Interdisciplinary Design

Architecture and engineering are changing. But what about the relationship between architects and engineers? Hanif Kara, Andreas Georgoulias

The subject of this experimental course held at Harvard GSD, with the students of Harvard and MIT, is to see the potential of interaction between the two disciplines from these two schools. Hanif Kara of AKT, leads the class, insisting on the importance of each professional field but trying to erode the borders and boundaries between them.

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Oxymoron & Pleonasm

Conversations on American Critical and Projective Theory of Architecture Monika Mitášová 12 interviews focusing on the problem of critical and projective approach to architectural thinking and design discussed by current American theorists, historians and practitioners. Monika Mitášová interviewed an influential group of current American theorists, historians and practitioners proposing critical and projective architecture, respectively, which forms the first book that brings those perspectives together to show the state of current critical and projective theory, practice and new alternative actions of designing architecture. EBOOK EDITION

Landscape Tunings (ENG ED.)

An Urban Park at the Danube Silvia Benedito & Alexander Häusler / OFICINAA Landscape Tunings maintains that landscape is more than ecology and technical performance; it is also an environment of paramount importance to one’s dispositions and wellbeing—an emotional space of social relevance, tuned with and for its communities. In this book, OFICINAA examines the design potentials of the Danube River as a civic anchor, a bioclimatic medium, and a space for collective imagination in the city of Ingolstadt, Germany. Landscape Tunings: An Urban Park at the Danube explores the city’s littoral landscapes with video-essays, drawings, walks, public installations, and exhibitions—each spotlighting the sensate-space where the city meets the Danube’s edge. It then showcases the bottom-up and tactical design approaches of the Stadt Park Donau | Donau-Loop project, which aims to foster the spatial embodiment with the riverine environments facing the present challenges of the anthropogenic era. With contributions by Günther Vogt, Andres Lepik, and Simone Schimpf, Landscape Tunings projects the role of littoral landscapes as a medium for the collective wellbeing of the city. Flowing through ten countries, the Danube is one of the most international rivers in the world. Regardless of its scale, economic output, and ecological relevance, the Danube’s landscapes act as cornerstones for civic interaction while “touching” numerous urban fabrics. Initiated in 2013, the Stadt Park Donau | Donau-Loop project in Ingolstadt derives from a three-year design study in collaboration with the various communities in the city. Rather than totalizing, and related to the key German concept of “Stimmung” (tuning of space), the design interventions are spatial tunings to foster community access, wonder and delight. These interventions intensify the particularities of the river landscapes with its distinct environments, and leverage the potentials of the riverbanks as a “thick” space in the pressing commitments to social wellbeing. The Stadt Park Donau | Donau-Loop project was exhibited at the Museum of Concrete Art and Design in Ingolstadt. The exhibition shared the multiple scopes and scales of the design, inviting the public to envision the Danube’s inherent beauty as a spatial component in the urban fabric of one the fastest growing cities in Germany. Buy German edition EBOOK VERSION

Soupergreen!

Souped-Up Green Architecture Doug Jackson SOUPERgreen! features projects and essays that offer a long overdue critique of the current approach to "green" architecture and, in turn, demonstrate a more appropriate way for architects to address the challenges posed by the environmental crisis. In sharp contrast to contemporary examples of "green" or "sustainable" architecture —which primarily rely upon the invisible agency of unremarkable technologies and materials to reduce resource consumption, but which do so without producing a necessary shift in the public's perception of the environment or behavior towards it —SOUPERgreen! demonstrates how green technology can not only perform from a measurable standpoint, but can also produce engaging experiences that profoundly alter, enhance, and transform the public's understanding of the environment. By leveraging the inherently expressive nature of technology in order to dramatize the constantly negotiated relationship between humanity and the natural world, the "souped-up" green architecture featured in SOUPERgreen! transforms "greenness" from a mere measurement of environmental performance into an actively engaged and highly conscious lived reality —resulting in a new way of experiencing and understanding the environment that is inherently more ecological. Visit urbanNext for exclusive on-line content about this book EBOOK EDITION

Time for Play

Why architecture should take happiness seriously AZC – Atelier Zündel Cristea Over the last 15 years AZC’s architectural work has developed through a diverse range of experiences. This book, Time for Play, presents exhibition pavilions, temporary installations, and ideas competitions – a mix of built and un-built projects.

“Today’s situation promotes innovation, supports creativity and enriches projects, calling on our intelligence. We are forced to take a new look at practices and uses, to consider different ways of doing things, to think about the humanity of a place; and all this when we still find it so hard to understand community needs, and even more so to keep up with changing society. Faced with a changing world, they propose solutions that are novel in their shape, use, cost and temporality. This project is realistic and realisable. The architects put their intelligence and skill not into regurgitating conventional solutions but into inventing new ones. They have left behind the stagnant reproduction of the city and shapes of the 19th century, repetition of a past time, and moved on to building in response to our times. Is this modernity? Does this project mark a new era, as did Paris Plage in 2002, or the subsequent shifting developments along the Left Bank of the Seine?” Jean-Pierre Charbonneau - 2015 EBOOK VERSION

Total Latin American Architecture

Libretto of Modern Reflections & Contemporary Works Ana de Brea This book is not about a folk or typical Latin American architecture. Latin America is not some faraway, isolated region, rather a huge and universal laboratory. It shows a different Latin America through its recent architecture, which flourishes in our time of global communications. It does have roots in the past; but does not appeal to nostalgia. Architecture thought for the present and designed for the near future. Total Latin American Architecture intends to communicate a targeted objective, to circumscribe a segment, a series of observations and actions in architecture. EBOOK VERSION

Beyond Patronage

Reconsidering Models of Practice Joyce Hwang, Martha Bohm, Gabrielle Printz This book explores contemporary architectural practices and design agendas that are being shaped or enabled by news forms of "patronage" Essays, projects, and interviews will examine emerging forms of sponsorship, new forms of connectivity –technological or social– that produce innovative modes of collaboration, and strategies for cultivating relationships that allow us to rethink typical hierarchies between those in power and those in service. One could argue that the profession of architecture has traditionally been characterized by patronage. Throughout the twentieth century, private clients have enabled architects to develop and realize their most significant work. Today, the landscape of patronage is shifting. While the role of private clients is still central to the survival of the profession, an increasing number of architects and design practitioners are actively cultivating partnerships with not-for-profits, granting agencies, educational institutions, and other public organizations. How are these broader relationships redefining the role of patronage in architecture? Have our current economic, ecological, and political climates provoked architecture to confront its own priorities and assumptions? How can the practice of architecture be shaped not only through relationships of power, but also through strategies of empowerment? How are emerging practitioners today grappling with issues of inclusion and exclusion in the field? EBOOK VERSION

[Re] Stitch Tampa

Shannon Basset [Re] Stitch Tampa, an international design ideas competition, challenged designers to consider innovative design ideas and strategies, employing connective urban landscapes and ecological infrastructure as an underlying framework for the post-war coastal city. The competition brief posited that this framework might operate as a catalyst for the economic redevelopment, as well as the landscape and urban recovery of Tampa, Florida. These strategies might physically reconnect a fragmented city, its urban fabric punctured with urban vacancies and significantly impacted by foreclosures during the financial crash, as well as earlier suburban expansion and urban renewal agendas. The Obama administration's announcement in 2010 of 1.25 billion dollars of federal stimulus package monies earmarked for a high-speed rail connection between Orlando and Tampa, to be the first in the United States, was the initial catalyst for the large scale infrastructural re-thinking of the city. While the high-speed rail was not implemented in the end, squashed by tea party politics, this infrastructural initiative still prompted the momentum and enthusiasm for an infrastructural re-thinking of the city. How might this new urban framework begin to choreograph the flows and movements through the city, to and from its river running through Tampa, virtually hidden and undetected? The charge of an urban design master plan, initially focused around what was designated as the high-speed rail station, was the impetus for the re-thinking and recalibration of infrastructure through ecologies for the city. This publication critically examines these issues through essays, in addition to showcasing selected competition entries, the results of [re] Stitch Tampa. The discourse distills the design schemes and examines their possibilities as viable alternative urban models for development, which reconsider the relationship of landscape to the city and urban redevelopment. It also proposes how the schemes might operate as transformative urban design agents and as the underlying connective tissue which [re] stitch the city to the river and bring the river and its ecologies into the city. EBOOK EDITION

MCHAP The Americas 1

The Americas Fabrizio Gallanti (ed.) MCHAP: The Americas brings together leading architects and academics in a dialogue exploring the current state of architecture throughout the Americas and explores themes raised by the seven finalist projects (designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Álvaro Siza, Steven Holl Architects, OMA/ LMN – Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, Smiljan Radic, Cristián Undurraga, Rafael Iglesia) from the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize cycle recognizing the best built work in the Amercas from 2000 through 2013. As part of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MHCAP) program, established by Dean Wiel Arets at IIT Architecture Chicago, recognizing the best built work in the Americas from 2000 through 2013, MCHAP is publishing MCHAP BOOK ONE, as well as publications by the authors of MCHAP 2000-2008 winner, Álvaro Siza, the MCHAP 2009-2013 winner, Herzog & de Meuron, and the MCHAP.emerge 2000-2013 winner, Pezo von Ellrichshausen. Within this editorial program, MCHAP BOOK ONE will critically explore themes raised by the jury process and the selected finalists projects (designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Álvaro Siza, Steven Holl Architects, OMA/ LMN – Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, Smiljan Radic, Cristián Undurraga, Rafael Iglesia) including the two inaugural winners: Iberé Camargo Foundation in Porto Alegre, Brazil, designed by Álvaro Siza, the 1111 Lincoln Road mixed use parking structure in Miami Beach, Florida, USA, designed by Herzog & de Meuron. MCHAP BOOK ONE uses the seven finalist projects to identify broad, thematic reflections on the American condition. In that frame, “American” necessarily refers to the entirety of the American continents, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. With contributions of Dean Wiel Arets, Kenneth Frampton, Jorge Francisco Liernur, Dominique Perrault, Sarah Whiting, Fabrizio Gallanti, Pedro Alonso, Luis Castañeda, Felipe Correa, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Horacio Torrent, Molly Wright Steenson, Mimi Zeiger. EBOOK VERSION

Thermodynamic Interactions

Architectural Exploration into Material, Physiological and Territorial Atmospheres Javier Garcia-German An Exploration into Material, Physiological and Territorial Atmospheres. Energy and sustainability is a complex topic that needs to address simultaneously core disciplinary values and ideas that come from other fields of knowledge. The interconnection between the environment and its climate, its built structures and the human body requires overlying architecture with other disciplines such as meteorology, thermodynamics or physiology to engage them in a holistic way. The book is structured in three blocks—Territorial Atmospheres, Material Atmospheres and Physiological Atmospheres—which present three distinct and successive realms at which thermodynamic exchanges are taking place. Territorial Atmospheres deals with the thermodynamic interaction between the environment and its built structures. Material Atmospheres focuses on the interaction between a building and the climate it generates. And lastly, Physiological Atmospheres centers on the interaction between indoor ambient and the physiologi-cal and psychological effects on human beings. Each of the blocks has a coeditor: Silvia Benedito for Territorial Atmospheres; Iñaki Ábalos for Material Atmospheres and Philippe Rahm for Physiological Atmospheres, who will work together with the editor defining the context of the book. EBOOK EDITION

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