Agenda: JDS Architects

Can We Sustain Our Ability to Crisis? Julien De Smedt, Jesse Seegers

AGENDA is a catalog of 365 days, like a diary or journal: a collective narrative, personal and subjective. It documents the work and thinking of JDS Architects over a specific year marked by crisis, beginning on September 15th, 2008, the day that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The form of the book exploits the double meaning of its title, presenting the absurdities of day-to-day architectural practice while also staking our intent. Rather than a definitive direction, our agenda is a definitive attitude - of eagerness, enthusiasm, and optimism, of criticality and concern, of fun and inquiry. It is a directive, a motivation to act, at times without clear knowledge of where our agenda will lead. "Change," the buzzword of the last U.S. presidential campaign, is the order of the day, and the task of AGENDA is to explore what kind of change will be needed if architects are to assume a political and social agency in this new landscape. Bringing together diverse forms of content, AGENDA is a product of vigilant observation, introspection, and engagement with outside thinkers and collaborators - artists, curators, politicians, authors, economists, journalists, developers, educators, and architects. EBOOK VERSION

Yona Friedman / Pro Domo ( ENG ED. )

Yona Friedman In 1958 Yona Friedman published his first manifesto on "mobile architecture" and founded GEAM (Groupe d'Etude d'Architecture Mobile), which proposed different strategies and actions geared to the adaptation of architectural creation to modern user requirements for social and physical mobility. In this initial manifesto, Friedman claims that architectural knowledge cannot be the exclusive property of professionals and specialists, and suggests writing guides or manuals, which explain topics related to architecture and urban planning in clear and simple terms. Pro Domo is "a collection of fragments of scattered topics," a set of "milestones" selected by the author himself, a personal selection chosen "according to sentimental value", spanning 50 years of production. Spanish edition EBOOK VERSION

Suspended City: L’Aquila after the Earthquake

Michele Nastasi The photographs taken by Michele Nastasi of L’Aquila after the earthquake lay the city implacably bare as a place where it has become impossible to live: a deserted and surreal landscape, choked with structures shoring up the buildings and fixing the city in a state of suspension without any time limit The photographs, accompanied by drawings and essays written by Giorgio Agamben and Maddalena d’Alfonso, conjure up images of surgery: prostheses, braces and splints stabilize the body of the city, but while the operations have been a technical success, the patient shows no signs of life. The picture of L’Aquila presented here is not just a record of the catastrophe of the earthquake and its aftermath, but an image that has become exemplary of some decisive changes underway in the whole of European and Western culture. What is brought into focus in this book is the shift in political paradigms and the nature of government action, the febrile relationship of culture with history and the need to restore the experience of the community and urban living to its central role as a forge of identity.

SKYCAR CITY

Winy Maas, Grace La From the 2006 Marcus Prize Studio at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Winy Maas of MVDRV and Grace La of UWM present the work of twelve students who explored the relationship between infrastructure, architecture, and urban form. This highly investigative studio pushed the physical and conceptual limits of given definitions of city, circulation, and program. Tested in two scenarios (one real in Tianjin, China and the other purely hypothetical), the studio severed vehicular traffic flow from its traditional two-dimensional plane and then forecast the potentials of a new, hyper-volumetric city where given urban activity inflate to fully occupy all three-dimensions. Populated by 5 million inhabitants and rising 800 meters high, this new 'sky car city' is buzzing with the flows of goods and people, as they navigate the airways in several models of newly designed air-born vehicles.

City Sense

Shaping our environment with real-time data / 4th Advanced Architecture Contest The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia IAAC This publication compiles the winning and the finalist entries of the City Sense competition, organized by the Institute of Advanced Architecture. The competition was open to architects, engineers, planners, designers and artists who wanted to contribute to progress in making the world more habitable. See Preview on issuu

Self-Sufficient Habitat

5th Advanced Architecture Contest The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia IAAC Material Intelligence, simulations, sensors, actuators, as well as the bio-mimetic and digital manufacturing innovations provide revolutionary ideas on growth, adaptability, repair, sensitivity, replication and energy savings in architecture. Should we continue constructing rigid and fixed structures? Or can our habitats begin to think? EBOOK VERSION

SELF SUFFICIENT HOUSING

1st Advanced Architecture Contest Vicente Guallart Created for students and professionals to inspire changes in how new buildings are designed and constructed, the Self-Sufficient competition challenged participants to design a self-sufficient and ecologically oriented dwelling. In the early 20th century, the concept of “dwelling” was defined as a “machine for living”, a reference to a new way of understanding the construction of inhabitable spaces that characterized the Machine Age. Today, a century later, we face the challenge of constructing a sustainable or self-sufficient dwelling, a living organism that interacts with its environment, exchanging resources, and which functions as an entirely independent entity. The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) has collected a selection of entries presented during its 1st Advanced Architecture Contest: Self-Sufficient Housing.

SELF FAB HOUSE

2nd Advanced Architecture Contest Lucas Cappelli The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia investigates global projects for sustainable development on the cutting edge of self-sufficient housing, addressing environmental, economic and social needs. The projects investigate construction techniques and processes to build houses with local means, from the intelligent application of traditional techniques to advanced digital processes and fabrication.This book is a fascinating compilation of the most innovative projects for single dwellings and residential buildings, proposing the most creative designs and construction through the use of new materials and energy systems, and the integration of architecture into the landscape. Based in Barcelona, the IAAC is an international centre of architectural research in territorial analysis, urban development, digital fabrications and informational environments for improving cultural, economic and social conditions. See Preview on issuu

Self-Sufficient City

Envisioning the habitat of the future / 3rd Advanced Architecture Contest Vicente Guallart The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and the technology company HP have developed an international contest with the idea of "self-sufficient city." It is an invitation to reflect on how we will live in the near future in the light of the social, cultural and technological changes in which we are immersed. This publication presents the projects of the 107 finalists between 708 participant proposals. From connected metropolises, eco neighbourhoods, self-sufficient buildings, intelligent homes or any other proposal for a short, medium or long-term project such as the winning ones: "HURBS" proposed by Sergio Castillo Tello and MarÃa HernÃ¡ndez EnrÃquez from Spain and "WATER FUEL" by Rychiee Espinosa and Seth Mcdowell from the United States. See Preview on issuu

Landscape Futures

Instruments, Devices and Architectural Inventions Geoff Manaugh A speculative look into the future of our built environment. This book explores how landscapes, and our perceptions of them, can be utterly transformed by technology and design. It travels the shifting terrains of architectural invention, where new spatial devices on a variety of scales – from the handheld to the inhabitable – reveal previously overlooked dimensions of the built and natural environments. EBOOK VERSION

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