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The result of several years of investigation carried out on several different continents, this remarkable book offers an original, radical, and, like its subject matter, symbiotic reflection on this common but mostly invisible form of life, blending cultures and disciplines, drawing on biology, ecology, philosophy, literature, poetry, even graphic art. What if lichens(...)
Fauna and flora
January 2023
Lichens: toward a minimal resistance
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The result of several years of investigation carried out on several different continents, this remarkable book offers an original, radical, and, like its subject matter, symbiotic reflection on this common but mostly invisible form of life, blending cultures and disciplines, drawing on biology, ecology, philosophy, literature, poetry, even graphic art. What if lichens were at the heart of some of the most pressing and topical questions of our day? Does the fact that they can live everywhere, even in very harsh environments, that they persist when almost all other traces of life have disappeared, mean that, despite their fragility, lichens are a force of resistance?
Fauna and flora
How to think about cities
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Cities are raucous, cacophonous, and complex. Urban policy makers and analysts often attempt to “cut through the noise” of urban disagreement by emphasizing a dominant lens for understanding the key, central logic of the city. This volume sees this tendency to selective vision as misleading and ultimately unjust: cities are many things at once to different people and(...)
How to think about cities
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Cities are raucous, cacophonous, and complex. Urban policy makers and analysts often attempt to “cut through the noise” of urban disagreement by emphasizing a dominant lens for understanding the key, central logic of the city. This volume sees this tendency to selective vision as misleading and ultimately unjust: cities are many things at once to different people and communities. It describes the various ways of seeing the functions and landscapes of the city as place frames, and the constant process of negotiating which place frames best explain the city as place-making. This approach highlights how any given stance opens up some lines of inquiry and understanding while closing off others.
Urban Theory
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Profit is the original genius of homo sapiens, who learned how to unleash the energy stored in wood, exploit the land, and refashion ecosystems. As civilization developed, we found more and more ways of extracting surplus value from the earth, often deploying brutally effective methods to discipline people to do the work needed. Historian Mark Stoll explains how(...)
Profit: an environmental history
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Profit is the original genius of homo sapiens, who learned how to unleash the energy stored in wood, exploit the land, and refashion ecosystems. As civilization developed, we found more and more ways of extracting surplus value from the earth, often deploying brutally effective methods to discipline people to do the work needed. Historian Mark Stoll explains how capitalism supercharged this process and traces its many environmental consequences. The financial innovations of medieval Italy created trade networks that, with the European discovery of the Americas, made possible vast profits and sweeping cultural changes, to the detriment of millions of slaves and indigenous Americans; the industrial age united the world in trade and led to an energy revolution that changed lives everywhere. But when efficient production left society awash in goods, a new sort of capitalism, predicated on endless individual consumption, took its place.
Environment and environmental theory
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he link between architecture and art and the sublimity it can create has a history that stretches back millennia. From cave paintings to the stained glass and saintly icons in churches and cathedrals, to the geometric and calligraphic treatments of mosques and contemporary artists channelling architecture and vice versa, and so much else. This AD is about the contemporary(...)
AD Art and architecture: A sublime synthesis
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he link between architecture and art and the sublimity it can create has a history that stretches back millennia. From cave paintings to the stained glass and saintly icons in churches and cathedrals, to the geometric and calligraphic treatments of mosques and contemporary artists channelling architecture and vice versa, and so much else. This AD is about the contemporary interactions between living artists and architects, and the artistic practices, such as poetry and abstractions, that architects adopt to develop ideas for their projects. The issue features artists, architects, curators, musicians, poets and designer craftspeople, illustrating the current rich mix of architectonic constructions, interventions and set pieces that range from musical performance to exhibition designs, glass works and digital 3D scanning. It lays out the wide spectrum and beauty of these sublime correspondences, with contributions from architects about their own artistic practices, and creative works viewed through the eyes of architectural commentators. An explosion of colour, form and creative tactics for making multifaceted work that above all is architectural, it offers a cornucopia of possibilities.
Architectural Theory
AD In praise of penumbra
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Penumbra, from the Latin paene (almost) and umbra (shadow), can be defined as an intermediate zone of transition between light and shadow. Penumbra is therefore that space, both physical and imaginary, where everything is possible: it is the place of the uncanny, where presence and/or absence can produce wonder or horror. This AD positions the presence of this(...)
AD In praise of penumbra
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Penumbra, from the Latin paene (almost) and umbra (shadow), can be defined as an intermediate zone of transition between light and shadow. Penumbra is therefore that space, both physical and imaginary, where everything is possible: it is the place of the uncanny, where presence and/or absence can produce wonder or horror. This AD positions the presence of this archetype in the contemporary world of architecture, investigating the ways it permeates different expressive forms – from critical theory to architectural drawing, from design and planning to photography. The contributors illustrate and discuss how penumbra has shaped their creativity and modified their approach to the design process. As a physical phenomenon, penumbra has supra-historical and global connotations; nonetheless, different cultures elaborate its symbolism in different ways. Its wide semantic spectrum powerfully inspires creative forms that hover between fullness and emptiness, presence and absence, past and future. The critical perspectives in this issue offer a wide analysis of penumbra’s expressive potential and the key to an in-depth understanding of this elusive layer of reality.
Magazines
AD California dreaming
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California has historically provided a fertile breeding ground for radical modes of architectural thinking, practice and building, which from the 1920s onwards was sparked by the presence of eminent émigré architects. It was also central to the birth of ‘cool’ mid-century Modernism – all in parallel with the intense concentration of design and experimentation in the film,(...)
AD California dreaming
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California has historically provided a fertile breeding ground for radical modes of architectural thinking, practice and building, which from the 1920s onwards was sparked by the presence of eminent émigré architects. It was also central to the birth of ‘cool’ mid-century Modernism – all in parallel with the intense concentration of design and experimentation in the film, aerospace and tech industries. This AD issue explores the influential formal tropes generated in the nexus between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, as well as the thriving theoretical preoccupations that have brought California's architects global attention. Between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, this unique context has nurtured and become the platform for those who not only build buildings around the world, but have also founded and directed schools and educated emergent generations of architects.
Magazines
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Public and private, traffic and open space, planned and spontaneous – our idea of a city is characterised by opposites. However, the contributors to this bilingual book show that these poles can also be consciously connected. The urban building blocks from São Paolo present surprisingly idiosyncratic city scenes: People dancing along the motorway, strolling through the(...)
Sao Paulo Heterotopia: Urban spaces in suspense
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Public and private, traffic and open space, planned and spontaneous – our idea of a city is characterised by opposites. However, the contributors to this bilingual book show that these poles can also be consciously connected. The urban building blocks from São Paolo present surprisingly idiosyncratic city scenes: People dancing along the motorway, strolling through the stone archipelago, splashing around in front of the city skyline… Many of the case studies are linked to the ideas of the Brazilian urban planner Francisco Prestes Maia. As early as in the 1930s, he developed concepts that combine traffic, open space and architecture – a surprisingly contemporary approach.
Urban Theory
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This book is a sub-urbanist manifesto. Its author, Sébastien Marot, challenges the dominant role of the programme in regulating the design project, and argues that instead attention should be redirected towards the site – the site read in depth, with an active regard for memory. Exploring this analysis, he considers in turn Frances Yates’ book ''The Art of Memory'',(...)
Sub-urbanism and the art of memory
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This book is a sub-urbanist manifesto. Its author, Sébastien Marot, challenges the dominant role of the programme in regulating the design project, and argues that instead attention should be redirected towards the site – the site read in depth, with an active regard for memory. Exploring this analysis, he considers in turn Frances Yates’ book ''The Art of Memory'', Sigmund Freud’s analogy between the past of a city and the workings of memory, Robert Smithson’s account of a tour of his suburban birthplace and Georges Descombes’ design for a small park in the Geneva suburb where he spent his childhood. Marot’s conclusion brings these different strands together and highlights, in memory, a precept that is essential to the renewal of current architecture. This AA Documents publication is a re-edition of Sébastien Marot’s Sub-Urbanism and the Art of Memory, originally edited by Pamela Johnston and published by AA Publications in 2003. It is based on a 1999 text by Marot, translated from the French by Brian Holmes.
Architectural Theory
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The book questions how ''artifice'' and the ''social world'' can be mutually and constructively integrated so that the contemporary urban space can be shared by all. Taking the example of Tokyo, it takes up the two major traits in urban transformation – the large-scale development model on the one hand, and the small-scale model of neighborhood development or preservation(...)
Sharing Tokyo: Artifice and the social world
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The book questions how ''artifice'' and the ''social world'' can be mutually and constructively integrated so that the contemporary urban space can be shared by all. Taking the example of Tokyo, it takes up the two major traits in urban transformation – the large-scale development model on the one hand, and the small-scale model of neighborhood development or preservation on the other – and instead seeks alternative ideas and new strategies. A variety of innovative practices are presented by a diverse group of contributors including renowned scholars, architects, urbanists, and photographers from Japan and the US, and the research team at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. While the discourses and architectural works presented deal with the specificity of Tokyo, they were carefully selected to formulate together a collection of insights, new perspectives, and speculative experiments in urbanism and architecture that can also be used in other contexts.
Urban Theory
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Ari Marcopoulos is an Amsterdam-born photographer and filmmaker who often situates himself in the lives of people living on the edge. He shot this series during one February afternoon in Exarcheia, a neighbourhood in central Athens which is famously known as home to Greek anarchists. Through 352 colourful pictures of graffiti and crumbling concrete walls, a coherent urban(...)
Exarcheia Athens Sunday Feb. 5 2017 13:07-16:51
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Ari Marcopoulos is an Amsterdam-born photographer and filmmaker who often situates himself in the lives of people living on the edge. He shot this series during one February afternoon in Exarcheia, a neighbourhood in central Athens which is famously known as home to Greek anarchists. Through 352 colourful pictures of graffiti and crumbling concrete walls, a coherent urban portrait comes to light, as if Marcopoulos was scanning the area through his camera lens. The entire series remains unedited in the layout of the book, presenting an accurate reflection of a district that still preserves the memory of decades of resistance to state repression.
Photography monographs