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 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

Catalyst: Conditions

An interdisciplinary monograph, this volume examines the work of multiple disciplines, many peoples and a multitude of approaches, all operating under the umbrella of one institution. Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh This volume examines one year of research and pedagogy at the University of Virginia School of Architecture, engaged in the conditions of the built environment, relative to 3 states of Flux, Stasis and Crisis. The questions asked are: What is the impact of design on the forces that shape our contemporary reality? To what extent do contingencies of time and place impact our practice, and in return how effective is our response in re-shaping the same contingencies?

GSD Platform 5

A year of research through studio work, theses, lectures, exhibitions and events at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Mariana Ibañez Platform 5 considers the expanded boundaries of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. It features not only the selections of the work produced at the GSD during the 2011-2012 academic year, but also the potential of that work to address broader questions and inform global initiatives.

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

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