Catalyst: Lineages & Trajectories

Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh This volume examines one year of research and teaching at the University of Virginia School of Architecture. At a time when fundamentals of design education are being questioned and studios are being used as laboratories for everything ranging from design-build and fabrication practices to community service, material research, and multidisciplinary incubators, this volume of Catalyst positions the current pedagogy at the University of Virginia School of Architecture within an extended history of the school through an archival project that traces the lineages of its faculty. It considers design pedagogy through the lens of the formative experiences and agendas of the faculties of the Departments of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, examining their role in shaping the school's direction, independent of top-down mandates and institutional agendas.

Biodigital Architecture & Genetics

Escritos / Writings Alberto T. Estévez Special selection of Alberto T. Estévez writings, after 15 years since the creation of the Genetic Architectures Research Group and of the Biodigital Architecture Master, in ESARQ (UIC Barcelona), year 2000. This book is about the interdisciplinary of Architecture, Design, Art, Science, Technology, Theory, Practice, Biology, Digital, Genetics... With writings about the application of genetics to architecture, about the first time that geneticists work for architects, towards frontiers of architecture, working with digital tools and organic forms, with the new bio & digital techniques in architecture and design

(IN)formal LA

Victor J. Jones Often portrayed as a confluence of cars and movies, this book traces another course to uncover Los Angeles' primal sources of creation - land and opportunity. Within the endless sprawl there reside flurries of uncodified spatial configurations that no high-definition map or satellite image can accurately capture nor present. (IN)formal LA explores a range of unique spatial practices and pedagogies through the lens of politics in Los Angeles. While this book articulates growing skepticism in current design discourse and education, it also provides a spatial awareness that is culturally rooted, socially responsive and vitally connected to the city. Composed of essays, photos, projects and interviews, (IN)formal LA embraces the quirky, celebrates the wide and embellishes the close range to expose the complex social organizations within this contemporary urban network. (IN)formal LA serves as both a textbook for classes in art and architecture, urban design, planning and theory in addition to responding to the increasing interest in the study of Los Angeles by scholars in other fields. The book provides an extended overview of the range and variety of urban issues that are critical to understanding present-day Los Angeles.

The Car in 2035

Mobility Planning for the near Future. An artful and refreshingly multifaceted view of the future of mobility Kati Rubinyi The Car in 2035: Mobility Planning for the Near Future focuses on the car, the street, and public policy in Southern California. In this collection of essays and images, the car is viewed as both a challenge and benefit to our neighborhoods, cities, and suburbs. Despite rising fuel prices, the automobile will be Southern California's primary form of transportation in 2035 because the region's population will continue to be dispersed widely, and the car offers the best access to the area's tremendous diversity of economic, social, recreational, and cultural opportunities. But the infrastructure will need to accommodate a heterogeneous mix of modes of transportation, including more cars on the road than today.

The Cornell Journal of Architecture 8

RE Cornell AAP An essential collection of illustrated texts regarding the reiterative in architecture and design today. This issue of the Cornell Journal of Architecture is about the now, the new, and the next in architecture, while simultaneously acknowledging that every possible future is intrinsically linked to the existent, to the present and its attendant past. At the heart of issue 8: RE is the understanding that the creative act itself is reiterative; that in rethinking, recombining, reshuffling, recycling, and reimagining aspects of the world around us, we produce work that both belongs to the current moment and establishes new future trajectories. The texts reflect the interconnected strands of technology, history, theory, and intuition that necessarily reinforce each other in architectural education and practice today: issues of reuse and recycling; of feedback loops and regression; of dialogue, criticism, and correspondence; and of the role that changing technologies have in restructuring the way we think, see, and remember.

The Cornell Journal of Architecture 9

Mathematics: From the Idea to the Uncertain. Exploring the dynamic and non-linear relationship between mathematics and architecture Cornell AAP While mathematics in architecture has historically referenced notions of order, proportion, and ideal form, the discipline of mathematics itself has shifted to encompass uncertainty, incompleteness, relativity, and chaos towards a situation in which truth itself is elusive. This move stems in part from an engagement with real phenomena, in which natural systems were shown to behave non-linearly and unpredictably. In architecture, while computational developments enabling dynamic and variable modeling have been subsumed into our culture of design and production, a new kind of idealism has emerged. Formally prolific and inherently multiplicitous, this book proposes algorithmic truth and statistical outcomes over predetermined objectives; it signifies a retreat away from reality and back towards abstraction and simulation in the smooth space of possibility. Meanwhile, the consequences of uncertainty have pervaded our culture to its core. Recovering from the initial high of fractal and random geometrical proficiency, architecture is just beginning to re-embrace the underlying issues embedded within this contemporary mathematics: uncertainty, unpredict-ability, chance, recursion, wildness, and informality. Contributors: Cecil Balmond, Mario Carpo, Lily Chi Adrian Lewis, Dana Cupkova Kevin Pratt, Tom Fecht, Francois Roche, Jenny Sabin, Anthony Vidler and others.

Turbulence

Leo Stevens This book follows the research and design work of three studios of Ali Rahim of Contemporary Architecture Practice, Christopher Sharples, and William Sharples of SHoP Architects. The three studios are united by a focus on the future of mile-high design. Ali Rahim and his students push the boundaries of emergent digital techniques to generate an intelligent design for a high-rise in Dubai. Christopher Sharples asks his studio to redefine the concept of air travel and generate a hybrid airport of the future in New Delhi, India. William Sharples sets the architectural framework for space tourism by researching the commercial spaceport as an urban gateway and catalyst for re-forming the city.

eVolo 01 (Fall 2009)

Housing for the 21st Century Carlo Aiello eVolo is an architecture and design journal (based in New York City) published twice-yearly focused on technology advances, sustainability, and innovative design for the 21st century. Our objective is to promote and discuss the most innovative ideas generated around the world. It is a medium to explore the reality and future of architecture and design with up-to-date news, events, and projects. eVolo is a work in progress with a clear mission, but no other rules. We have in mind a desire to examine the relationship between architecture and the natural world, architecture and the community, architecture and urban living; but this is an open investigation, welcoming all questions with a willingness to entertain any and all possible answers. Housing for the twenty-first century is what we have chosen, and have made it a collaboration between thinkers from diverse fields attempting to understand our current habitation necessities; an exploration of where we are and where are we heading. We start off with the analysis of the economic, social, and architectural causes and consequences of the largest and fastest migration event of human history; the exodus from rural to urban China. Opinion is a collection of essays on the broad topic of housing, reaching broadly, from discussions about the use of new technologies, ecology, and global warming, to the transformation of a house into another member of a family. This section also includes a reflection on the legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his architectural sensibility to make house and context one single entity. In this section you will also find critiques on some of the most forward-looking housing projects designed by world-class firms such as Steven Holl Architects, Asymptote Architecture, Herzog & de Meuron, Bjarke Ingels Group, and Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Central to this issue are the winning projects of the 2007 Housing Competition organized by eVolo, which consists of twenty proposals that, through the use of new materials, technology, novel spatial organizations, and combinations of programs, present a glimpse of the possible world to come. You will find examples of underground housing, the regeneration of existing neighborhoods, the exploration of new aesthetics from mathematical algorithms, and the studies of biogenetic materials used for environmentally responsive claddings. The final section spotlights a young firm of designers known as Nervous System, who are producing an ingenious jewelry line based on patterns of organization in the natural world. Some of their pieces mimic the growth of coral and other branching structures, while other collections are created with the simulation of particle aggregation and diffusion systems.

eVolo Skyscrapers

Carlo Aiello Established in 2006, the eVolo Skyscraper Competition has become the world's most prestigious award for high-rise architecture. Over the last six years, an international panel of renowned architects, engineers, and city planners have reviewed more than 4,000 projects submitted from 168 countries around the world. This book is the compilation of 300 outstanding projects selected for their innovative concepts that challenge the way we understand architecture and their relationship with the natural and built environments. The projects have been organized in six chapters: The first chapter, "Technological Advances," is an investigation on the use of digital tools and computing fabrication. "Ecological Urbanism" explores sustainable systems. Projects that analyze the reconfiguration of existing cities and the colonization of new environments, such as underwater cities and floating habitats, are part of "New Frontiers." The improvement of our way of living is the topic of the fourth chapter, "Social Solutions." A more experimental approach to architectural design is exposed in "Morphotectonic Aesthetics," with proposals that use fields of data and self-regulating systems to respond to internal and external stimuli--the results are fascinating explorations of function and form. Finally, "Urban Theories and Strategies" is a group of projects that establish new methods to alleviate the major problems of the contemporary city.

eVolo Skyscrapers 2

150 New Projects Redefine Building High Carlo Aiello This publication is the follow-up to the highly acclaimed book eVolo Skyscrapers. 150 new skyscrapers submitted to the eVolo Skyscraper Competition are categorized and examined. These super-tall structures take into consideration the advances in technology, the exploration of sustainable systems, and the establishment of new urban and architectural methods to solve economic, social, and cultural problems of the contemporary city; including the scarcity of natural resources and infrastructure and the exponential increase of inhabitants, pollution, economic division, and unplanned urban sprawl.

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