AA – Actar Publishers

AA publishes titles that explore developments in architecture, engineering, landscape and urbanism, as well as the fields that touch on them – philosophy, history, art and photography

Founded as a means of examining influential contemporary projects and opening up ideas to debate, Architectural Association School of Architecture London Publications has a long tradition of publishing architects, artists and theorists early in their careers. AA publishes titles that explore developments in architecture, engineering, landscape and urbanism, as well as the fields that touch on them –philosophy, history, art and photography. Since fall 2019 season, ACTAR D is honored to distribute the titles of this prestigious School of Architecture in London.

Quickview

Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays

Robin EvansA re-edition of Robin Evans’ classic essay anthology Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, originally published by the AA in 1997, featuring a new introduction.

Robin Evans ‘What makes this book so captivating is not just the individual insights, but also the intensity of Evans's vision and the coherence of his approach.’ —Joseph Rykwert, Harvard Design Magazine This book brings together eight of the most interesting and significant essays by the unequalled historian Robin Evans, author of The Projective Cast. Written over a period of 20 years from 1970, shortly after his graduation from the Architectural Association (AA), to 1990, the essays cover a wide range of architectural concerns: domestic space, society’s involvement with building types, aspects of geometry, modes of projection and drawing as a process for generating ideas. The book includes 'Mies van der Rohe's Paradoxical Symmetries' and other essays first published in AA Files. Evans's writings are supported by a new introduction and an annotated bibliography by Richard Difford. This AA Documents publication is a re-edition of the 1997 essay collection originally published by AA Publications.

40,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Book 2023

Ryan Dillon, Anna Lisa Reynolds (eds.)This book highlights the agendas and practices that have intersected both physically and metaphorically throughout the Architectural Association (AA) during the 2021–22 academic year.

Ryan Dillon, Anna Lisa Reynolds (eds.) The AA Book 2023 presents a synopsis of the 2022–23 academic year at the Architectural Association (AA) School of Architecture. The layout of its pages has been generated by the students and tutors of each unit or programme within the school, in parallel with the development of their projects. The middle of the book comprises a series of pull-out posters featuring highlights of the year from other facets of the AA, including the Public Programme, the Visiting School and the Communications Studio. Its centrefold recreates the Front Members’ Room at 36 Bedford Square, which this year sits at the heart of the Projects Review exhibition as a visual catalogue of projects by every student in the school. Together, these elements represent a radical shift in approach from previous iterations of the AA Book towards a more nimble and less wasteful record of the work of the

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Book 2022: On Location

Ryan Dillon, Anna Lisa Reynolds (eds.)This book highlights the agendas and practices that have intersected both physically and metaphorically throughout the Architectural Association (AA) during the 2021–22 academic year.

Ryan Dillon, Anna Lisa Reynolds (eds.) The AA Book 2022: On Location highlights the agendas and practices that have intersected both physically and metaphorically throughout the Architectural Association (AA) during the 2021–22 academic year. The publication features hundreds of projects by students from every unit and programme within the school, which together document the plurality of agendas explored, interests developed, approaches tested and questions posed and addressed by our community this year. With Contributions of Students and staff of the Architectural Association (AA).

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 79

Maria Shéhérazade Giudici (ed.)AA Files looks to promote original and engaging writing on architecture. It does this by drawing both on the AA’s own academic research, public programme, exhibitions and events.

AA Files is the Architectural Association's (AA) journal of record. Launched in 1981 by the AA's then chairman Alvin Boyarsky, the journal appears twice a year and is sent out to members of the Architectural Association and individual subscribers, and is distributed to a global network of bookshops. Currently under the editorship of Maria Shéhérazade Giudici, AA Files looks to promote original and engaging writing on architecture. It does this by drawing both on the AA’s own academic research, public programme, exhibitions and events, as well as by a rich and eclectic mix of architectural scholarship from all over the world. With Contributions of Pier Vittorio Aureli, Brendon Carlin, Jingru (Cyan) Cheng, Thomas Daniell, Adam Kaasa, Marson Korbi, Michelle Millar Fisher, Gabrielle Printz, Ines Weizman, Amber Winick

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 78

Maria Shéhérazade Giudici (ed.)AA Files looks to promote original and engaging writing on architecture. It does this by drawing both on the AA’s own academic research, public programme, exhibitions and events.

The forthcoming issue of AA Files examines a range of building typologies and histories from Pyongyang to Lusaka and beyond – its geographic remit is broader than any previous issue. It also features articles looking at some of the wider contexts informing architectural practice, including timelines of ecological rupture, ways of measuring the human body, and the emergence of privatised public space. Contributors include Thandi Loewenson, Calvin Chua, Christina Varvia, Elisa Iturbe, Manijeh Verghese and Madeleine Kessler among others. With Contributions of Calvin Chua, Mark Cousins, Elisa Iturbe, Thandi Loewenson, Christina Varvia, Manijeh Verghese and Madeleine Kessler, and others.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Book 2021

Communications StudioThe AA Book 2021 celebrates the depth of research and plurality of practice pursued at the Architectural Association (AA) during the 2020-21 academic year.

The AA Book 2021 celebrates the depth of research and plurality of practice pursued at the Architectural Association (AA) during the 2020-21 academic year. The publication features hundreds of projects by students from every unit and program within the school, which together document the AA as an environment where architecture is investigated as a form of knowledge that aims to address the most urgent questions we face in contemporary society. The work featured within this book is the outcome of circumstances that have challenged the entire school community over the past year; to rethink how designers approach the environment, to reinvent practice so that we can address societal inequality and to reconsider how our space can foster a sense of care. Collectively, these reimagined buildings, reconceptualized cities and regenerated landscapes seek to establish a future that is more sustainable, equitable and democratic. Complementing these projects are a series of thoughts and provocations that

25,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Pocket Books

Pocket books that you can take anywhere Architecture through Digital The Total Designer Projectiles (Architecture Words 6) Architecture on Display Architecture on Display: On the History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture Future Tempos Italy and Brasil Inspiration Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy Light & Space The House of Light and Entropy (Architecture Words 11) The Empty Room Tectonics Tectonic Acts of Desire and Doubt (Architecture Words 9) Modernity Unbound (Architecture Words 7)

159,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Tales from the Dark Side-Col. (6 Vol.)

Unknown FieldsU.F. ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion

Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. The series includes stories developed from expeditions through Bolivia and the Atacama Desert, the Western Australian Outback, the South China Sea and Inner Mongolia, the gemfields of Madagascar,

54,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Cedric Price Works 1952–2003

Samantha HardinghamA Forward-Minded Retrospective by Samantha Hardingham is a two-volume anthology,

A Forward Minded Retrospective Cedric Price Works 1952-2003: A Forward-Minded Retrospective by Samantha Hardingham is a two-volume anthology, co-published by the Architectural Association (AA) and the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), and is supported by the Graham Foundation and the Cedric Price Estate. The books bring together for the first time all of the projects, articles and talks of British architect Cedric Price, aiming to present his munificence as thinker, philosopher and designer. A student at the AA in the 1950s, Price established his office in London in 1960 and went on to produce some of architecture's most intensely imaginative and experimental projects of the latter half of the 20th century. His work is central in defining architectural discourse around the emerging postwar themes of mobility and indeterminacy in design. With the contributions of Eleanor Bron, Brett Steele, Mirko Zardini Supported by The Cedric Price Estate and The Graham Foundation, 2016. Recipient of The Festival

300,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Colquhounery: Alan Colquhoun from Bricolage to Myth

Irina DavidoviciColquhounery is a commemorative volume celebrating the life and work of the architect and architectural historian Alan Colquhoun, who died in December 2012.

Irina Davidovici (ed.) Colquhounery is a commemorative volume celebrating the life and work of the architect and architectural historian Alan Colquhoun, who died in December 2012. Testimonials from friends, colleagues and students are gathered together alongside original photographs, sketches, letter transcripts, biographical and archival data tracing Colquhoun's career as an architect, writer and educator on both sides of the Atlantic. This anthology represents a collective effort to remember the work and the man responsible for some of the most penetrating and clear sighted architectural criticism of the last 60 years.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Snowing in the Supercomputer

Unknown FieldsFor Snowing in the Supercomputer Unknown Fields locate the environmental forecasts and data landscapes of the city and travel to Alaska’s far north

Far North Alaska Expedition Unknown fields Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the CityÂ is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. For Snowing in the Supercomputer Unknown Fields locate the environmental forecasts and data landscapes of the city and travel to Alaska's far north, to

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

The Breastmilk of the Volcano

Unknown FieldsOver half of the world’s reserves of lithium – a key ingredient in batteries – lie under the ethereal inverted skies of the Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia

Bolivia and the Atacama Desert Expedition Unknown fields Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. Over half of the world's reserves of lithium - a key ingredient in batteries - lie under the ethereal inverted skies of

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Never Never Lands

Unknown FieldsIn Never Never Lands Unknown Fields chronicle the creation stories of the city and head off on a dust-blown road trip across Australia

Western Australian Outback Expedition Unknown fields Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. In Never Never Lands Unknown Fields chronicle the creation stories of the city and head off on a dust-blown road trip across Australia, into the

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Treasured Island

Unknown FieldsIn Treasured Island Unknown Fields travels through Madagascar to catalogue the push and pull of economy and ecology and meet the illegal traders of the world’s luxury brands

Madagascar Expedition Unknown fields Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. In Treasured Island Unknown Fields travels through Madagascar to catalogue the push and pull of economy and ecology and meet the illegal traders of the world's

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

High Strange

Unknown FieldsTo chart the black sites of the Unknown Fields city the studio commandeers an old US school bus and heads off on a reconnaissance trip through fenced-off folkloric landscapes of the United States.

United States Black Sites Expedition Unknown fields Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. To chart the black sites of the Unknown Fields city the studio commandeers an old US school bus and heads off on a

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

A World Adrift

Unknown FieldsThis book is a collection of conversations and images from Unknown Fields’ journey.

South China Sea and Inner Mongolia Expedition Unknown fields Unknown Fields is a nomadic design studio that ventures out on expeditions into the shadows cast by the contemporary city, to uncover the industrial ecologies and precarious wilderness its technology and culture set in motion. Tales from the Dark Side of the City is a book series that forms an atlas to the territories and stories of a city that stretches across the entire planet, a city that sits between documentary and fiction, a city of dislocated sites, of drone footage and hidden-camera investigations, of interviews and speculative narratives, of toxic objects and distributed matter from distant grounds. They are a collection of tales from the constellation of elsewheres that are conjured into being by the city's wants and needs, fears and dreams. For A World Adrift Unknown Fields travel through Asia and beyond, tracing the shadows of the world's desires along the

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files X

Bodo Neuss, Jane Wong, Mads Bjørn Christansen, Emily PriestPresented in facsimile, AA Files X revisits the voices, ideas, drawings and designs that have filled its pages for nearly  four decades.

AA Files X Even the most casual visitor to the AA’s club-liked premises at Bedford Square where the school, the London and International networks make contact in a series of elegant eighteenth-century public rooms, cannot but be caught up in the momentum of the daily events which have made the AA a centre for the public discussion and display of architecture on a unique and unprecedented scale. Unfortunately, until the advent AA Files,’ writes AA Chairman Alvin Boyarsky in 1981 in the opening pages of the first issue of the long-running journal, ‘few glimpses have been available and certainly no documents exist recording aspects of this all-important phenomenon.’ In this student-edited issue AA Files 76 looks back on 37 years of not only glimpsing architecture as it happened at the AA, but also of writing about architecture and, through the idiosyncrasies, interests and generosity of its authors and editors, extending those

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files Conversations

Léon Krier, John Winter, Mario Botta, Robin MiddletonThis volume collates conversations from the past ten issues of AA Files, the long-running journal published by the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Léon Krier , John Winter,Mario Botta, Robin Middleton Thomas Weaver (ed.) This volume - the first in an anticipated series of similar anthologies - collates conversations from the past ten issues of AA Files, the long-running journal published by the Architectural Association School of Architecture. It includes extended interviews with architects François Dallegret, Léon Krier, John Winter, Mario Botta, John Frazer, Massimo Scolari, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Moshe Safdie, artists Richard Wentworth and Thomas Demand, film maker Sally Potter, philosopher Paul Virilio, historian Robin Middleton and photographers Tim Street-Porter and Hilla Becher.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Women in Architecture 1917-2017

Lynne Walker, Elizabeth DarlingOctober 2017 marks the centenary of the admission of the first female students to the Architectural Association.

October 2017 marks the centenary of the admission of the first female students to the Architectural Association. Published to coincide with a symposium, exhibition and series of talks all celebrating this event, AA Women in Architecture puts forward the stories of women who have entered the architectural profession and their contributions to architectural practice and education.

40,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

An Anatomy of influence

Thomas DaniellAn Anatomy of Influence contains a wealth of texts and images that together elucidate the theory and practice of 12 leading Japanese architects

An Anatomy of influence Written by Thomas Daniell, with a foreword by Thomas Weaver and an afterword by Peter Cook, An Anatomy of Influence contains a wealth of texts and images that together elucidate the theory and practice of 12 leading Japanese architects. Rather than the usual array of exquisite yet autonomous buildings, this book focuses on the hitherto unexplored lives of their architects, and the febrile intellectual, social and political environment in whichthey worked. The period covered spans from the postwar decades up to the present day, but the emphasis is on the radical transformation of Japan’s architectural culture that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s: from envisioning rigorously systematised urban plans to creating introverted private houses, from the imitation of western modernism to the study of non-western vernaculars, from the ruthless demolition of historical buildings to the documentation of forgotten objects, from rigid authorial control to flexible user participation,

51,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Auto-Destructive Art

Gustav MetzgerAuto-destructive art is a comprehensive theory for action in the field of the plastic arts in the post-second world war period.

Metzger at AA Gustav Metzger 'Auto-destructive art is a comprehensive theory for action in the field of the plastic arts in the post-second world war period. The action is not limited to theory of art and the production of art works. It includes social action. Auto-destructive art is committed to a left-wing revolutionary position in politics, and to struggles against future wars.' Facsimile edition of a lecture transcript given by German-born artist Gustav Metzger at the Architectural Association in February 1965. This new edition is published 50 years on since its original printing in June 1965 by the AA's Action Communications Centre (A.C.C), reigniting Metzger's urgent and ever-relevant arguments which confront society's obsession with destruction and the detrimental effects of machinery on human life.'

13,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Enabling

Theodore & Stephen SpyropoulosThis book highlights the work of the design and architecture practice Minimaforms, founded in 2002 by brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos.

The Work of Minimaforms Theodore and Stephen Spyropoulos This book highlights the work of the design and architecture practice Minimaforms, founded in 2002 by brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos. The practice has developed a diverse body of work that explores new forms of communication through correlated systems of interaction. Beyond style, the work moves away from the object towards behavioural models stimulated through participation and interaction. Using installations as a primary mode of research, the studio creates public performance-based interventions that engage material and social interaction. The book features recent work developed in collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko (a vehicle for veterans), a pavilion produced with the performance artist Stelarc, a video piece with Warp recording artist Mira Calix and Minimaforms critically acclaimed light installation in Trafalgar Square, Memory Cloud. Accompanying the projects will be texts by Archigram's David Greene, Stelarc and Krzysztof Wodiczko

27,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Fieldwork, The Complete Reader

Sixty-six objects from Ryan Gander’s collection make up his major new works Fieldwork 2015 (2015) and Fieldwork 2016 (2016)Ryan Gander

Ryan Gander Sixty-six objects from Ryan Gander's collection make up his major new works Fieldwork 2015 (2015) and Fieldwork 2016 (2016). Each object passes by a window, one after another, on a constantly looping conveyor belt. A National Trust sign protecting 'Culturefield', a chess set, a pair of dead pigeons, a kitchen sink. Found, fabricated, everyday and exceptional, these objects may represent the richness of our existence, mapping its totality one object at a time. Through this work and a series of writings, Fieldwork serves as a reader to Gander's on-going and ever-evolving practice. Using installations as a primary mode of research, the studio creates public performance-based interventions that engage material and social interaction. The book features recent work developed in collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko (a vehicle for veterans), a pavilion produced with the performance artist Stelarc, a video piece with Warp recording artist Mira Calix and Minimaforms critically acclaimed light installation

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

In Progress: The IID Summer Sessions

Brett Steele, Nicholas Boyarsky, Grahame Shane, Dennis CromptonThis book is the first to document the remarkable history of the International Institute of Design (IID), an independent school of architecture founded and directed by Alvin Boyarsky

Irene Sunwoo (ed.) Contributions by Brett Steele, Nicholas Boyarsky, Grahame Shane and Dennis Crompton. This book is the first to document the remarkable history of the International Institute of Design (IID), an independent school of architecture founded and directed by Alvin Boyarsky from 1970 – 72, and highlights a pivotal episode in the career of Boyarsky, best known for his subsequent role as chairman of the Architectural Association (1971 – 90). Launched in the wake of the institutional upheavals that had swept schools of architecture during the late 1960s, the IID introduced an alternative model of architectural instruction: one that brought together a range of teaching methods, design strategies, theories and projects alongside an international assortment of protagonists. In Progress details this short-lived experiment through a trove of previously unpublished material, and reveals how three informal architectural gatherings, held over three successive summers, can be seen to have established not only a

Buy Book

Natasha Sandmeier (ed.) Little Worlds documents three years of conversations and projects in Diploma Unit 9's ongoing enquiry into context. At a time when architecture is trying to redefine itself, the issue of context –how to collect it, make it, shape it, talk about it, and enter one's architecture within it –is more pressing than ever. The book pulls together a collection of utterly unique and singular worlds that together argue for a positioning of architecture: not geographically, but rather set within its rich cultural context shaped by real histories and imagined futures. Ultimately, Little Worlds addresses a question all architects face at the beginning of their bright futures– how to shape an identity.

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Memo For Nemo

William FirebraceMemo for Nemo is an account of the human inhabitation of the undersea, in fact and fiction

William Firebrace Memo for Nemo is an account of the human inhabitation of the undersea, in fact and fiction. It takes as its starting point Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, with the Nautilus submarine and its captain Nemo –inventor, explorer, oceanologist, gastronome, musician and terrorist. The undersea is examined as a zone created both by exploration and invention, from the earliest attempts to photograph and descend into the depths with deep-sea devices, through the 1960s experiments and actual inhabitation, such as the US Sealab and Cousteau's Conshelf, to contemporary surveillance of the rapidly changing oceans. This history is paralleled and subverted by a fictitious history of films such as The Abyss, The Life Aquatic, Das Boot, Bioshock, Fantastic Voyage and other hallucinogenic delights.

25,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Didier Fiuza Faustino: Misarchitectures

Brett Steele, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Steven Matijcio, Pedro Gadanho, Philippe VassetDidier Fiuza Faustino: Misarchitectures brings together for the first time the entire work of Didier Faustino and his office Bureau des Mesarchitectures

Brett Steele, Mathieu Potte-Bonneville, Steven Matijcio, Pedro Gadanho and Philippe Vasset. Didier Fiuza Faustino: Misarchitectures brings together for the first time the entire work of Didier Faustino and his office Bureau des Mesarchitectures. Through drawings, diagrams, photographs and essays this part-monograph part-manifesto explores the ideas that drive Faustino's architectural and artistic works: the political and ethical conditions for constructing sites and spaces within the socio-cultural layout of the city, and in particular how to critically approach the problem of the body in both private and public space. At the same time, the book revisits Faustino's projects –from sculptures and installations, to public art, architectures and books– up to his most recent work, offering new insight into the architect's perspective.

46,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Panel

Pedro Ignacio Alonso, Hugo PalmarolaThis book focuses on a particular aspect of history, namely those systems exported from Soviet Russia into Cuba and then on to Chile in the 1960s and 1970s.

Pedro Ignacio Alonso and Hugo Palmarola Although largely marginal within official accounts of modern architecture, during the second half of the twentieth century the development of large concrete panel systems was central to debates about architecture's modernisation and industrialisation. Through this development, not only was construction transferred from the building site to the factory floor, and manual labour succeeded by automated mass production, but political, aesthetic and ideological debates began to inscribe themselves onto the panel itself, a symbol for a whole new set of architectural values. Distributed and adapted to many different cultural, geographical and political contexts, these systems went beyond national borders in producing more than 170 million apartments worldwide. This book focuses on a particular aspect of this history, namely those systems exported from Soviet Russia into Cuba and then on to Chile in the 1960s and 1970s. Written from the point of view of the worker as

40,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Paradise Lost

Mark CampbellThis book explores the notion of architectural obsolescence through a study of the contemporary United States.

Mark Campbell This book explores the notion of architectural obsolescence through a study of the contemporary United States. While the US was the world's greatest economic, scientific and cultural force during the twentieth century, it now appears to be obsessed with its own decline. In this obsession the changing patterns of consumption and demand often result in an architectural redundancy where buildings exist as a form of by-product or residue. While our stereotypical image of the US reflects the heroic potential of production, this book examines the opposite - of that which isn't work. Or, more pointedly, those abandoned pleasures and lost paradises that remain when there is no longer any work left to define them.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Practice of place

Emma Smith, Can Altay, Dennis Atkinson, Ricardo Basbaum, Janna Graham and othersPractice of Place explores the role of social and participatory art practices to consider the contribution of artist and gallery

Emma Smith Contributions by Can Altay, Dennis Atkinson, Ricardo Basbaum, Janna Graham, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Annette Krauss, Maria Lind, Ute Meta Bauer, Christian Nyampeta, Emily Pethick, Filipa Ramos, Louise Shelley, Eva Wisniewska and others Practice of Place explores the role of social and participatory art practices to consider the contribution of artist and gallery. Proposing present-tense practices including collaboration, commitment, imagination, play, forgiveness, reflexivity and trust, the book looks at the potential for tactics over strategy as a mode of being in place. Texts ask how we might consider this theory in relation to the gallery as a bordered space, both physical and imagined.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Adaptive Ecologies

Theodore SpyropoulosAdaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living examines computational frameworks that explore a time-based poly-scalar urbanism.

Theodore Spyropoulos Adaptive Ecologies: Correlated Systems of Living examines computational frameworks that explore a time-based poly-scalar urbanism. The publication includes essays by Mark Burry, Brett Steele, John Frazer, John Henry Holland, Makoto Sei Watanabe, Patrick Schumacher, and David Ruy. Architecture finds itself having to cope with new social and cultural complexities that demand systems that are open, adaptive and participatory. The book explores organisational systems that examine a model of collective living constructed as an evolving ecology. As a response to models of accelerated urbanism that privilege top down master planning the book explores experimentation that examines a generative and time-based approach towards a computational urbanism. The research conducted by AADRL Director Theodore Spyropoulos with his research lab explores a pattern logic that is poly-scalar, allowing bio-diverse patterns to operate between urban, building and material agency. The model of architecture and urbanism speculated here is not one embedded in a blueprint as

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Rituals and Walls: The Architecture of Sacred Space

Pier Vittorio Aureli, Maria Shéhérazade GiudiciIn recent years the idea of sacred space has not been considered a relevant topic in contemporary architecture, a neglect that is even more pronounced in terms of debates about the city

Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Shéhérazade Giudici In recent years the idea of sacred space has not been considered a relevant topic in contemporary architecture, a neglect that is even more pronounced in terms of debates about the city. The texts and projects collected together in this book aim to redress this oversight, and re-open a contemporary understanding and discussion of the architecture of sacred space. The book itself is the result of a year-long investigation on the nature of sacred space and its manifestation developed in the AA's Diploma Unit 14. It consists of design proposals that range from a multi-faith school in Strasbourg to the reconstruction of a festival hall in the city of Xian, China; from a Jesuit monastery in Detroit to a women's Islamic centre in Paris. Each proposal is introduced by critical texts that analyse the political and ideological meaning of religious architecture. The book is

35,00€

Quickview

Small Architecture / Natural Architecture

Kengo KumaThis two-volume set of essays by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma offers an overview of his key built works and gives insight into his ideas about architecture

Kengo Kuma Translated by Alfred Birnbaum with an introduction by Thomas Daniell This two-volume set of essays by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma offers an overview of his key built works and gives insight into his ideas about architecture. Until now available only in Japanese, this edition comprises a lucid theoretical manifesto for humble, sustainable architecture that is sensitive to materials and to place. Written in the wake of the 2011 tsunami which devastated parts of northern Japan, the essays take on a particular poignancy. Each book features a signature of original drawings produced by Kengo Kuma especially for this English-language release.

Quickview

Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy

Peter WilsonIts content here offers an eclectic and idiosyncratic list of assorted reasons to head south, richly illustrated by Wilson’s own drawings and watercolours

Peter Wilson Italian cities have been points of reference for much of architect Peter Wilson's professional life and the many reasons for visiting the country have long presented themselves as not just the easy list –holidays, food, architecture and culture. The grand tour is the most obvious of tropes for framing these things, but it can also serve as a useful vehicle for a more ingrained understanding into Italy's wider architectural habitat and cultural mythology. This book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same title at the AA School in 2016, appears in the form of a latter-day Baedeker. But rather than a pragmatic itinerary, its content here offers an eclectic and idiosyncratic list of assorted reasons to head south, richly illustrated by Wilson's own drawings and watercolours. Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy refers not only to the pilgrimages of architects from Inigo Jones to Le Corbusier, but also those of the

25,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Space as Membrane

Siegfried Ebeling, Walter Scheiffele, Spyros PapapetrosThis book includes the full 1926 text by Ebeling, supplemented by critical essays by Walter Scheiffele and Spyros Papapetros with original drawings by Ebeling

Siegfried Ebeling, Walter Scheiffele and Spyros Papapetros This book includes the full 1926 text by Ebeling, supplemented by critical essays by Walter Scheiffele and Spyros Papapetros with original drawings by Ebeling, as well as a brief biography of the German architect. Translation by Pamela Johnston and Anna Kathryn Schoefert. With essays by Walter Scheiffele and Spyros Papapetros.What if architecture was no longer 3D or 2D, mass or surface, object or space? And what if the architectural environment was envisioned not as an abstract continuum, but as a material envelope that grows organically from the human body, uniting its skin with the periphery of a city, a region or a continent, and even the entire earthly atmosphere? Such a sprawling hypothesis informs the theoretical premise of the 1926 essay 'Space as Membrane', written by former Bauhaus student, architect and cosmological theorist Siegfried Ebeling. Read and praised by Mies van der Rohe, denounced by

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

The World of Madelon Vriesendorp

Beatriz Colomina, Douglas Coupland, Hubert Damisch, Teri Wehn-Damisch and othersThis book from AA Publications accompanied the exhibition curated by AACP director Shumon Basar and architect/theorist Stephan Trüby, and designed by Kasia Korczak.

This book from AA Publications accompanied the exhibition curated by AACP director Shumon Basar and architect/theorist Stephan Trüby, and designed by Kasia Korczak. The World of Madelon Vriesendorp reveals for the first time a significant, and nearly secret, corpus of work notable for its wild diversity. Though Vriesendorp is best known for her seminal cycle of anthropomorphic architectural paintings, her extensive 'art of generosity' embraces bad taste, pop, 'playground surrealism' and the touching beauty of culture's failed objects. Here, enlightenment emerges from distraction while seriousness must surrender to the non-serious. It includes an introduction by critic and collaborator Charles Jencks, conversations between Vriesendorp and historian Beatriz Colomina and cult novelist Douglas Coupland, a rumination by Hubert Damisch on Freud's London house and Vriesendorp's studio close by, Fenna Haakma Wagenaar on the 'productivity of distraction', a photo-essay by Charlie Koolhaas on her mother's house/studio, and Rem Koolhaas in a frank interview on origins, ambition

Quickview

Tectonic Acts of Desire & Doubt (Arch. Words 9)

Mark RakatanskyThis collection proposes an innovative framework for architecture to enact the complex tectonic dramas of social and culture space.

Mark Rakatansky This collection of a number of key essays by the New York-based architect and writer Mark Rakatansky proposes an innovative framework for architecture to enact the complex tectonic dramas of social and culture space. Following its title, the book is arrayed in three sections: Tectonic, Acts of, Desire and Doubt. In each, Rakatansky covers a series of subjects in a writerly voice that varies from the third-person narrative of the scholarly essays to the transcript of an email exchange with fellow academic Sarah Whiting discussing recent books by architect Greg Lynn. Transformational performances of architectural identity are explored in discussions of fabrication, social parametrics, building envelopes, spatial narratives, animation, migrancy, and in illuminating readings into the works of Louis Kahn, Robin Evans, John Coltrane, Giulio Romano and Andrea Palladio.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Projectiles (Arch. Words 6)

Bernard CacheA split between modern and historical realities – whether real, imagined, projected or fantasised – has long configured modern architectural cultur

Bernard Cache A split between modern and historical realities - whether real, imagined, projected or fantasised - has long configured modern architectural culture. The very construction of this division has proved a durable, near structural, means by which to assert the idea of a properly 'modern' architecture defined in opposition to the past. The writings of Bernard Cache confound exactly this attempt to divide and then distance the contemporary world from its history.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Modernity Unbound (Arch. Words 7)

Detlef MertinsThese essays elaborate on such key modernist tropes as transparency, glass architecture, organicism, life and event, sameness and difference.

Other Histories of Architectural Modernity Detlef Mertins These essays elaborate on such key modernist tropes as transparency, glass architecture, organicism, life and event, sameness and difference. Previously published in a variety of different venues, from journals to anthologies - including such noted books as Lars Spuybroek's NOX: Machining Architecture and FOA's Phylogenesis - they are now assembled for the first time in this volume.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

The House of Light and Entropy (Arch. Words 11)

Alessandra PonteAn investigation of the American obsession with lawns and then continues to collectively map the aesthetic, scientific and technological production of past and present North American landscapes.

Alessandra Ponte Written by landscape historian Alessandra Ponte, this collection of essays begins with an investigation of the American obsession with lawns and then continues to collectively map the aesthetic, scientific and technological production of past and present North American landscapes. These include the American desert as a privileged site of scientific and artistic testing; the faraway projects of electrification of the Canadian North; the transformation of the notion and perception of waste and wasteland during the twentieth century; the photographic medium and its encounters with Native Americans; as well as an introductory essay, 'The Map and the Territory', written specifically for this volume.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Stones Against Diamonds (Arch. Words 12)

Lina Bo BardiThis collection of essays is the first-ever English anthology of her writings

Lina Bo Bardi This collection of essays is the first-ever English anthology of her writings. It includes texts written when she was still living in Italy as well as later contributions to a number of Brazilian newspapers, journals and magazines. An acute critic and a creative thinker, Bo Bardi proposes a series of new parameters for design thinking and practice, such as the notions of 'historical present', 'roughness' and 'tolerance to imperfection'. Presented collectively, her texts present a wealth of inspirational thoughts articulated in a refreshingly simple, straightforward fashion.

Quickview

20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse

Kirk Wooller20/20 brings together editors from 20 leading contemporary architectural magazines to discuss collectively the role editors play in shaping architectural discourse

Kirk Wooller 20/20: Editorial Takes on Architectural Discourse brings together editors from 20 leading contemporary architectural magazines to discuss collectively the role editors play in shaping architectural discourse. Each of the contributors has responded to a set of 20 questions on the multiple conditions under which particular ideas and words enter architectural discourse through publication. The resulting critical positions and observations are as diverse as the magazines from which they originate, and range from the oldest student-edited journal (Perspecta) to a research collective that at the time of writing was on the cusp of being launched ([bracket]). 20/20 is a timely publication that provides today's architectural reader with concise viewpoints from the editors behind the magazines behind architectural culture. With the contribution of Neyran Turan See Preview on issuu

13,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Agendas 8: Nine Problems in the Form of a Pavilion

Alan Dempsey, Yusuke ObuchiFrom Mies van der Rohe’s 1929 Barcelona Pavilion to the Serpentine Gallery’s annual summer pavilions the production of pavilions has been at the forefront of architectural experimentation.

Alan Dempsey and Yusuke Obuchi (eds) From Mies van der Rohe's 1929 Barcelona Pavilion to the Serpentine Gallery's annual summer pavilions designed by architects such as Toyo Ito, Zaha Hadid and Rem Koolhaas, the production of pavilions has been at the forefront of architectural experimentation. Because of their temporary nature and loose functional requirements, pavilions can be realised as a pure expression of the way in which building materials are manufactured, organised, managed and assembled. People might not automatically categorise pavilions as great works of architecture, but they have nonetheless provided a vital platform for challenging current practice and making it evolve into the future. Created as part of the 2008 tenth anniversary celebrations of the Design Research Laboratory, the AA DRL TEN Pavilion is one of those built projects that push the conventions in architecture and structural engineering as well as the building materials industry. A fullscale construction built by

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Agendas 12: Drawings that Count

Mary Beard, Noam Andrews, David EdgertonThis collection of 60 large drawings produced over five years by AA Diploma 15 addresses the construction of context by architecture for its own very particular purposes.

Mary Beard, Noam Andrews, David Edgerton This collection of 60 large drawings produced over five years by AA Diploma 15 addresses the construction of context by architecture for its own very particular purposes. No architectural category is more fickle or more artificial than 'context'. A self-declared 'render-free zone', the unit's interrogations of architecture's seminal sites (antiquity, technology, the future and its proxies) examine the role of figuration and the exclusion of indeterminacy in the always already mediated question of context. Through the quiet business of counting, these line drawings –against the double ascendancy of parametricisation and the glossy rendered perspective– question architecture's ambivalent relations to the artifice it installs between itself and the outside world.

25,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 70

Tom WeaverAA Files 70 features contributions by Joseph Bedford, Jesús Vassallo, Andrew Leach among others

Tom Weaver (ed.) AA Files 70 features contributions by Joseph Bedford, Jesús Vassallo, Andrew Leach, Jean-Louis Cohen, Susan Holden, Enrique Walker, Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano, Dietrich Neumann, Juergen Schulz, Goswin Schwendinger, Gavin Stamp, Sam Jacob, David Jenkins, Paul Vermeulen, Diego Inglez de Souza, Irina Davidovici, Mark Swenarton, Thomas Weaver, Will McLean, Andrew Higgott, Nicolas Grospierre, Diane Ghirardo and Paul Mason.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 71

Tom WeaverAA Files 71 features essays and two conversations, the first with Irish-American architect Kevin Roche, and the second with the Japanese architect Hiroshi Hara

Tom Weaver (ed.) AA Files 71 features essays on Brunelleschi, by Pier Vittorio Aureli, on the Museum Insel Hombroich, by William Firebrace, on Louis Bonnier, possibly the most boring architect in nineteenth-century France, by Andri Gerber, on the relationship between the artist Joseph Beuys, the architect Hans Hollein and the curator Johannes Cladders, by Eva Branscome, and two conversations, the first with Irish-American architect Kevin Roche, and the second with the Japanese architect Hiroshi Hara.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 72

Tom WeaverAA Files 72 features contributions on Patrick Hodgkinson and essays and conversations

Tom Weaver (ed.) AA Files 72 features contributions by Davide Spina, Thomas Daniell, Itsuko Hasegawa, Mario Tedeschini-Lalli, Laurent Stalder & Moritz Gleich, Colin Rowe, Daniel Naegele, Irénée Scalbert, Peter St John, Silvia Micheli & Léa-Catherine Szacka, Paulo Berdini, Daniel Sherer, Hubert Damisch, Nicolas Kemper, Thomas Weaver, Alexander Brodsky, Emma Letizia Jones, Henrik Schoenefeldt and Max Moya.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 73

Tom WeaverAA Files 73 features contributions on Patrick Hodgkinson and essays and conversations

Tom Weaver (ed.) AA Files 73 features contributions on Patrick Hodgkinson and essays and conversations by Matthew Mullane, Mariana Siracusa, Eva Branscome, Nicholas Olsberg, Mike Dempsey, Helen Thomas, Thomas Weaver, Jonathan Sergison, Alberto Ponis, Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Fabrizio Ballabio & Alessandro Conti, Marrikka Trotter, Hans Frei, Gabriela García de Cortázar, Ida Jager, Alex Schweder & Ward Shelley

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 74

Tom WeaverAA Files 74 features essays, a personal reminiscence by Joseph Rykwert, a recipe by Chris Behr, and two conversations

Tom Weaver (ed.) AA Files 74 features essays by Peter Wilson, William Firebrace, Michael Hill, Dietrich Neumann, Dagmar Motycka Weston, Simona Ferrari & Wataru Sawada, Christophe Van Gerrewey, Charles Rice & Kenny Cupers, Tim Benton, Andrew Crompton, Davide Spina, Nicholas de Monchaux and Cynthia Davidson, a personal reminiscence by Joseph Rykwert, a recipe by Chris Behr, and two conversations, the first with Kate Macintosh, the second with Peter Eisenman.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 75

Tom WeaverAA Files 75 features essays, together with a personal reminiscence by Nigel Coates and a conversation between Thomas Daniell and Shin Takamatsu.

Tom Weaver (ed.) AA Files 75 features essays by Freya Wigzell, Kristina Jaspers, Claire Zimmerman, Laila Seewang, Roberta Marcaccio, Rebecca Siefert, Shantel Blakely, Francesco Zuddas, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Francisco González de Canales, Ross Anderson, Salomon Frausto, Theo Crosby, Marco Biraghi and Zoë Slutzky, together with a personal reminiscence by Nigel Coates and a conversation between Thomas Daniell and Shin Takamatsu.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 76

Maria Shéhérazade GiudiciAA Files 76 is structured as a glossary of terms relevant to contemporary debate in architecture.

Maria Shéhérazade Giudici (ed.) AA Files 76 is structured as a glossary of terms relevant to contemporary debate in architecture. Each entry has been contributed by a different author, and represents a personal position as much as an attempt to frame the topic in a broader context; the issue therefore maps both a landscape of current concerns, interests, and ambitions, and also an overview of diverse positions and forms of practice. The authors of this glossary are practitioners, academics, students, lawyers, politicians, activists, and their contributions do not only seek to explore the potential of the themes put forward, but also to question the ways in which we can discuss space –as designers, as scholars, as citizens.

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Files 77

Maria Shéhérazade GiudiciThe Architectural Association’s journal of record and offers a platform for exchange connecting the research produced by the AA community to a larger architectural debate globally

Maria Sheherazade Giudici AA Files is the Architectural Association's journal of record and offers a platform for exchange connecting the research produced by the AA community to a larger architectural debate globally. Organised in a series of thematic sections that emerged from the AA Files Issue 76 Glossary, each 'file' contains two or more contributions that explore a common keyword constructing a dialogue between a heterogeneous set of authors with the aim to reframe architecture as a critical point of entry through which the most urgent social and environmental questions of today can be addressed. In Issue 77, the themes are Body, Care, Economy, Environment, Labour, Project and Resistance. A special feature 'file' on Home gathers ten perspectives on domestic living during lockdown from Mexico City to Teheran, while ARÓ (Allies Against Discrimination and Disparity) writes on four keywords that have beed added to our AA Files Glossary: Afrofuturism, Exile, Third

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Alejandro de la Sota

Alejandro de la SotaThis publication traces de la Sota’s influence on Spain’s contemporary culture of architecture through essays and a visual presentation of his most significant projects

An Architecture of Imperfection Alejandro de la Sota Alejandro de la Sota was born in 1913, and so belongs to the same generation as Jorn Utzon, Denys Lasdun, Aldo van Eyck and Jose Maria Coderch. But it is only in recent years that his work has become known outside Spain. It is an oeuvre of impressive consistency, combining a naked abstraction with a rigorous interest in the character of materials. While Sota clearly drew many lessons from the modern masters –from Mies in particular– he also defined a language with an internal momentum of its own. This publication traces de la Sota's influence on Spain's contemporary culture of architecture through essays and a visual presentation of his most significant projects, including the Maravillas Gymnasium in Madrid and the Civil Government building in Tarragona.

15,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Any Part, Any Form

Radim PeškoAny Part, Any Form is a follow-up to London-based graphic designer Radim Peško’s Informal Meetings (2010), a collection of photographs made during travels and wanderings to different places.

Radim Peško Any Part, Any Form is a follow-up to London-based graphic designer Radim Peško's Informal Meetings (2010), a collection of photographs made during travels and wanderings to different places. This volume brings back found compositions and situations where seemingly unremarkable encounters between space, architecture and water suggest their own stories.

13,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Architecture on Display

Aaron Levy, William MenkingArchitecture on Display is a research initiative by Aaron Levy and William Menking that consists of interviews with each of the living directors of the Venice Biennale for Architecture.

On the History of the Venice Biennale of Architecture Aaron Levy and William Menking Architecture on Display is a research initiative by Aaron Levy and William Menking that consists of interviews with each of the living directors of the Venice Biennale for Architecture. The origins of the architecture biennale are generally traced to the 1970s, when it emerged from under the umbrella of the larger Venice Biennale, which was itself established in 1895. Since then it has become one of the most prestigious forums for architectural discourse today, and has served as a model for a range of international exhibitions. The book explores the biennale through the directors who established its particular discourse, including Vittorio Gregotti, Paolo Portoghesi, Francesco Dal Co, Kurt W Forster, Massimiliano Fuksas, Hans Hollein, Richard Burdett, Deyan Sudjic, Aaron Betsky and Kazuyo Sejima, as well as the current president of the Venice Biennale, Paolo Barrata. These conversations do

10,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Berlin Free University

Gabriel FeldTransgressing the distinct boundaries of architecture and urbanism, Berlin Free University is a unique imagination of what a building might be

Gabriel Feld Transgressing the distinct boundaries of architecture and urbanism, Berlin Free University is a unique imagination of what a building might be –a building designed to function as a piece of the city, adapting to the needs of its users while generating opportunities for social interaction. The university offers a window into the politicized and optimistic discourse of the 1960s and 1970s, but it also illuminates contemporary debates around large projects of infrastructure and public space. It is, in the words of Peter Smithson, 'one of the two critical building-events of the second half of this century'. The publication contains specially commissioned photographs, archive material, construction details and plans. The visual survey is completed by essays that describe the building's conception and system of construction, and analyse the reasons for its enduring importance.

13,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Beyond Entropy

Stefano Rabol PanseraThis book marks the conclusion of the AA School’s Beyond Entropy research cluster, and is produced in tandem with an exhibition on show at the AA in May 2011.

When Energy Becomes Form Stefano Rabolli Pansera This book marks the conclusion of the AA School's Beyond Entropy research cluster, and is produced in tandem with an exhibition on show at the AA in May 2011.The theme of the book derives from the urgency with which the idea of energy has been raised in recent years in political, economic and scientific debates. The book charts the efforts of architects to reappropriate this theme and to address the debate in a wider cultural sphere.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Beyond the Minimal

Otto KapfingerBeyond the Minimal presents four of the most interesting practices in Austria today: Artec, Adolf Krischanitz, PauHof and Riegler-Riewe

Author: Otto Kapfinger Beyond the Minimal presents four of the most interesting practices in Austria today: Artec, Adolf Krischanitz, PauHof and Riegler-Riewe. Certain qualities of formal reduction are evident in the work of all four architects, but none of them equates minimalism with negation or absence, in the sense that the term has been used in writings on architecture. They have been brought together because of the affinities in their approach –their common interest in materials, structure and the contribution of the building to the larger environment. Each practice is represented by a survey of around a dozen projects, including houses, schools, offices and exhibition pavilions. The survey is complemented by texts that link the work to broader developments in European (particularly Swiss) architecture.

13,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Manifest Destiny

Jason GriffithsOn 18 October 2002 Jason Griffiths and Alex Gino set out to explore the American suburbs. Over 178 days they drove 22,383 miles, made 134 suburban house calls and took 2,593 photographs.

A Guide to the Essential Indifference of American Suburban Housing Jason Griffiths On 18 October 2002 Jason Griffiths and Alex Gino set out to explore the American suburbs. Over 178 days they drove 22,383 miles, made 134 suburban house calls and took 2,593 photographs. In Manifest Destiny, Griffiths reveals the results of this exploration. Structured through 58 short chapters, the anthology offers an architectural pattern book of suburban conditions all focused not on the unique or specific but the placeless. These chapters are complemented by an introduction by Griffiths and an afterword by Swiss architectural historian Martino Stierli.

22,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Double or Nothing: 51N4E

51N4E51N4E is a Brussels-based architectural practice led by Johan Anrys, Freek Persyn and Peter Swinnen

Author: 51N4E 51N4E is a Brussels-based architectural practice led by Johan Anrys, Freek Persyn and Peter Swinnen. Founded in 1998, it has drawn increasing attention and renown through projects for the C-mine cultural centre in Genk, the Groeningemuseum and the TID Tower and Skanderbeg Square both in Tirana, Albania. This book, accompanying an exhibition on the practice at the Architectural Association, features these and 17 other projects alongside essays by Lars Lerup, Dominique Boudet and Stefan Devoldere.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

DRL Ten

Tom VerebesDRL TEN evaluates the first decade of the AA’s acclaimed post-professional masters programme in architecture and urbanism, the Design Research Lab

A Design Research Compendium Tom Verebes DRL TEN evaluates the first decade of the AA's acclaimed post-professional masters programme in architecture and urbanism, the Design Research Lab. Since 1997 the programme has championed a project-based and research-driven approach to design, continually reinventing itself across successive design research agendas. The book reflects upon the DRL;s collaborative teaching and learning methods, which have contributed to the wholesale re-formulation of contemporary architectural practice during a decade in which digital communication, information, design and production technologies have gone from being nascent and emerging to being embedded in new forms of networked architectural education and practice. Understanding this (r)evolution is fundamental to the DRL's pursuit of innovation and the role design research plays in contemporary design culture. The structure of this book elaborates on how the programme has evolved the terms of design as a form of research over the last decade, with chapters focusing on the

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Exhibition Prosthetics

Joseph GrigelyExhibition Prosthetics by Joseph Grigely explores the artist’s use of language and images as a means of representation that further the reach of the real.

Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Zak Kyes Joseph Grigely Exhibition Prosthetics by Joseph Grigely explores the artist's use of language and images as a means of representation that further the reach of the real. Grigely uses the term 'exhibition prosthetics' to describe an array of these conventions, particularly (but not exclusively) in relation to exhibition practices. Exhibition Prosthetics is the first in the Bedford Press Editions series of artist's books edited by Zak Kyes. The series will engage with publications as a primary medium of practice, enabling artists to explore the inherent constraints and possibilities of the printed document.

13,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Glass Ramps/Glass Wall

Bernard TschumiGlass Ramps/Glass Wall documents in full the making of this complex building, from early concept sketches to structural diagrams and final construction photos.

Deviations from the Normative: Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University Bernard Tschumi Tschumi's Alfred Lerner Hall is a turbulent mixture of the conventional and the innovative. Its opaque, masonry-clad wings respond to the traditional materials and massing of the Columbia University campus, while its transparently clad middle develops as a spectacular multitiered system of glass ramps. Designed in collaboration with a team of engineers, including Hugh Dutton, the glass ramps and the glass wall are intersupporting. Together they form a central hub of circulation, an event space that registers the dilation and contraction of structural and social flows. In the words of Jesse Reiser, Alfred Lerner Hall 'signals a crucial turning point in Tschumi's oeuvre. While a legacy of built and unbuilt works beginning with the Manhattan Transcripts prioritized the programmatic as an irreducible condition to architecture, Lerner Hall inverts this logic, foregrounding physicality instead.' Glass Ramps/Glass Wall documents in full the making of

10,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

God & Co

François Dallegret, Lauren Stalder, Thomas WeaverGod & Co is published to accompany the exhibition of the work of the French Montreal-based artist and architect François Dallegret

François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble François Dallegret, Lauren Stalder, Thomas Weaver God & Co is published to accompany the exhibition of the work of the French Montreal-based artist and architect François Dallegret (1937â) .Dallegret's own life and work denies anything so predictable as a neat synopsis, but in essence his work, beginning in Paris in the late 1950s and early 60s, and later taking in New York and Montreal, absorbs everything from intricate line drawings for a series of astrological vehicles and designs for a number of machines (from those that assist in cooking a meal to others that generate literature) to the 'A Home Is Not a House' collaboration with the critic Reyner Banham; a drugstore/gallery in Montreal; proposals for a new Montreal Palais Metro; designs for chairs, more cars and yet more machines; a film collaborative set up to shoot a western; contributions to the Montreal 67 Expo; engraved bars

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

In Search of a Forgotten Architect

Lilly DubowitzThe book gives a compelling account of the gradual elucidation of a once forgotten architect.

Lilly Dubowitz Stefan Sebök was a Hungarian-born architect who worked with Walter Gropius in Dessau and Berlin in the late 1920s. The book is the result of the research of Sebök's niece, Lilly Dubowitz, who has meticulously pieced together clues and details of her uncle's life. He went on to work with fellow Hungarian emigré László Moholy-Nagy on his famous Light Prop, and later still moved to the Soviet Union to work with the constructivist architects Ginzburg, the Vesnin brothers and El Lissitzky. In between he carried out numerous projects of his own and found himself central to a key generation of emerging modern architects in Dresden, Berlin and Moscow. The book gives a compelling account of the gradual elucidation of a once forgotten architect. The text is accompanied not only by numerous illustrations of Sebök's design work, but by essays on the Hungarian and Soviet context by historians Eva Forgacs and

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Inventory Arousal

James Hoff, Danny SnelsonIn February 2008, James Hoff delivered a lecture on minor history in Oslo, Norway.

James Hoff, Danny Snelson In February 2008, James Hoff delivered a lecture on minor history in Oslo, Norway. His lecture arranged rare publications, ephemeral artworks, and the history of concept in writing and the arts within a dense mesh of anecdotal relations. There was no set agenda or prefigured instructions for the material that would or wouldn't be used. Instead, the lecture responded to hundreds of images and hours of artists' curated video - improvising an anectodal narrative while browsing through digital artifacts. Explring the commingled archive or artwork, publication, and recording, Hoff arguies for the ways in which minor histories function as primary information while secondary information becomes the source material for primary history. Given the nature and content of this improvisational lecture, Danny Snelson mirrored the spoken performance with a coterminous transcription 5,220 miles away in Tokyo, Japan.

9,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

MacLean 705

Joseph GrigelyMacLean 705 documents an exhibition in twelve parts, organised by artist Joseph Grigely between November 2011 and December 2012

Joseph Grigely (ed.) MacLean 705 documents an exhibition in twelve parts, organised by artist Joseph Grigely between November 2011 and December 2012, within MacLean 705, a small office atrium at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Twelve collaborators took part in this incremental exhibition, with each successive contribution, consisting of one work, adding to existing work, thereby unfolding a set of intertextual relations with each new installation.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Agendas 9:Making Pavilions

Martin Self , Charles WalkerOver the past six years the students of the Architectural Association’s Intermediate Unit 2 have designed and built a series of experimental pavilions.

Martin Self , Charles Walker (eds.) Over the past six years the students of the Architectural Association's Intermediate Unit 2 have designed and built a series of experimental pavilions. Structured to follow a year in the life of the unit, this book presents the processes of the pavilions' design and production, from concept ideas to workshop fabrication. Essays by the unit's tutors, Charles Walker and Martin Self, explain the ambitions and pedagogic basis of the programme, rooted in the idea of experiential learning. Through the voices of students, tutors and anonymous critics, both the educational validity of this innovative design-build programme and its architectural output is explored.

35,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Marseille Mix

William FirebraceMarseille Mix describes the city of Marseille, its culture, buildings, gastronomy, cinematic images, history, planning, language, music, detective stories, criminology.

William Firebrace Marseille Mix describes the city of Marseille, its culture, buildings, gastronomy, cinematic images, history, planning, language, music, detective stories, criminology. These aspects of the city interrelate and overlap, to create a complex ever shifting image. In seven chapters (in reference to the seven hills surrounding Marseille and the seven seas to the south) the book uses various forms of writing –essay, narrative, description, list, recipe, glossary, conversation– to examine the city and investigate its defining mix.

22,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

AA Agendas 11: Mediating Architecture

Theo Lorenz, Peter StaubMediating Architecture demonstrates the extended role of the architect through the applied work of AA’s Diploma Unit 14 within London’s Thames Gateway over three consecutive years.

Theo Lorenz, Peter Staub (eds.) Given today's multitude of demands on the built environment, the role of the architect has extended from being a mere designer and builder to acting as a mediator within a much larger network of expertise. This mediation takes place on multiple levels –within the building industry, between public, clients and designers, and between public, clients and designers, and between the actual design and its environment. To achieve this, the field of work, the tools of design and the representation of architects needs to develop. The architect has to design the design process itself. Mediating Architecture demonstrates the extended role of the architect through the applied work of AA's Diploma Unit 14 within London's Thames Gateway over three consecutive years. A series of essays reflect this methodology from the multi-disciplinary perspectives of architecture, urban design, landscape design and philosophy.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

O-14: Projection and Reception

Reiser UmemotoO-14: Projection and Reception explores the groundbreaking exo-skeleton office tower in Dubai by New York-based architects, Reiser Umemoto.

Reiser Umemoto O-14: Projection and Reception explores the groundbreaking exo-skeleton office tower in Dubai by New York-based architects, Reiser Umemoto. This monograph will not only provide exhaustive documentation of O-14's design and construction but delves further into the complex interrelationships this architectural model weaves between technology, expression and politics in the context of the 'nowhere place' of the global city. The book is both an account of a design's realisation and a manifesto, and contains Jesse Reiser's explanatory and theoretical texts on the tower as well as a number of critical essays.

46,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

One Million Acres & No Zoning

Lars LerupRoutinely dismissed as ‘mere sprawl’, the suburban city is the black hole of recent urbanism, absorbing human energy and resources but seldom revealing the principles of its operation.

Lars Lerup Routinely dismissed as 'mere sprawl', the suburban city is the black hole of recent urbanism, absorbing human energy and resources but seldom revealing the principles of its operation. For the past 20 years Lars Lerup has explored Houston as its prototype. In this book he broadly approaches this complex conurbation so as to develop a vocabulary to interpret its urban forms. Loved by its inhabitants, defined by huge potential and difficult problems, Lerup's Houston is a test-case for twenty-first-century urbanism and our understanding of unregulated cities everywhere.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Public Occasion Agency 1–22

Scrap Marshall, Jan Peter NautaThe book is a collection of fragmented documents: previews, photographs, ephemera, reviews, reflections and opinions collated from the first twenty-two POA events

Scrap Marshall, Jan Peter Nauta (eds.) POA 1–22 is part of the ongoing archive of activities conducted by the independent event bureau Public Occasion Agency (POA), founded by Jan Nauta and Scrap Marshall at the Architectural Association in 2009. The book is a collection of fragmented documents: previews, photographs, ephemera, reviews, reflections and opinions collated from the first twenty-two POA events. Critical and inquisitive, personal and probing contributions from a variety of authors from across fields and disciplines and with differing agendas here propose a withdrawal from idle commentary and encourage more productive forms of participation.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Reconstructing Space

Michael MackGerman photography has led the world in the reassessment of our relationship to the urban and man-made environment.

Architecture in Recent German Photography Michael Mack German photography has led the world in the reassessment of our relationship to the urban and man-made environment. Themes such as the way we move through space, and our alienation from the world around us, are explored by artists including Bernd & Hilla Becher, Gosbert Adler, Laurenz Berges, Mona Breede, Johannes Bruns, Susanne Brügger, Michael Danner, Thomas Demand, Christine Erhard, Andreas Gursky, Matthias Hoch, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Heiner Schilling, Matthias Schmidt, Michael Schmidt, Heidi Specker, Petra Wunderlich and Ulrich WÃ¼st. The artists' portfolios are supported by a series of essays that set the work in a theoretical and historical context.

25,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Scavengers & Other Creatures in Promised Lands

Ricardo de Ostos, Nannette JackowskiIs the idea of environment in architecture only ever reducible to ‘environmental architecture’?

Ricardo de Ostos and Nannette Jackowski Is the idea of environment in architecture only ever reducible to 'environmental architecture'? For AA unit masters Ricardo de Ostos and Nannette Jackowski the answer is a resolute no. Instead they offer an alternative reading of 'environment', in which the brutal and lyrical are juxtaposed through visually compelling narratives of architecture. Illustrating their approach, this book presents ten years of student projects, all prompted by the unit's visits to extreme geographic contexts –from the rainforests of Brazil to the quarries of northern India. With additional photographic documentation and conversations with Lebbeus Woods, Geoff Manaugh and Peter Cook, Scavengers & Other Creatures in Promised Lands explores the gripping power of myth and fiction as radical narratives for imagining the near future of cities and forests.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Shadowed: Victor Burgin

Victor BurginThe book contains texts by Victor Burgin and Anthony Vidler as well as colour reproductions of seven of Burgin’s recent video works.

Victor Burgin Victor Burgin has made remarkable contributions as an artist and cultural theorist for more than three decades. His writings on general issues such as photographic, psychoanalytic and cultural theory are noted for their lucidity, compactness and reason. In contrast, the photographs and videos that Burgin creates as an image-maker are richly paradoxical and constitute an inquiry into the structure of meaning in contemporary society. Shadowed continues Burgin's preoccupation, in writings and video installations, with the intrication of physical and psychical space -- and in particular the haunting of the built environment by history, memory and fantasy. The book contains texts by Victor Burgin and Anthony Vidler as well as colour reproductions of seven of Burgin's recent video works.

10,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Sharp Words

Dennis SharpSharp Words collates together a variety of essays that touch upon each of his architectural fascinations, glass architecture, picture palaces, masters of concrete and English modernism.

Selected Essays of Dennis Sharp Dennis Sharp To commemorate the life and work of Dennis Sharp (1933–2010), Sharp Words collates together a variety of essays that touch upon each of his architectural fascinations –among them, glass architecture, picture palaces, masters of concrete and English modernism. Punctuating these texts are a number of editorials from his days as editor of AAQ, which graphically as much as intellectually offer emblems of his time at the AA.

30,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Venice Takeaway

Alastair Donald, Sarah HandelmanVenice Takeaway: Ideas to Change British Architecture brings together the research of ten architectural teams exhibiting in the British Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale.

Ideas to Change British Architecture Alastair Donald, Sarah Handelman Venice Takeaway: Ideas to Change British Architecture brings together the research of ten architectural teams exhibiting in the British Pavilion at the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale. Charting a course that takes in Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Russia, Thailand and the USA, the catalogue presents images and essays by the teams who travelled the world to seek imaginative responses to universal issues and explore the common ground of architecture. In addition, the book features texts by Patrik Schumacher, the show's curators Vanessa Norwood and Vicky Richardson and a foreword by Brett Steele.

22,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

Ahali: An Anthology for Setting a Setting

Can AltayAhali: An Anthology for Setting a Setting is a collection of selected articles from current and previous contributions to Ahali, a journal by artist Can Altay.

Can Altay (ed.) Ahali: An Anthology for Setting a Setting is a collection of selected articles from current and previous contributions to Ahali, a journal by artist Can Altay. 'Ahali' in Turkish refers to a community defined through contingency without a defined or expressed commonality other than being together. The contents of each issue of the journal are composed of invited contributions. Titles include: Support, Control and Letting Go; Model making for the Socio-spatio-economic-political/On Propositions and Implementation; Co-habitation and Parasitical Practice; Locatedness (and Education?); Recycling and Reconfiguration/Sustainable Excess; Community and Contingency; Forecasting Broken Pasts; and Becoming Globe. With contributions of: Agency, Bik Van der Pol, Celine Condorelli, Claire Doherty, Chris Evans, Luca Frei, Nils Norman, Paul O'Neill and others.

18,00€

Buy Book

Quickview

A Right to Difference

Iréné ScalbertIn France no less than in Britain, the late 1960s saw a rebellion against the relentless anonymity of modernist planning.

The Architecture of Jean Renaudie Iréné Scalbert In France no less than in Britain, the late 1960s saw a rebellion against the relentless anonymity of modernist planning. In the search for alternatives, Jean Renaudie showed an originality and a daring unrivalled up to this day. Conceived along structuralist principles, informed by research in molecular biology, his urban projects overturned the logic of the vast housing estates that were being steamrolled across France by the State. In the place of uniform tower blocks, he designed developments in which every dwelling was unique. Diversity - the spanner in the works of mass production - was for him a moral obligation. No concession was made in the name of type, be it human or architectural.

13,00€

Buy Book

Select Gift