AA Agendas 8: Nine Problems in the Form of a Pavilion

Alan Dempsey and Yusuke Obuchi (eds) From Mies van der Rohe's 1929 Barcelona Pavilion to the Serpentine Gallery's annual summer pavilions designed by architects such as Toyo Ito, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas, the production of pavilions has been at the forefront of architectural experimentation. Because of their temporary nature and loose functional requirements, pavilions can be realised as a pure expression of the way in which building materials are manufactured, organised, managed and assembled. People might not automatically categorise pavilions as great works of architecture, but they have nonetheless provided a vital platform for challenging current practice and making it evolve into the future. Created as part of the 2008 tenth anniversary celebrations of the Design Research Laboratory, the AA DRL TEN Pavilion is one of those built projects that push the conventions in architecture and structural engineering as well as the building materials industry. A fullscale construction built by a group of students as part of their academic activities, the pavilion was conceived as a way of bringing together digital explorations in architectural design with state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and advanced structural calculations based on non-linear stress analysis.

A Right to Difference

The Architecture of Jean Renaudie Iréné Scalbert In France no less than in Britain, the late 1960s saw a rebellion against the relentless anonymity of modernist planning. In the search for alternatives, Jean Renaudie showed an originality and a daring unrivalled up to this day. Conceived along structuralist principles, informed by research in molecular biology, his urban projects overturned the logic of the vast housing estates that were being steamrolled across France by the State. In the place of uniform tower blocks, he designed developments in which every dwelling was unique. Diversity - the spanner in the works of mass production - was for him a moral obligation. No concession was made in the name of type, be it human or architectural.

20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse

Kirk Wooller 20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse brings together editors from 20 leading contemporary architectural magazines to discuss collectively the role editors play in shaping architectural discourse. Each of the contributors has responded to a set of 20 questions on the multiple conditions under which particular ideas and words enter architectural discourse through publication. The resulting critical positions and observations are as diverse as the magazines from which they originate, and range from the oldest student-edited journal (Perspecta) to a research collective that at the time of writing was on the cusp of being launched ([bracket]). 20/20 is a timely publication that provides today's architectural reader with concise viewpoints from the editors behind the magazines behind architectural culture. With the contribution of Neyran Turan See Preview on issuu

Agri-Cultures, Agro-Cities, Eco-Productive Landscapes

Agricultural Parks as Key Studies: Barcelona-Llobregat, Liguria-Albenga Manuel Gausa, Nicola Canessa

The research represented in these pages aims to introduce a strategic approach to the environmental importance and to a functional revaluation of large agricultural areas within the current city and its operational reactivation. The evolution of the urban-territorial city and our occupied environments produced of matters regarding the relations City-nature, City-Nature-Landscape and a change of perspective between the urban, physical and social dimension and the largest agricultural-landscape and agricultural-environmental system in the context within which the city redefines and develops itself.

Landscape as Territory

A Cartographic Design Project Clara Olóriz Sanjuán Landscape as Territory is a cartographic book project that critically addresses the agency of architects in the so-called 'Urban Age,' understanding the notion of 'territory' as a field of design praxis through which interconnected landscapes are produced. Territory, understood as a 'political technology,' has the capacity to involve architects and designers into complex social, political, technical, legal, strategic and economic processes that are both historical and geographical engines of contemporary urbanization. Territorial praxis is interrogated in a collection of threaded theory and design contributions where essays pose key questions that are addressed through projective cartographies, unfolding arguments related to three sections: (1) territory, (2) critical cartographies and (3) agency. This material intends to raise awareness about the consequential production of landscapes through territorial processes and urges a critical re-appropriation of cartographic tools, accomplice in the production of territories, and to question and expand the architect's agency. EBOOK EDITION

Under the Influence

A Symposium Ana Miljački, Mario Carpo, Alexander D'Hooghe, Cristina Goberna, Urtzi Grau, Eric Höweler, Timothy Hyde, Florian Idenburg, Sam Jacob, Michael Kubo, Amanda Reeser Lawrence, Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, Nader Tehrani, Enrique Walker, Ines Weizman, Meejin Yoon, John McMorrough. The Under the Influence book is based on the eponymous symposium, which brought together scholars and practitioners of architecture in order to focus on one of the most anxious disciplinary topics: influence. The symposium invited each of the participants to illuminate a single term —a disciplinary synonym for appropriation— and through that term, the specific strategies, historical, and disciplinary circumstances in which it is enmeshed. It was organized and hosted by Ana Miljački, and presented by the MIT Department of Architecture. With some small additions this is a reprint of that book. Influence is not easily quantified. It is elusive, even when we casually admit to it as we ogle images on the internet, or feel ourselves softening our resolve on an important issue in light of a beautifully crafted piece of rhetoric; or as the mass-media drone imperceptibly rewires some of our most fundamental desires. When Under the Influence symposium took place at MIT in 2012, the invitation to discuss issues of originality and copying in architecture were still taboo. There have been a number of projects on the topic since, but they have hardly exhausted the topics of copying and copyright, whose importance increases with every act of scrolling or "liking" architectural images on Instagram.

GSD Platform 12: How About Now?

How About Now? Carrie Bly, Isabella Caterina Frontado, Natasha Hicks This installment of the GSD Platform series celebrates —and places itself within— the rich tradition of student publications at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Offering questions of the past to ground questions of the present, How About Now? summons the enduring concerns and preoccupations that designers constantly revisit, reconsider, and redefine in response to a changing world. Platform represents a year in the life of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Produced annually, this compendium highlights a selection of work from the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, and design engineering, and exposes a rich and varied pedagogical culture committed to shaping the future of design. Documenting projects, research, events, exhibitions, and more, Platform offers a curated view into the emerging topics, techniques, and dispositions within and beyond the Harvard GSD.

The Empty Room

Fragmented Thoughts on Space RZLBD (Reza Aliabadi) Part aphorism and part manifesto, this book by Canadian architect Reza Aliabadi (RZLBD) references his ideas and thoughts about space. He suggests 'the empty room' as the very essence of architecture, and 'the spatial experience' as its highest mandate. Reza revisits architecture —not as the walls that enclose the space— but rather the space in-between the walls. What he calls an "anti-architecture" of invisible voids. Today architecture has fallen short as a discipline and has instead converted into an industry, part of the commercial establishment. Accordingly it has given up its capacity to offer contributions and has been reduced to being a service. It has become all about a form-making exercise and dressing it up with a fashionable skin. What matters most, is the look of it, and the contest to keep that look relevant in the media— as long as possible. It submits itself to a sick competition for visibility. The more awes it creates, the more viral it becomes. What used to be an autonomous discipline and a source of inspiration, stimulation, and motivation now has become the subject of entertainment, speculation, and show business. Now, it is necessary or rather urgent to pause, take a moment, go inward, search for the essentials, and hope to rediscover a principle which is at once basic and timeless. Where to begin then! Well, as Kahn always said: "Architecture comes from the making of a room". This book starts with this, the very desire to dwell in a space in its most basic form— a room. Through short passages and aphorisms, this text revisits space as the only protagonist, the very foundation, and the sole essence of architecture. It affects your perception of space, it makes you to look at architecture differently —most likely to see the invisible. Today architecture has turned into a mere media device at the service of external forces. What used to be an autonomous discipline and a source of inspiration, stimulation, and motivation, now has become the subject of entertainment, speculation, and show business. It has given up its capacity to be a discipline and instead converted to be an industry, a part of commercial establishment. It is my hope that reading through these pages affects the way you perceive the space and hopefully invites you to look at architecture differently —most likely to see the invisible. _RZLBD (Reza Aliabadi) EBOOK EDITION

IaaC BITS 9

Black Ecologies Manuel Gausa, Areti Markopoulou, Jordi Vivaldi The IaaC BITS journal is a collective container of knowledge developed by the Advanced Architecture Group of the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia. The journal collects material stimulating, promoting and developing research in the diverse areas of Advanced Architecture through a multi-disciplinary approach. With the 9th issue, IaaC BITS is entering a new editorial phase pushing research, generating dialogue and presenting novel ideas and solutions for the current global challenges. In the face of a hyper-technified world, we need more technology. In the face of an inhuman world, we need more otherness. In front of a perturbed world, we need more alienation. And above all, in front of an adulterated world, we need more artifice. In this scenario, biological agents, ecological agents, technological agents and cultural agents coproduce a reality that is no longer built from promethean epics, relativist ironies or primitivist nostalgia, but from accelerated hybrids; poly-plural constructs that hurtle towards a post-capitalist world. In the light of this narrative, Black Ecologies displays an architecture based not only on processes and performances, but also on specific, literal and hyperrealist protocols; they do not find shelter in abstraction, history or language, but on the conformation of operative "assemblages". This monographic issue —presented with an experimental and proactive foundation and associated to technological and creative innovation— aims at to combining inter-disciplinary and multi-scalar exchanges with a new environmental and socio-cultural sensitivity. The different formats that constitute the new IaaC BITS respond to criteria of documentary coherence and expository clarity: INTRO, main introductory inputs that help to frame each topic; PAPERS, a set of content dedicated to background articles and theoretical contributions, argued culturally, scientifically and bibliographically; DIALOGUES/INTERVIEWS exchanges between different approaches and research trajectories; RESEARCH PROJECTS, a sample of projects, experimental proposals and applicative essays. Visit urbanNext for exclusive on-line content about this book

Vivienda, envolvente, hueco

Jose María De La Lapuerta, Fernando Altozano Collection of technical details of a selection of high-density social housing, all located in Madrid, with special attention to the resolution of the holes or windows and their envelope. A technical catalog of different collective housing solutions promoted by the Municipal Housing Company in Madrid in recent years, on high-density social housing. In it, the house is analyzed from its construction system, especially focused on the types of enclosure and hole in which technical, design, social repercussions, energy savings and costs are contemplated. This book has been made on the results, redrawing, completing, uniforming and correcting, or re-photographing all these buildings.

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