Verb Processing (SP 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 English edition

Verb Natures (SP ED.)

Irene Hwang “What is fascinating is the inability to separate the real from the digital, because they already form part of the same nature.” So we said in the last issue of Verb. Here we explore how this fusion takes place. Buildings and cities grow, are transformed, and dissolve. How can this evolution be generated, controlled, enhanced or imagined? Is our environment programmable? How does the fusion of natural and artificial matter produce new architectural organisms, new environments, new natures? How does technology animate space, and how do users and programs animate matter? The fifth volume of Actar's boogazine looks for a new definition of the organic.Projects by: Terraswarm, Aranda/Lasch, Shohei Matsukawa / 000studio, Kram/Weisshaar, Michael Meredith, mos, Foster + Partners, George L. Legendre, IJP Corporation, PTW Architects + Arup Australia + CSCEC, ON-A, Hitoshi Abe, Manuel Gausa Asociados, Vicente Guallart, Mick Pearce, Yusuke Obuchi, R&Sie(n), Cristina Díaz, AMID, INI, ONL...

Vivienda Total (SP ED.)

Alternativas a la Dispersión Urbana 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 English edition

Verb Crisis ( SP 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. Featuring: FOA, Teddy Cruz, Shigeru Ban, Elemental, Boris B.Jensen, Hilary Sample, John May, Jacobo García Germán, Markus Miessen, Interboro Partners, MVRDV, and Takuya Onishi. Buy English edition

Revisions de la Barcelona Metropolitana (CAT ED.)

Espai Públic 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.

Revisiones de la Barcelona Metropolitana (SP ED.)

Espacio Público 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.

OPEN ( SP ED. )

Espacio, tiempo, información Arquitectura, vivienda y ciudad contemporánea. Teoría e historia de un cambio Manuel Gausa “Open-ended Logic: Space-Time-Information (Composition -> Position -> Disposition)” defends the new, underlying architectonic logic (spatial-temporal in conception) that has emerged within contemporary culture. In accordance with a shared terrain of inquiry, which represent a whole series of decisive experiences from the past fifteen years, this new logic could be considered a “logics of complexity.” Concerned with the mapping of the contemporary project and the contemporary city, Open-Ended Logic focuses on the capacity of linkages between dynamic systems and irregular structures.

Venezia, Venezia (IT ED.)

Alfredo Jaar

Alfredo Jaar's immersive site-specific installation in the Chilean pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, "Venezia Venezia" is a call to examine how today's culture, composed of increasingly complex global networks, can be adequately represented on a world stage.This publication features essays by 18 prominent, international authors from different fields of work and thought, including political and philosophical thinkers, critics, theorists, art historians and curators. Their contributions consider Venezia Venezia in its critical context, as well d recent global developments and the volatile conditions of contemporary art practice.

Buy English edition.

Territoires de Désobéissance (FR ED.)

Linna Choi, Tarik Oualalou This compendium of essays and projects presents a confrontation of radically dissimilar projects which underscores the exploration of architectural empowerment at the core of the office’s work. Four themes are presented in four volumes: Cultural Resistance, Occupying Earth, Public Prerogatives, and Territory and Transgressions. Architects build in and for a system that is not only pathological, but toxic. It is ruining the only planet we have, and we are clearly at the end of what is still possible within this ecology. The architecture presented in this book is a form of resistance – one which actively engages in the societies and territories it is inscribed in and which presents an antidote to the accelerating banalization of our everyday environments. The search for singularity is not a search for formal distinction or a fetishism of the architectural object, but instead the desire to inscribe oneself into a unique territory and moment in time. Buy English edition

Territories of Disobedience (ENG ED.)

Linna Choi, Tarik Oualalou This compendium of essays and projects presents a confrontation of radically dissimilar projects which underscores the exploration of architectural empowerment at the core of the office’s work. Four themes are presented in four volumes: Cultural Resistance, Occupying Earth, Public Prerogatives, and Territory and Transgressions. Architects build in and for a system that is not only pathological, but toxic. It is ruining the only planet we have, and we are clearly at the end of what is still possible within this ecology. The architecture presented in this book is a form of resistance – one which actively engages in the societies and territories it is inscribed in and which presents an antidote to the accelerating banalization of our everyday environments. The search for singularity is not a search for formal distinction or a fetishism of the architectural object, but instead the desire to inscribe oneself into a unique territory and moment in time. Buy French edition EBOOK VERSION

Select Gift

Espacio Público 2013-2017