. And then, as it began to fade, the casinos came. And instead of reviving the city they killed it. Chief among the villains in this piece is Donald J Trump, who built his casinos on dunes of debt and bled them into bankruptcy. On the presidential campaign trail Trump boasted of his "success" in Atlantic City, how he had outwitted Wall Street and leveraged his own name for riches. He would do for America what he had done for Atlantic City, he said. And so it came to be. Brian Rose has documented what remains of the city in the aftermath of the casino explosion. The images are haunting. Atlantic City may never recover.
Photography monographs
Alvin Baltrop: The Piers
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Powerful, lyrical and controversial, Alvin Baltrop's photographs are a groundbreaking exploration of clandestine gay culture in New York in the 1970s and 80s. During that era, the derelict warehouses beneath Manhattan's West Side piers became a lawless, forgotten part of the city that played host to gay cruising, drug smuggling, prostitution and suicides. Baltrop(...)
Alvin Baltrop: The Piers
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Powerful, lyrical and controversial, Alvin Baltrop's photographs are a groundbreaking exploration of clandestine gay culture in New York in the 1970s and 80s. During that era, the derelict warehouses beneath Manhattan's West Side piers became a lawless, forgotten part of the city that played host to gay cruising, drug smuggling, prostitution and suicides. Baltrop documented this scene, unflinchingly and obsessively capturing everything from fleeting naked figures in mangled architectural environments to scenes of explicit sex and police raids on the piers. His work is little known and underpublished--mainly due to its unflinching subject matter--but while often explicit, his photographs are on a par with those of Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar and Enrique Metenides. While the outside world saw New York as the glamorous playground of Studio 54, Warhol's gang and the disco era, Baltrop photographed the city's gritty flipside; his work is an important part of both gay culture and the history of New York itself. This clothbound volume compiles the Piers series in one definitive monograph, a powerful tribute to a long-forgotten world at the city's dilapidated margins.
Current Exhibitions
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Do you really know what is under that new house you just bought? How about what lies beneath the neighborhood playground? Was that "big box" retailer down your street built over a toxic site? These are just a few of the worrisome scenarios facing us all as our cities begin to redevelop old toxic waste sites—places Alan Berger has coined "drosscapes." "Drosscape : wasting(...)
Drosscape : wasting land in urban America
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Do you really know what is under that new house you just bought? How about what lies beneath the neighborhood playground? Was that "big box" retailer down your street built over a toxic site? These are just a few of the worrisome scenarios facing us all as our cities begin to redevelop old toxic waste sites—places Alan Berger has coined "drosscapes." "Drosscape : wasting land in urban America" is a guide to this vast, hitherto largely ignored field of waste landscapes. Landscape architects must learn to accommodate these wastelands along with the more traditional challenges of site and construction. This will require a radical reconceptualization of thinking about landscape before potential solutions can be effectively addressed or devised. Ten cities are exam-ined both visually and analytically through the use of aerial photography and geospatially derived maps, charts, and graphs. Lured by tax incentives and the benefits of inade-quate public awareness, corporate America is rapidly developing these toxic sites. The photograhs and mappings are by the author.
Urban Theory
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In "Celluloid Skyline" James Sanders shows that the dream city of the movies, created by more than a century of films, may hold the secret to the allure and excitement of the actual place. Here are the cocktail parties and power lunches, the subway chases and opening nights, the playground rumbles and rooftop romances. Here is an invented Gotham, a place designed(...)
Commercial interiors, Building types
October 2003, New York
Celluloid skyline : New York and the movies
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In "Celluloid Skyline" James Sanders shows that the dream city of the movies, created by more than a century of films, may hold the secret to the allure and excitement of the actual place. Here are the cocktail parties and power lunches, the subway chases and opening nights, the playground rumbles and rooftop romances. Here is an invented Gotham, a place designed specifically for action, drama, and adventure, a city of bright avenues and mysterious side streets, of soaring towers and intimate corners, where remarkable people do exciting, amusing, romantic, scary things. Sanders takes us from the tenement to the penthouse, from New York to Hollywood and back again, from 1896 to the present, all the while showing how the real and mythic cities reflected, changed, and taught each other. Illustrated with scores of rare and unusual production images culled from Sanders's decade-long research in studio archives and private collections around the country, "Celluloid Skyline" offers a new way to see not only America’s greatest metropolis, but cities the world over
Commercial interiors, Building types
books
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"Ground-up city : play as a design tool" maps the continuing history of an urban design strategy for play in the city. Liane Lefaivre has developed a theoretical model for tackling playgrounds as an urban strategy. She steps off from a historical overview of play and the ludic in art, architecture and urban design, focusing particularly on the post-war playgrounds(...)
Ground-up city : play as a design tool
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"Ground-up city : play as a design tool" maps the continuing history of an urban design strategy for play in the city. Liane Lefaivre has developed a theoretical model for tackling playgrounds as an urban strategy. She steps off from a historical overview of play and the ludic in art, architecture and urban design, focusing particularly on the post-war playgrounds realized in Amsterdam as joint ventures between Aldo van Eyck, Cornelis van Eesteren and Jakoba Mulder. The architecture firm Döll - Atelier voor Bouwkunst explored the possibility of applying the model in two urban redevelopment areas in Rotterdam, Oude Westen in the inner city and Meeuwenplaat in Hoogvliet, an outlying postwar district, refining it into a practical design strategy. A second layer in the book gives an inspirational and refreshing new look at play in a picture essay with a welter of reference images illustrating play as an urban phenomenon. "Ground-up city" places the playground high on the agenda as an urban design challenge. It also shows how specifying a generic, academic model for a particular situation can lead to a practically applicable design resource.
books
January 2007, Rotterdam
Urban Theory
books
Toronto : design city
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At a time when modern architecture has become a means for cities to up their game and raise their cultural profile on the world stage, Toronto is coming into its own. Fully entrenched in a design renaissance that is dramatically changing the face and space of the city, Toronto is now a welcome playground for celebrated local talent and international star architects. While(...)
Architecture in Canada
March 2007, Chichester
Toronto : design city
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At a time when modern architecture has become a means for cities to up their game and raise their cultural profile on the world stage, Toronto is coming into its own. Fully entrenched in a design renaissance that is dramatically changing the face and space of the city, Toronto is now a welcome playground for celebrated local talent and international star architects. While some cities can be immediately defined by a specific style, Toronto is distinguished instead by a fusion of contemporary architecture, heritage preservation and sustainable urban design. A true mosaic of architecture and culture, Toronto is a city learning to recognise and celebrate its diversity – it is a city set to rediscover itself. "Design city : Toronto" showcases over thirty exemplary contemporary interior and architectural projects, both complete and underway. These range from hip restaurants and bars by Toronto-based practices to major institutional buildings completed by the likes of Will Alsop, Behnisch, Behnisch & Partners, Foster and Partners, Frank Gehry, Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg and Daniel Libeskind. Written in an engaging and lively manner, the book is illustrated with new photography by Tom Arban. It also provides a neighbourhood overview and biographies of featured designers.
books
March 2007, Chichester
Architecture in Canada
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A detailed history of the international modern house, illustrated with 400 photographs and architectural drawings. As the basic building block of the human environment, the house has served as an inexhaustible playground where architects experiment with theories, styles, forms, and materials. Arguably, the best and most innovative residential architecture has been(...)
Twentieth-century residential architecture
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A detailed history of the international modern house, illustrated with 400 photographs and architectural drawings. As the basic building block of the human environment, the house has served as an inexhaustible playground where architects experiment with theories, styles, forms, and materials. Arguably, the best and most innovative residential architecture has been conceived and realized over the past 100 yearsÑfrom the cantileveral serenity of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater to the spectacular Chemosphere, which resembles a UFO that has planted its landing gear in the Hollywood Hills. This book examines major shifts in international domestic design over the past century as it highlights a superb selection of extraordinary homes. Author Richard Weston engagingly tells the story of the twentieth-century house through eight semi-chronological design themes. From the Arts and Crafts period to the present, he covers a wide range of homes exemplifying each period and presents more than 100 benchmark dwellings with detailed architectural drawings. Weston also addresses the fascinating ways in which domestic design has both reflected and influenced the changing social climates and lifestyles of the past century, making this a book that will appeal to anthropologists, as well as architects, designers, and homeowners.
Residential Architecture
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The first authoritative book on the history of the Glass House property—Philip Johnson’s fifty-year project of iconic modernist design, encompassing the remarkable buildings, landscape, and follies. From its completion in 1949 to the present day, Philip Johnson’s Glass House has drawn cognoscenti and the curious from around the world to New Canaan, Connecticut, to(...)
The Philip Johnson Glass House: An architect in the garden
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The first authoritative book on the history of the Glass House property—Philip Johnson’s fifty-year project of iconic modernist design, encompassing the remarkable buildings, landscape, and follies. From its completion in 1949 to the present day, Philip Johnson’s Glass House has drawn cognoscenti and the curious from around the world to New Canaan, Connecticut, to experience what might be the most photographed modernist residence in America. The property—an architectural playground on forty-seven acres with eleven Johnsonian follies dating from 1949 to 1995—is an icon of twentieth-century architectural and landscape design. The book chronicles how Philip Johnson and David Whitney, the architect and the plantsman, lived on the property for decades and used the landscape as an ever-changing canvas for their designs—the result of a unique synthesis of influences and ideas from across history and geography. New research reveals Johnson’s and Whitney’s interaction with the landscape and the evolution of the site from a five-acre parcel to a world-renowned gentlemanly estate for modern times. The Philip Johnson Glass House—beautifully illustrated with vintage and commissioned photography—will be a must-have for connoisseurs of architecture, landscape design, photography, and social history.
Architecture Monographs
The Sweetsburg archives
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Jonathan Reid Sévigny was born and raised in Cowansville, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, a culture so unique and full of rare and local treasures that become significant to those who grew up there but perhaps seem completely foreign and often tacky to outsiders. It isn’t the most glamorous town, nor does it have any particular sites or landmarks that one would go out(...)
The Sweetsburg archives
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Jonathan Reid Sévigny was born and raised in Cowansville, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, a culture so unique and full of rare and local treasures that become significant to those who grew up there but perhaps seem completely foreign and often tacky to outsiders. It isn’t the most glamorous town, nor does it have any particular sites or landmarks that one would go out of his / her way to visit. In The Sweetsburg Archives Sévigny is attempting to use his Quebeçois boyhood as an archetype for the relationship between the individual, the hometown, and the bewildering beauty that connects the two. As adults, we tend to romanticize our youth, we try and remember the best things about our coming of age, but we’re also scarred by certain events which we wish we could go back and change; fight back, kiss back. At a glance Sévigny’s depictions of Cowansville seem crisply utopian, a neat little playground of nice boys and girls. However, a closer look reveals their human forms are corrupt, splayed, eaten, and absorbed by animal fraternities, by swords of ritualistic death, by minute veils of the macrocosmic sky in all its unknown intricacies. The scene becomes otherworldly in the kid’s play, pushing us to remember that what is around and inside is both innocent and dirty, violent and soft, and constantly revised.
Illustration