Imminent Commons: Urban Questions for the Near Future

Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Hyungmin Pai, urbanNext (eds.) Imminent Commons, first book from the Seoul Biennale 2017, will present an imminent urban cosmology that is crucially mediated by the technologies and institutions that feed us, move us, condition our environments, recycle our refuse, make our clothes, and connect us into communities. The cities of the world stand at a crossroads. Amidst radical social, economic, and technological transformations, will the city become a driving force of creativity, diversity, and sustainability, or will it be a mechanism of inequality, despair, and environmental decay? At this critical moment, where do the stakes lie and what are the agents of change? From the time of its birth, the city has been held together by the commons. The first publication of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017, proposes a framework where set basic commons —an evolving network of agencies, resources and technologies— as the critical issue in the move towards a sustainable and just urbanism. It shows an exploration not of distant utopias, but of the very near future, because the emerging commons is changing the way we connect, make, move, recycle, sense, and share, and the way we manage air, water, energy and the earth. Whether met with fear or hope, they will very soon change the way we live in the city. With contributions of: Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Hyungmin Pai, Maider Llaguno, Nerea Calvillo, Hyewon Lee, Lindsay Bremner, Alex Ivancic, Iñaki Abalos, Charles Waldheim, David Gissen, Carlo Ratti, Daniele Belleri, Saskia Saseen, Adam Greenfield, Jesse LeCavalier, Philip Rode, Duncan McLaren,, Jennifer Gabrys, Julian Agyeman, Gunter Pauli, Gramazio and Kohler, Mario Carpo, Dirk E. Hebel, Marta H. Wisniewska, Felix Heisel, Mitchell Joachim, Christian Hubert. EBOOK EDITION

Cerdà. 150 years of modernity (ENG ED.)

Francesc Magrinyà & Fernando Marzá This book is a tribute to the first modern urban planner and his product: the Eixample, which is today the thriving and undisputed centre of the Barcelona metropolitan area. The city of Barcelona as constructed over the last 150 years on the strength of Ildefons Cerdà’s 1859 ‘Project for the Reform and Expansion’ bears living witness to the modernity of a way of thinking and making the city. An appreciation of the values of the Eixample that has taken shape in this century and a half affords illuminating insights into what it means to plan, design and build a city. The chapter structure is devoted to an orderly analysis in the first instance of the elements that articulate the construction of the Eixample — the residential fabric, the grid, the street, the chamfered corner and the sewers — and then of the city blocks and the various configurations associated with housing, industry, amenities and open spaces. The book intentionally focuses on the Eixample as a whole — what we know as the Cerdà Eixample — instead of confining itself to the more central Eixample traditionally associated with Modernista architecture. Buy Spanish edition

Earth, Water, Air, Fire

The Four Elements and Architecture Josep Lluis Mateo, Florian Sauter This research addresses the archaic or permanent conditions of architecture. According to Pre-Socratic tradition, since earliest times, when humankind began to analyse the universe, there was this important proposition lasting until today that nature and life are connected to the four principles of earth, water, air and fire. This thesis not only relates to basic conditions of man on earth, but also targets the fundamentals of architecture. Forced to interact with the natural elements that invigorate a built structure and co-determine a building’s experiential reality during construction, one ought to keep in mind their brute powers – earth’s crushing heaviness, the erratic character of water, air’s thermo-dynamic cataclysms, or the dangerous benignity of fire. Affective in a direct way, they act as guiding principles in the process of realization: While the earth targets the foundations, the roof shields from water, the openings control the flow of air, and the walls protect from the gleaming sun.

The Self-Sufficient City

Internet has changed our lives but it hasn't changed our cities, yet Vicente Guallart The Barcelona Architect in Chief peals the axes in which the cities must be sustained to adapt them to the new information age, and to generate its own resources. Internet has changed our lives but it has not yet changed our cities. Any technological revolution takes paired radical transformations in the life styles. If the age of the car and the oil shaped the cities of the 20th century, the society of the information will form those of the 21st century. It is an unstoppable evolution that, nevertheless, it is necessary to be able to lead with criterion. It is a question of taking advantage of the urban experiences accumulated for centuries by the human beings and having present that the growth cannot be unlimited and the energetic resources that our planet offers have expiry date. Vicente Guallart exposes this fascinating process in a book loaded with ideas, information and proposals. EBOOK VERSION

GSD Platform 6

A year of research through studio work, theses, lectures, exhibitions and events at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Rosetta S. Elkin (ed.) GSD has always recognized the indispensable importance and values of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, and urban design, yet has transcended their individual aspirations through intellectual cross-fertilization and collaboration. The material presented in this publication forms a small part of the incredible range and diversity of proposals and visions that our students and faculty have produced during the past academic year. This work is indicativeÂ of the School's commitment, as a global leader in the field, to exploring and articulating transformative ideas through the power of design. It is as importantÂ for us to share and communicate the outcome of our research and design investigations as it is to show making of these projects.

GSD Platform 7

Leire Asensio Villoria A selection from a year’s design speculations, events, and other activities at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The Harvard Graduate School of Design prides itself on the wide scope of its global aspirations, collaborations, and projects. As a School, they are deeply interested in the conditions giving rise to new topics that benefit from the design imagination of our students and faculty across a range of fields and practices. This approach is not so much new as it is intentional, forming a deliberate cornerstone of our mission and pedagogy. They wish for their work to be transformative in multiple locations and in richly varied geographies, societies, economies, cultures, and political circumstances. The projects presented in this book all play their part in taking up this planetary imperative.

Reflections on Light

Coordination: Isabel Valle Designed by: Folch ‘Reflections on light’ gathers a series of conversations with designers, architects and artists who work with and think about light every day. Behind any object, especially those concerned with light, there is a clear intention to attempt to improve the quality of life of the user and take care of the space in which the light is found. Light allows us to see our surroundings; as such, looking after light is essential, and it is precisely this that is at the heart of this project. These interviews focus on the people behind the objects, concentrating on their creative vision and background from which their ideas are born; the importance of the beauty of well-made objects, and how the objects affect our perception of life.

GSD Platform 8

Zaneta Hong Platform 8 catalogs a curated selection of work generated in the past year at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Alongside final products of design education, Platform 8 places particular emphasis on collecting and documenting the people and artefacts that shape research-driven design practices. Here, design is presented both as process and as a final product. The book's indexical structure, punctuated with a collection of portraits, presents a comprehensive picture of the school. Platform 8 shows the intention, direction, and passion seen and experienced every day at the GSD. One of the 50 Best Books for 2016 by the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Designers)

Caza: 2011-2015

The inaugural monograph of the Brooklyn-based design studio CAZA, celebrating the first five years of the firm. CAZA: 2011-15, the inaugural monograph of the Brooklyn-based design studio CAZA, celebrates the first five years of the firm, and includes photographs, drawings, building descriptions, essays, and conversations that relate to CAZA's global architecture and design practice. The book opens with a photo essay by world-renowned photographer Iwan Baan, who documented CAZA's first internationally acclaimed project, the 100 Walls Church, in Cebu City, Philippines. With offices in Brooklyn, New York; BogotÃ¡, Colombia; Lima, Peru; and Manila, Philippines, CAZA has emerged as a risk-taking, forward-thinking studio working on a mixture of residential, civic, and corporate projects that are shaping the built environment in cities around the world. The launch of CAZA: 2011 will coincide with the opening of La Biennale di Venezia in May 2016, with a special installation at Palazzo Mora in Venice, which will subsequently travel to various cities around the world.

Analytic Models in Architecture

Emmanuel Petit Analytic Models in Architecture documents Yale School of Architecture student work from the undergraduate studio course “The Analytic Model: Descriptive and Interpretive Systems in Architecture,” taught by Emmanuel Petit from 2005 to 2014. The projects are organized to a set of ten conceptual categories that emphasize varying strategies of formal analysis: Aggregation, Cinematics, Condensation, Diagrammatics, DNA, Fluid Interlocking, Fragmentation, Morphology, Seriality, and Thickened 2-D. Five critical essays focus on particular aspects of analysis in architecture: Anna Bokov about the Soviet avant-garde, Matthew Claudel about agency as the crucial qualifier, Kyle Dugdale draws an analogy to Homeric analysis, exposing the web of deceit that underlies the ostensibly dispassionate analytic exercise, John McMorrough asks what constitutes architectural analysis after close reading is over, and Emmanuel Petit reviews the different ideologies that concepts of analysis have occupied in architectural theory throughout modernity.

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