MA YANSONG

From (Global) Modernity to (Local) Tradition / Entre la modernidad (global) y la tradicion (local) Menene Gras MAD works in forward-looking environments developing futuristic architecture based on a contemporary interpretation of the eastern spirit of nature. All of MAD's projects - from residential complexes or offices to cultural centres - desire to protect a sense of community and orientation toward nature, offering people the freedom to develop their own experience. Founded in 2004 by Ma Yansong, the office first earned worldwide attention in 2006 by winning an international competition to design a residential tower near Toronto, expected to be completed in the summer of 2012. MAD has been commissioned by clients of all backgrounds, leading to an intriguing combination of diverse project designs. MAD's ongoing projects include two major cultural projects in Harbin: the China Wood Sculpture Museum and Harbin Culture Island, an opera house and cultural center that will retain the original wetlands as an urban park between the old and new city. MAD is led by Ma Yansong, Dang Qun and Yosuke Hayano. They have been awarded the Young Architecture Award from the New York Institute of Architects in 2006 and the 2011 RIBA international fellowship. EBOOK VERSION

Critical Prison Design (ENG ED.)

Mas d’Enric Penitentiary by AiB arquitectes + Estudi PSP Arquitectura Roger Paez The newly built Mas d’Enric penitentiary sparks a series of reflections on architecture’s role in the problematic subject of prison design. The prison is an uncomfortable institution and its architecture is often subjugated to technocratic criteria. This servility forces the prison out of the socio-cultural realm where it belongs, thus erasing it from public discourse. “Mas d’Enric” is a new penitentiary that overturns preconceptions and posits architecture as a medium to critically rethink contemporary prison buildings. The discussion is enriched by contributions from a number of influential architects and architectural theorists, and is complemented by original work in film, photography, literature, sculpture and visual arts. Buy Catalan edition EBOOK VERSION

Díaz Llanos, Saavedra

Juan Antonio González Pérez The architects Saavedra and Díaz -Llanos have produced a fantastic adaptation of architecture and environment' style without committing to its essence. The events' chronicle of the architecture of our time, including its history, is usually written from the present, thus manifesting our current concerns towards the past, so that, according to the sentiment of some historians, the beginning of the account of the initial works it is presented as a final representation. This publication is a synthesis of many years of work as architects of Javier Díaz-Llanos and Vicente Saavedra: it is not their history, and even less the chronicle of their professional work. This history will prevail the feeling of these works of architecture and urbanism invaded by good work in the office of architect and, above all, it will be inscribed in the chapter of human relations' rationalism. EBOOK VERSION

Facts ( ENG ED. )

by mateo arquitectura Josep Lluís Mateo Vision of recent buildings and projects from one of the most outstanding European architectural practice, also presented from a multilayered critic panel. Presenting architectural works at the time when they have been done is a critical question to understand, by specific practices, trends into our contemporarity. This book presents a full description of the projects by reelaborated materials (plans, texts, photos) producing a network able to transmit the qualities of the real architecture. Different contributions theoretical. Coming from preeminent academicians, expand the arguments passing from the single cases to a category. Buy Spanish edition

Fuksas Object

Objects, pieces of furniture, scenographies, interior design... another dimension in the work of Fuksas architects. Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas This companion book to Fuksas Buildings features the works by the studio focused on product design, interior design, scenographies, furniture and jewelery. Perhaps the less known aspect of Fuksas work, their product design emphasizes a natural condition in changing scales, materials and uses. Research is also very present behind every piece. Richly illustrated projects such as the Armani stores, the Alessi collection and the furniture for Haworth Castelli, among many others. EBOOK VERSION

Looking for Mies (ENG ED.)

Ricardo Daza A historical photograph shows a room in a steel and glass building and a man which is evidently the architect Mies van der Rohe. Only the name of the photographer is known. In a manner more usually found in detective novels, the author has painstakingly researched the events surrounding its taking making deductions and gradually revealing in which room the architect is standing, in which building it is to be found, what the architect is looking at, what his stance and his gaze tell us about his person, his work. Step by step, the author systematically investigates the photograph, drawing fascinating conclusions and making astonishing revelations about the architecture, the man and his character from this one photograph. His hypothesis is illustrated by a short and compelling text and supported by further visual material. Spanish edition

The Sniper’s Log

Architectural Chronicles of Generation-X Alejandro Zaera-Polo

An insight into the theoretical discourse that shapes and expands the architect's practice. This compilation of texts written since 1986 reveals a parallel activity to Alejandro Zaera-Polo's professional life. The book is like a sniper's log, a register of events for the purpose of accumulating experience for future missions, be it academic or professional, trying to identify tendencies and to assess performances, rather than to establish truth.

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Experiments With Life Itself (ENG ED.)

Radical Domestic Architectures between 1937 and 1959 Francisco González de Canales

Five experiments made by prestigious architects on their own homes during the dark days of the Second World War. In most books or manuals on the history of modern architecture we found a large number of pages devoted to the avant-garde movement that took place in-between wars and to the reconstruction and expansion after World War II. Therebetween, as a misunderstanding or an agreed silence, is a big gap of dark years, wars and exiles of which you can hardly speak about. It is precisely in those dark years when the most experimental and inspiring projects had place. Architects and artists relegated to the margins of civil reality began to present a picture of reactions to a cultural situation unsustainable. Francisco González de Canales analyzes a constellation of scattered cases between late thirties and late fifties of the twentieth century he calls domestic self-experimentation.

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Beyond Environment

Emanuele Piccardo, Amit Wolf This publication presents the potent interchange between architecture, Land Art and Performance Art that emerged through Italian architect Gianni Pettena's idealized collaboration with American artists Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson in the 1970s. Earlier in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Pettena's experiments in material transformations helped create some of the architect's most iconic works. Staged in an abandoned school and in a non-descriptive suburban house, and titled Ice House I and II, Pettena would pour water into the mold works he created around the buildings' perimeter walls. Curing during the winter night to a coat of ice, the houses resonated with their conceptual predecessor, Kaprowâ's Fluids of 1967, as well as with an incomparable contemporary architectural sensibly concerned with the effects of variedly compounded, highly eidetic architectural surfaces. EBOOK EDITION

The Petropolis of Tomorrow

Neeraj Bhatia, Mary Casper The Petropolis of Tomorrow examines the role of resource extraction infrastructure in the production of new forms of urbanism. In recent years, Brazil has discovered vast quantities of petroleum deep within its territorial waters, inciting the construction of a series of cities along its coast and in the ocean. We could term these developments as Petropolises, or cities formed from resource extraction. The Petropolis of Tomorrow is a design and research project, originally undertaken at Rice University that examines the relationship between resource extraction and urban development in order to extract new templates for sustainable urbanism. Organized into three sections: Archipelago Urbanism, Harvesting Urbanism, and Logistical Urbanism, which consist of theoretical, technical, and photo articles as well as design proposals, The Petropolis of Tomorrow elucidates not only a vision for water-based urbanism of the floating frontier city, it also speculates on new methodologies for integrating infrastructure, landscape, urbanism and architecture within the larger spheres of economics, politics, and culture that implicate these disciplines. EBOOK EDITION

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