Dirk Denison 10 Houses

Dirk Denison and Fred A. Bernstein / Denise Bratton

Architect and educator Dirk Denison reflects on the diverse influences that have shaped his practice over 30 years in a volume featuring 10 remarkable houses designed in a broad range of modernist vocabularies –each finely tuned to its site and occupants.

Taking the form of an in-depth conversation between architect and educator Dirk Denison and journalist Fred A. Bernstein, this volume chronicles Denison's childhood in Detroit, travels and early encounters with the arts and architecture, and his education at Cranbrook, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A perceptive interlocutor, Bernstein deftly draws upon Denison's own insights into how these experiences have influenced his aesthetic sensibilities, design philosophy, and working processes over 30 years of collaborative practice.

For design professionals and students of architecture, Dirk Denison 10 Houses draws attention to the manifold ways in which life experiences at all scales nurture and shape a career in the field, but the book is an engaging read for anyone interested in the gratifying process of building one's own home.

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Revisiting Metropolitan Barcelona (ENG ED.)

Public Space 2013-2017

Projects and Urban Design Section, AMB / Poch Comunicación This volume, the fifth in the collection Metropolitan Spaces, is published with the intention of marking a turning point as it broadens its sights and moves away from the concept of catalogue. Its objective, beyond incorporating a historical reflection of the vital role that the AMB has played in the design, the construction of public space, and the transformation and structuring of the metropolitan territory, is to blaze new paths for the future. In order to do so, the volume offers three types of concepts: data, texts and projects. The data explains the context and offers the reader an objective idea of the territory. Then, the texts and their authors help to explain the complexity of the territory, its past and its future potential. Visiting public space, the way of understanding it and acting in it contributed by guest practices, is complemented by re-visiting the work carried out in the last 30 years, contributed by the team of the AMB. Finally, the projects included confirm the diversity and the quality of the works developed by the institution. The content is divided into six chapters: park space, river space, coastal space, covered space, urban space and mobility space. These are, in short, spaces that characterise the metropolitan area of Barcelona, and which, in the course of these 30 years, have acquired an entity of their own.

Verb Crisis ( ENG ED. )

Mario Ballesteros Verb Crisis examines architectural solutions to the extraordinary conditions of an increasingly dense and interdependent world.It presents innovative projects and research through original photos, essays, and exclusive interviews with key figures from architecture and urban planning to environmental, economic, and global affairs. Confronted by shifting densities and uncharted urban transformations, Crisis tackles the conflict between the physical limits of architectural design and the demands on the practice for an updated social relevance. Buy Spanish edition EBOOK VERSION

Total Housing (ENG ED.)

Alternatives to urban sprawl Albert Ferré Total Housing was designed to be a demonstration of the virtues of high and medium density multi-family homes, and an antidote to urban sprawl. The selection of works in Total Housing (in hard copy and on its supplementary website: www.actar.com/totalhousing/) spans a period coinciding with the height of the housing boom, and consequent bust, experienced in most "developed" economies. From among the huge amount of projects developed in this period, Total Housing selects 61 of them from 22 countries which exemplify outstanding innovations in construction systems, layout of residential space, systems of unit aggregation, integration of the residential program into the other functions that make up our cities, and repercussions in the formation of the urban fabric. These innovations are summarised in a series of concepts or keywords that identify their "virtues" as a residential model on the first page of each project. This book is a design manual as much as a reference for future good practices. Its structure follows a simple sequential order of the number of homes included in each project (from 4 to 750), regardless of the other complementary programs they may respond to. This sequence aims to facilitate the identification of possible examples and case studies, and show that interesting design solutions are found in big and small projects alike. The final section consists of detailed plans of 17 of the works in the book. Buy Spanish edition EBOOK VERSION

Verb Processing (ENG ED.)

Jaime Salazar The shift from modern to digital systems of design and production opens up a material work to a deeper relationship between author and perceiver. From the classical work to the modern object and from the modern industrial to 'computerised' procedures, the interplay between author and user has become closer, more direct and open. How does this increasing complicity affect architectural practice? How can architecture be conceived as a more fluid informational development? Publishing architectures is much more than displaying a recently finished product in which the architect is the unique author. To make architecture is a real undertaking of numerous authors based on the processing of information before, during and after the materialization of the building. The contemporary relationship between information and authorship in architectural practice, featuring works and texts by Manuel de Landa, Jorge Wagensberg, FOA Architects, Sadar & Vuga, njiric & njiric, Love, Lacaton & Vassal. Buy Spanish edition

The Total Designer

Authorship in the Architecture of the Postdigital Age Lluís Ortega

This book develops an alternative and inclusive approach --based on the hypothesis that the impact of digitalization on architectural culture is similar to the effects of the linguistic turn in philosophy-- and steers clear of exclusive dichotomous approaches, without the foundational reconsideration of the discipline or its ontological conservation. The project is open and broad, which was a necessary condition for demonstrating the power of the turn brought about by digitalization. Most studies on the digital phenomenon carried out in the context of the discipline are focused on the more technical aspects, with expert discourses based on the standpoint of the optimization of existing processes. This text was inspired by a concern and a certain discomfort with respect to those positions, which are often underwritten by a positivist vision of reality. This concern gave way to the idea for a study rooted in a cultural approach to the phenomenon. Given the general tendency toward creating experts --a phenomenon that, on the other hand, is not exclusive to the field of architecture-- and encapsulating knowledge, this text is meant to be based on a transversal vision, which can help non-specialist readers to understand certain complex phenomena.

From Control to Design

Michael Meredith, AGU, Mutsuro Sasaki, P .ART, Designtoproduction and Aranda/Lash Parametric and algorithmic design are two of the fastest emerging, most radical technologies reshaping architecture today. This book presents six independent practices that explore current applications of parametric and algorithmic design techniques in architectural production. If the first generation of digital modeling programs allowed designers to conceive new forms and processes, a new breed of digital techniques is being discussed to control and realize these forms. How are these techniques affecting architectural practice and what potentials do they offer ? This is a compilation of projects from leading practitioners across the fields of parametric and algorithmic design. A compelling, multi-perspective debate on the future of design. Featuring: Mutsuro Sasaki, AGU (Arup), Aranda-Lasch, Michael Meredith (mos), P.art (AKT), Designtoproduction, with a conversation between Sanford Kwinter and Jason Payne. EBOOK EDITION

Echos

University of Cincinnati School of Architecture and Interior Design Mara Marcu The publication captures the work done at the University of Cincinnati School of Architecture andÂ Interior Design while showcasing student work, faculty research, co-op stories, study abroad programs, and snapshots from the many events happening at our school. ECHOS is a platform for simultaneous conversations with shared ethos at UC SAID. Various constellations begin to surface and map our diverse milieu of academic and social interactions that revolve around the following five main themes: anxiety, praxis, trope, chreod, and utopia. Introduced by a series of analytical diagrams which are paired up with essays by lead figures in the discipline, the themes expand on the issues of theoretical anxiety, architectural discourse, practice, typology, self-made analogies, ad hoc morphologies inherent to research, flux and reflux - that return each disruption to a steady trajectory - similar to the natural cycle of compression and release generated by our co-op program, and the fictitious, the ideal. Anxiety collects and synthesizes among multiple contradicting theories entertaining with equanimity various solutions to design problems. Praxis looks at outcomes - may those be physical, prototypical, digital or analog, multi-dimensional and multi-media, spoken, written or unwritten - as well as working methodologies that shape design thinking. Trope begins to map out trends, emergent ideologies, and previously non-denominational design expressions. Chreod documents and interprets field conditions, rule based processes, issues of transgressions, non-smooth and nomadic entities which cut across arbolic like divisions. Utopia, while suspending various otherwise necessary constraints, allows for a euphoric and optimistic view of the world, with the goal of envisioning daring possibilities otherwise unimaginable. Utopia, therefore, foreshadows all other themes. One of the 50 Best Books and Covers for 2018 by the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Designers) in partnership with the Design Observer EBOOK EDITION

Verb Conditioning (ENG ED.)

Albert Ferré The fourth issue of Verb looks at two related processes: the conditioning of architectural environments and the conditioning of behaviors. On the one hand, studies of luminosity, sound, atmosphere and temperature expand the range of techniques available to the discipline, allowing the production of ever more extensive effects with increasingly minimal means. On the other, the rise of commerce, theming and the manufacturing of identity produce a different set of effects, directing users and their emotions for maximum financial success. What are the real potentials of conditioning? Do these new environments merely replicate the existing with increasing accuracy and sophistication, or can they generate qualitatively new atmospheres capable of stimulating not just new effects but also new forms of living? Featured works: The Venetian in Las Vegas, Spanish Pavilion in Aichi by FOA, New Milan Trade Fair by Fuksas, Arup SoundLab, Arakawa Gins, Enric Ruiz, Tomihiro Museum by Makoto Yokomizo, and texts by Norman Klein and AUDC. Buy Spanish Edition

The Mexican Social Housing (ENG. ED.)

Promises Revisited Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship Tatiana Bilbao This book is a compilation of the projects developed at the Yale School of Architecture in an advance studio called, Diversification: How to reintegrate abandoned social housing complexes in different areas of Mexico, led by the architect Tatiana Bilbao who was the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professor for a semester, and was developed in conjunction with the INFONAVIT (Institute of the National Fund for Worker's Housing). In response to the aggravating abandonment rates in Mexican social housing complexes, the studio aimed to address this issue and simultaneously offer solutions to the actual housing deficit. The studio's focal point was to understand the specific environmental conditions each of the chosen case study housing complexes, and to cast a proposal that could architecturally reintegrate these spaces and transform them into a positive detonator for its surroundings. The book features a general introduction of the problem and thematic of the studio, and a chapter for each of the projects: Monterrey, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, Guadalajara, and Cancún.

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Public Space 2013-2017