SELF FAB HOUSE

2nd Advanced Architecture Contest Lucas Cappelli The Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia investigates global projects for sustainable development on the cutting edge of self-sufficient housing, addressing environmental, economic and social needs. The projects investigate construction techniques and processes to build houses with local means, from the intelligent application of traditional techniques to advanced digital processes and fabrication.This book is a fascinating compilation of the most innovative projects for single dwellings and residential buildings, proposing the most creative designs and construction through the use of new materials and energy systems, and the integration of architecture into the landscape. Based in Barcelona, the IAAC is an international centre of architectural research in territorial analysis, urban development, digital fabrications and informational environments for improving cultural, economic and social conditions. See Preview on issuu

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?

Design Engineering

Adams Kara Taylor Collaborating with leading architects like Zaha Hadid, Foreign Office Architects, Norman Foster, and Will Alsop, Adams Kara Taylor have become the engineers of choice for projects that redefine the conventional boundaries between structural engineering and architecture. Their holistic approach expands structural thinking to include technical solutions, aesthetics, and advanced research to adapt both diverse architectures and design methodologies. Organized into a series of synthetic themes - complexity, trans-scalarity, modelling, process - this book presents a cross-section of diverse projects and methods as a manual for new relations between radical engineering and design. Contributors include Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Simon Allford, Patrik Schumacher, Tim Anstey, Mohsen Mostafavi, and Michael Speaks.

GSD Platform 4

Students from the GSD provide a framework to build upon

Author: Eric Howeler Beyond a design school, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is an immersive environment dense atmosphere saturated with creative and intellectual activity. Platform 4 represents a selective sampling of agendas cultivated at the GSD during the last academic year, revealing a diverse mixture of projects, research, and events. Organized as a searchable database, this publication documents both site and situation at the GSDâit is an institutional index. While Platform 4 records research trajectories from the past year, it also has the capacity to set agendas for future work. By framing a set of issues and topics, Platform 4 focuses attention towards particular areas of interest, allowing individual work to build on and contribute to a larger body of disciplinary knowledge. In that sense, the themes within this book become projective, they provide frameworks for future inquiry.

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

(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.

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Students from the GSD provide a framework to build upon