Colquhounery: Alan Colquhoun from Bricolage to Myth

Irina Davidovici (ed.)

Colquhounery is a commemorative volume celebrating the life and work of the architect and architectural historian Alan Colquhoun, who died in December 2012. Testimonials from friends, colleagues and students are gathered together alongside original photographs, sketches, letter transcripts, biographical and archival data tracing Colquhoun's career as an architect, writer and educator on both sides of the Atlantic. This anthology represents a collective effort to remember the work and the man responsible for some of the most penetrating and clear sighted architectural criticism of the last 60 years.

Cedric Price Works 1952–2003

A Forward Minded Retrospective

Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective by Samantha Hardingham is a two-volume anthology, co-published by the Architectural Association (AA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), and is supported by the Graham Foundation and the Cedric Price Estate. The books bring together for the first time all of the projects, articles and talks of British architect Cedric Price, aiming to present his munificence as thinker, philosopher and designer. A student at the AA in the 1950s, Price established his office in London in 1960 and went on to produce some of architecture's most intensely imaginative and experimental projects of the latter half of the 20th century. His work is central in defining architectural discourse around the emerging postwar themes of mobility and indeterminacy in design. With the contributions of Eleanor Bron, Brett Steele, Mirko Zardini Supported by The Cedric Price Estate and The Graham Foundation, 2016. Recipient of The Festival of International Art & Film (FILAF) Jury Special Prize, 2016. Recipient of The Colvin Award, Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2017. "Drawings, texts, models, recordings, books and reference material are all presented here as tantalising fragments of Cedric Price's very big life picture. It is the aim of these two volumes to provide a springboard from which to dive into Price's world.– Samantha Hardingham

Fieldwork, The Complete Reader

Ryan Gander Sixty-six objects from Ryan Gander's collection make up his major new works Fieldwork 2015 (2015) and Fieldwork 2016 (2016). Each object passes by a window, one after another, on a constantly looping conveyor belt. A National Trust sign protecting 'Culturefield', a chess set, a pair of dead pigeons, a kitchen sink. Found, fabricated, everyday and exceptional, these objects may represent the richness of our existence, mapping its totality one object at a time. Through this work and a series of writings, Fieldwork serves as a reader to Gander's on-going and ever-evolving practice. Using installations as a primary mode of research, the studio creates public performance-based interventions that engage material and social interaction. The book features recent work developed in collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko (a vehicle for veterans), a pavilion produced with the performance artist Stelarc, a video piece with Warp recording artist Mira Calix and Minimaforms critically acclaimed light installation in Trafalgar Square, Memory Cloud. Accompanying the projects will be texts by Archigram's David Greene, Stelarc and Krzysztof Wodiczko

Enabling

The Work of Minimaforms Theodore and Stephen Spyropoulos

This book highlights the work of the design and architecture practice Minimaforms, founded in 2002 by brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos. The practice has developed a diverse body of work that explores new forms of communication through correlated systems of interaction. Beyond style, the work moves away from the object towards behavioural models stimulated through participation and interaction. Using installations as a primary mode of research, the studio creates public performance-based interventions that engage material and social interaction. The book features recent work developed in collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko (a vehicle for veterans), a pavilion produced with the performance artist Stelarc, a video piece with Warp recording artist Mira Calix and Minimaforms critically acclaimed light installation in Trafalgar Square, Memory Cloud. Accompanying the projects will be texts by Archigram's David Greene, Stelarc and Krzysztof Wodiczko

Auto-Destructive Art

Metzger at AA Gustav Metzger

'Auto-destructive art is a comprehensive theory for action in the field of the plastic arts in the post-second world war period. The action is not limited to theory of art and the production of art works. It includes social action. Auto-destructive art is committed to a left-wing revolutionary position in politics, and to struggles against future wars.' Facsimile edition of a lecture transcript given by German-born artist Gustav Metzger at the Architectural Association in February 1965. This new edition is published 50 years on since its original printing in June 1965 by the AA's Action Communications Centre (A.C.C), reigniting Metzger's urgent and ever-relevant arguments which confront society's obsession with destruction and the detrimental effects of machinery on human life.'

Adaptive Ecologies

Theodore Spyropoulos Adaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living examines computational frameworks that explore a time-based poly-scalar urbanism. The publication includes essays by Mark Burry, Brett Steele, John Frazer, John Henry Holland, Makoto Sei Watanabe, Patrick Schumacher, and David Ruy. Architecture finds itself having to cope with new social and cultural complexities that demand systems that are open, adaptive and participatory. The book explores organisational systems that examine a model of collective living constructed as an evolving ecology. As a response to models of accelerated urbanism that privilege top down master planning the book explores experimentation that examines a generative and time-based approach towards a computational urbanism. The research conducted by AADRL Director Theodore Spyropoulos with his research lab explores a pattern logic that is poly-scalar, allowing bio-diverse patterns to operate between urban, building and material agency. The model of architecture and urbanism speculated here is not one embedded in a blueprint as with most man-made structures, but rather are correlated operations that are governed through emerging collective interaction.

Modernity Unbound (Arch. Words 7)

Other Histories of Architectural Modernity Detlef Mertins

These essays elaborate on such key modernist tropes as transparency, glass architecture, organicism, life and event, sameness and difference. Previously published in a variety of different venues, from journals to anthologies - including such noted books as Lars Spuybroek's NOX: Machining Architecture and FOA's Phylogenesis - they are now assembled for the first time in this volume.

Tectonic Acts of Desire & Doubt (Arch. Words 9)

Mark Rakatansky This collection of a number of key essays by the New York-based architect and writer Mark Rakatansky proposes an innovative framework for architecture to enact the complex tectonic dramas of social and culture space. Following its title, the book is arrayed in three sections: Tectonic, Acts of, Desire and Doubt. In each, Rakatansky covers a series of subjects in a writerly voice that varies from the third-person narrative of the scholarly essays to the transcript of an email exchange with fellow academic Sarah Whiting discussing recent books by architect Greg Lynn. Transformational performances of architectural identity are explored in discussions of fabrication, social parametrics, building envelopes, spatial narratives, animation, migrancy, and in illuminating readings into the works of Louis Kahn, Robin Evans, John Coltrane, Giulio Romano and Andrea Palladio.

Projectiles (Arch. Words 6)

Bernard Cache A split between modern and historical realities - whether real, imagined, projected or fantasised - has long configured modern architectural culture. The very construction of this division has proved a durable, near structural, means by which to assert the idea of a properly 'modern' architecture defined in opposition to the past. The writings of Bernard Cache confound exactly this attempt to divide and then distance the contemporary world from its history.

Atlas of emerging practices

Being an architect in the 21st century Gianpiero Venturini ATLAS of emerging practices provides an overview of the state of the architect's profession, analyzing themes, trends, projects, and methods that characterize the professional practice, and understanding this discipline through the research carried out with a selection of emerging architectural practices in the European territory. New Generations is a project conceived by Itinerant Office that investigates the changes in the architectural profession since the economic crisis. Since 2012 New Generations has been able to identify and involve some of the most interesting emerging studios in the European scene, gathering more than 300 emerging architectural firms and a variety of experts of other fields. This publication gathers the work of a selection of 95 emerging practices in Europe, with the aim of providing useful tools and insight for architecture students, new graduates, and emerging practices in the early stages of their careers. The 95 participants were involved in an online survey and their responses were collected and further analyzed in this publication. Following an introduction on the New Generations project and its evolution over the years, the publication develops in four main sections: organisation, business, media, and project. The "organisation"section analyses different organisations structures, with diagrams and data highlighting the huge variety of configurations that reflect the array of different approaches used by the various firms. The section "Business"highlights various types of commissions —public, private, and unsolicited— ranging in budgets, scale, and program. "Media" introduces the potential of digital tools, not only for the on-line communication of the offices activities, but also for the development of projects such as encouraging participation through social media, or managing the organisational aspects of the studio. The section "Projects" collects a selection of executed interventions by some of the participants of the ATLAS. The final chapter of ATLAS emphasises the need to rethink the architectural profession. Organisation,Â Business, Media, and Projects become central and inextricable themes to build a new generationsÂ of architect aware of their role in today's society.

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A Forward Minded Retrospective