Imminent Commons: Commoning Cities

Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2017 Hyungmin Pai, Helen Hejung Choi The third book from the Seoul Biennale 2017 explores the value and meaning of cities as commons, which is embedded and operate in various governance mechanisms of cities in the world. Imminent Commons: Commoning Cities presents questions and answers concerning the current state and near future of cities of the world through the lens of public initiatives, projects, and urban narratives. Cities are searching for new possibilities that will help them survive and thrive within new systems of municipal governance. The strategies of cities with regard to rapid urbanization, scarcity of public resources, and privatization of commons will be examined through the diverse spectrum of focused projects. It also discusses the present and future of cities as commons in the 21st century through examining various ways the cities use to deliberate, operate, imagine and execute their policies for the city. EBOOK EDITION

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

Open Enclosed: Donald Judd

Gillermo Zuaznabar In this brilliant essay, Gillermo Zuaznabar sets out to describe Donald Judd as if he were an unknown figure, a great pioneer. Taking "Specific," the seminal text written by Judd in the mid-sixties, as the central theme, the author analyzes the artist's main concepts and his whole career from a new perspective: "... what one seeks is an object that speaks of the world in which it is moving or of the world from which it is moving away. One searches for a boundary work, a frontier, that says, simultaneously, where it is coming from and where it is going, a work in which interests overlap. A work that will function as a mark or a crossroads, locating this work is the first exercise...". EBOOK VERSION

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

Fuksas: Building

Ramon Prat, Massimiliano Fuksas Massimiliano Fuksas (*Rome, 1944) is a major international architect with offices in Rome, Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt and China. For many years he has dedicated special attention to the study of urban problems and, in particular, to the suburbs. Four key considerations drive his work: community, culture, spirituality and peace. Some of his major works include the Maison des Arts in Bordeaux, the research centre for Ferrari in Maranello, the Milan Trade Fair, the Zenith Music Hall in Strasbourg and the Peres Centre for Peace in Israel. He is also a professor at several universities and has published widely. In 2000, he directed the VII Venice Biennale of Architecture titled Less Aesthetics, More Ethics. After New Trade Fair Milan and Frames, Actar publishes a new and valuable book that compiles high-quality photographs of his major works and never-released sketches and drawings conceived by this multi-faceted mind. The visual content will be accompanied by several interviews with renowned contributors.

Fuksas Building (Update)

Massimiliano Fuksas, Doriana Fuksas New and extended edition of Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas’ work. The work of Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas enjoys well-earned reputation for its artistic talent and its capacity to surprise with the most risky and spectacular projects up to 2014. With offices in Rome, Paris and Shenzhen, the Fuksases have completed projects of contrasting scales and typologies: airports, urban planning, large infrastructure, housing projects... Their most recent include the Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, Eur New Congress Centre in Rome, Lyon Confluence, Peres Peace House in Jaffa, St. Paolo Church in Foligno, MyZeil shopping mall in Frankfurt.

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.

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