Barcelona Guia de Arquitectura Moderna (SP ED.)

Manuel Gausa, Marta Cervelló, Maurici Pla, Ricardo Devesa This guide brings together the most important and interesting examples of modern and contemporary architecture in Barcelona. It covers the emergence of Modernisme and Noucentisme, creative periods for which Barcelona is known the world over: the emblematic German Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe (1929), rationalist works conceived from the 40s and 50s, large housing projects of the 70s, the Olympic architecture of the late 80s, post-Olympic architecture, examples of the ongoing urban redefinition from the 90s, and the iconic architecture of the 21st century. Each entry has a brief description that includes planning and completion dates, a summary explanatory description, and subsequent restoration and alterations with a graphic coding system. This updated edition features the most recent architectural production (up until 2012), including landmarks such as Jean Nouvel's Agbar tower, the 2004 Forum building by Herzog & de Meuron, the Media-ICT building by Enric Ruiz Geli, the Santa Caterina Market by EMBT and the Diagonal ZeroZero Telefonica Tower by EMBA. Buy English edition Buy Catalan edition EBOOK VERSION

Estructuras Compartidas, Espacios Privados (SP ED.)

Vivienda en México Fernanda Canales

A case study that analyzes the relationship between ideas and houses, this book focuses on 100 years of housing projects in Mexico. The geographic, social, and economic diversity of Mexico constitute a prime example of the challenges inherent to meeting individual needs in an increasingly crowded world. The drawings and essays comprise new ways of looking at theories and buildings in order to redefine the connection between housing and the city. This research is centered in drawings of 70 housing projects, creating a common language highlighting different attempts at reinventing the house not as an isolated battle but as part of a strategy for reimagining how we want to live. This book showcases the pivotal voices that have shaped major cities through housing projects and explores how policies and ideas transform into built form, and how in turn buildings shape societies.

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Andrea Branzi (IT ED.)

E=mc2 Il Progetto Nell'Epoca Della Relatività Andrea Branzi, Elisa C. Cattaneo

From radical research to contemporary design, this book collects Andrea Branzi’s work about city-design and a new opportunity to interpret and anticipate the next dynamics of society. Territories that are conceptual categories, through spaces that are offered up by reality such that design can act and perform cognitively: in this sense, the city becomes a critical concept capable of overcoming its own image. Each passage presents a precise anthropological articulation: from the concept of commodity civilization of the Sixties to that of immateriality, from the concept of the metropolis to that of the anthropological territory, in which the infinitely small and the immensely large coincide, to the point of generating and passing beyond our commonly held concept of the city. The publication begins from the Andrea Branzi’s reflection on the relationship civility-design, from the Radical's research on mass-production civilization to the "infinite territories", proposing new territories able to interpret and anticipate the new dynamics of society. In particular, if the first chapters review the historical/critical works of Andrea Branzi and of Radical Movement, the last opens a new parenthesis of research, right now never expressed: the issues ignored by Modernity, like life, death, destiny and the sacred: themes which underline the new drama and the fracture between tragedy and normality, between consumerism and death, between theology and technology, between the silence of reason and the voice of an irrational reality.

Graham Foundation Grant Buy English edition

Xpositions (CN ED.)

The Pavilion Dialogues Yichen Lu and Kenneth Namkung In May 2015, Studio Link-Arc completed the China Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015, its most prominent work to date. As China’s first free-standing Expo Pavilion beyond its own borders, the design and construction of the project raised a number of issues relevant to current architectural discourse: temporality and the legacy of Expos; nationality and representation; instant place-making and iconicity; and the relationship between parametric design and craft. The ideas seen in the China Pavilion are discussed and expanded by a respected group of professionals, with contributions by Stefano Boeri, Italian architect and one of the original master planners for Expo Milano 2015; Dr. Xiangning Li, Assistant Dean and Professor at Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning and Visiting Professor in Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Daniel Libeskind, the internationally renowned architect and designer of the Vanke Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015; and Studio Link-Arc, the architects of the China Pavilion. Buy English edition

MCM – Milano Capitale del Moderno (IT ED.)

Lorenzo Degli Esposti Modern architecture articulated itself in specific centers of propulsion, revision and critique during the 20th century. The case of Milan is exemplary: Terragni and Razionalismo, the reconstruction (Ponti, Rogers, Moretti, Viganò, etc.), the Tendenza of Rossi, product design, up to the current research. MCM traces this history from several contributors’ points of view. MCM - Milano Capital of the Modern, edited by Lorenzo Degli Esposti, is made up of texts and images from over 300 contributors from Europe and the US, across three generations, involved in the activities of the Padiglione Architettura in EXPO Belle Arti of Vittorio Sgarbi, a programme by the Regione Lombardia hosted in the Grattacielo Pirelli during the EXPO 2015. They investigate the relationships between modern architecture, the city of Milan (Razionalismo, reconstruction, Tendenza, Radical Design, up to current research) and the city in general, between single and specific works and the large scale of the urban territory, in the contradictions between architecture autonomy and its dependence on specific place and historical time. The idea of MCM is that each capital of the Modern brings an original version of modernity in architecture: in the specific Milanese case, this kind of Modern is characterized by the simultaneous presence of abstract, systematic and syntactic features and an ontological conception of both buildings and architectural and urban voids. Buy English edition

Filogénesis (SP ED.)

Foreign Office Architects Through a series of competitions, speculative commissions, and built work, FOA's first monograph is structured to reflect the development of their specific attitude and as a compendium of the technical arsenal that they use to within their practice. With the spirit of scientific classification, the genesis of an architectural project is identified within a series of phylum, actualized and simultaneously virtualized, in their specific application to the unique conditions of a project's location. Phylogenesis also includes a collection of texts from several critics who investigate related topics that touch upon different aspects of FOA's discourse. Buy English edition

Kazuyo Sejima en Gifu (SP ED.)

Albert Ferré, Tomoko Sakamoto Located in Gifu, sits a building that constitutes the first material expression of Kazuyo Sejima's studies on metropolitan housing. This investigation proceeded from the conclusion that not all subsidized housing needs to be the same. Starting from a generic public housing program, Sejima's housing block in Gifu departs from convention and occupies the conceptual and physical space created between oppositional design concerns: where a strictly modulated structure confronts a random arrangement of different spaces; between the length of the building and the reduction of its built depth; between inhabitable space and the surrounding landscape; between the individual and the family unit. Buy English edition

Trügerische Transparenz (DE ED.)

Thoughts and Observations Triggered by a Visit to Farnsworth House Jacques Herzog & Pierre de Meuron Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists. The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. The architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely alliance: Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in common: their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day. Published in the context of the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP). Launch of the publication series by the inaugural MCHAP award winners Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron for their project 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. Buy English Edition

The Mexican Social Housing (SP 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.

Verb Conditioning (SP 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, Décosterd & Rahm, Arakawa + Gins, Enric Ruiz, Tomihiro Museum by Makoto Yokomizo, and texts by Norman Klein and AUDC. Buy English Edition

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