Deviations from the Normative: Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University Bernard Tschumi Tschumi's Alfred Lerner Hall is a turbulent mixture of the conventional and the innovative. Its opaque, masonry-clad wings respond to the traditional materials and massing of the Columbia University campus, while its transparently clad middle develops as a spectacular multitiered system of glass ramps. Designed in collaboration with a team of engineers, including Hugh Dutton, the glass ramps and the glass wall are intersupporting. Together they form a central hub of circulation, an event space that registers the dilation and contraction of structural and social flows. In the words of Jesse Reiser, Alfred Lerner Hall 'signals a crucial turning point in Tschumi's oeuvre. While a legacy of built and unbuilt works beginning with the Manhattan Transcripts prioritized the programmatic as an irreducible condition to architecture, Lerner Hall inverts this logic, foregrounding physicality instead.' Glass Ramps/Glass Wall documents in full the making of this complex building, from early concept sketches to structural diagrams and final construction photos.

Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Zak Kyes Joseph Grigely Exhibition Prosthetics by Joseph Grigely explores the artist's use of language and images as a means of representation that further the reach of the real. Grigely uses the term 'exhibition prosthetics' to describe an array of these conventions, particularly (but not exclusively) in relation to exhibition practices. Exhibition Prosthetics is the first in the Bedford Press Editions series of artist's books edited by Zak Kyes. The series will engage with publications as a primary medium of practice, enabling artists to explore the inherent constraints and possibilities of the printed document.

A Design Research Compendium Tom Verebes DRL TEN evaluates the first decade of the AA's acclaimed post-professional masters programme in architecture and urbanism, the Design Research Lab. Since 1997 the programme has championed a project-based and research-driven approach to design, continually reinventing itself across successive design research agendas. The book reflects upon the DRL;s collaborative teaching and learning methods, which have contributed to the wholesale re-formulation of contemporary architectural practice during a decade in which digital communication, information, design and production technologies have gone from being nascent and emerging to being embedded in new forms of networked architectural education and practice. Understanding this (r)evolution is fundamental to the DRL's pursuit of innovation and the role design research plays in contemporary design culture. The structure of this book elaborates on how the programme has evolved the terms of design as a form of research over the last decade, with chapters focusing on the DRL's research agendas, topics, curricula, documents, media, methods and tools as well as a selection of work by its 350 graduates.

When Energy Becomes Form Stefano Rabolli Pansera This book marks the conclusion of the AA School's Beyond Entropy research cluster, and is produced in tandem with an exhibition on show at the AA in May 2011.The theme of the book derives from the urgency with which the idea of energy has been raised in recent years in political, economic and scientific debates. The book charts the efforts of architects to reappropriate this theme and to address the debate in a wider cultural sphere.

Gabriel Feld Transgressing the distinct boundaries of architecture and urbanism, Berlin Free University is a unique imagination of what a building might be –a building designed to function as a piece of the city, adapting to the needs of its users while generating opportunities for social interaction. The university offers a window into the politicized and optimistic discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, but it also illuminates contemporary debates around large projects of infrastructure and public space. It is, in the words of Peter Smithson, 'one of the two critical building-events of the second half of this century'. The publication contains specially commissioned photographs, archive material, construction details and plans. The visual survey is completed by essays that describe the building's conception and system of construction, and analyse the reasons for its enduring importance.

On the History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture Aaron Levy and William Menking Architecture on Display is a research initiative by Aaron Levy and William Menking that consists of interviews with each of the living directors of the Venice Biennale for Architecture. The origins of the architecture biennale are generally traced to the 1970s, when it emerged from under the umbrella of the larger Venice Biennale, which was itself established in 1895. Since then it has become one of the most prestigious forums for architectural discourse today, and has served as a model for a range of international exhibitions. The book explores the biennale through the directors who established its particular discourse, including Vittorio Gregotti, Paolo Portoghesi, Francesco Dal Co, Kurt W Forster, Massimiliano Fuksas, Hans Hollein, Richard Burdett, Deyan Sudjic, Aaron Betsky and Kazuyo Sejima, as well as the current president of the Venice Biennale, Paolo Barrata. These conversations do not seek to recapitulate the exhibitions themselves but rather explore the questions that these exhibitions raise, with the hope of offering a model for future curatorial endeavours.