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This book takes us on a culinary journey through New York’s most exciting neighbourhoods. Away from the well-trodden tourist paths, authentic delis, trendy cafés, and hidden food havens await discovery. From Little Italy to Brooklyn, each chapter presents special places and their stories, reflecting the city’s unique spirit. With exclusive recipes and fascinating background stories on the origins of the dishes, the book brings a taste of New York straight into your own kitchen.

A new, thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the beloved Scotland guide by local Lauren MacCallum. Because she is so passionate about exploring new places, Lauren always has a list of new secrets ready to share. The new entries in this book include her favourite and recently discovered spots in Orkney Islands and the far north of the Highlands, like the coolest places along the North Coast 500. She also added, for example, the best activities in every season in her home area of Cairngorms.

This book isn’t your typical Scottish travel guide; instead, it aims to encourage you to define your own sense of adventure, to explore beyond the usual hot spots and get to know the real Scotland. It will help you to see beyond the tartan trinkets, Irn-Bru and haggis, and to experience the authentic life in Scotland, so you’ll understand what’s so unique about this small stretch of land and its inhabitants. The book covers an eclectic range of over 60 themes such as: unusual art spaces; gin and whisky distilleries worth a visit; amazing coastal walks; dramatic lochs and bookshops with character.

This new alternative guidebook is a personal ode to the mélange of cultures called Brooklyn. It takes you to the most fascinating corners of the borough and will help you discover places most tourists won’t go. The aim is to inspire you to start exploring Brooklyn’s neighbourhoods, which all have a strong sense of local identity. Discover more than 350 places the author would recommend to a friend, in eclectic and enthusing lists such as:

In their works, Katja Stuke and Oliver Sieber address questions about the structure of cities and the links between urban and social boundaries. Their photographs reveal a particular interest in areas and neighbourhoods that are marginalised or carry a certain stigma in the eyes of society. Instead of focusing on individual images, Stuke and Sieber prefer to create series and sequences, layering, mixing, and connecting elements to create wide-ranging associations.

Their most recent work links the French capital with the Ruhr and its imagined centre, the Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex, which is often referred to as the ‘Eiffel Tower of the Ruhr.’ However, neither the Eiffel Tower nor the Zollverein complex feature in the photos. Rather, Stuke and Sieber’s experimental work juxtaposes snapshots taken along the périphérique ring road in Paris and photos of places associated with the Ruhr.

The locations are seemingly chosen at random in this system, but it is precisely their haphazard, fragmentary arrangement that highlights unexpected parallels and ingenious connections between places, actions, events, and individuals that are separated from each other in space and time.

Text in English and German.

Off-Grid Adventures brings together 20 exceptional travel adventures to special and surprising places all over the world. From a visit to the Japanese art islands of Naoshima and Teshima to surfing in Korea, horseback riding in Kyrgyzstan, and hang gliding over Canadian glaciers, this book is a source of inspiration for the modern adventurer who wants to stay far away from the beaten track and go in search of authentic experiences that respect the environment and the local population. Includes beautiful and awe-inspiring images from renowned travel photographers, travel tips and guidance for the best places to go and to stay.

Fast Forward: How HKS Shapes the Future of Design showcases recent work by global design firm HKS and offers a look ahead to the future of innovation in architecture and design. The firm’s portfolio of architecture, interior design, urban planning and research demonstrates how HKS contributes to improving communities and transforming the design industry. For more than 85 years, HKS has brought a depth of knowledge and expertise to clients spanning diverse markets and sectors, crafting design solutions that rise to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. The firm is now poised to continue its path of progress, influencing how the combined power of technology and design thinking will be an asset to society throughout the 21st century.

This one-of-a-kind guide takes you to New York’s best-kept secrets, like vintage shops packed with unique collector’s items, opulent spots for high tea, the best places to grab a drink before or after the theatre, the best stretches for running, and the coolest sneaker stores. This guide reveals hundreds of addresses, as well as good-to-know facts and interesting information, like the best ways to mingle with New Yorkers, the sports that you absolutely have to see, and 5 things that New Yorkers just know. The 500 Hidden Secrets of New York is the perfect book for those who want to discover the city, but avoid all the usual tourist haunts, as well as for residents who are keen to track down the city’s best-kept secrets.

Discover the series at the500hiddensecrets.com

Developed in the late ’80s, the eco-tourist approach is characterised by a two-fold concern for the places visited and the well-being of the people who live there. The means of eco-sustainable transport can be diverse: a canoe or kayak, a bicycle, a horse or mule… even our own legs! You may say the same for accommodation facilities: hotels, bed and breakfasts, farmhouses that are keen on recycling, using renewable energy sources and meeting the criteria to be a green-building. Fifty routes to eco-friendly travel around the world: each chapter will provide useful travel directions, schematic maps, information on stages to follow and tips for travelling in an environmentally sustainable way (from equipment to contacts of ecological facilities). Stunning pictures will accompany the reader in discovery of the most beautiful scenarios of the world: from forests and mountains to historic roads, small villages, peaks and deserts.

Lucy Lovell is a travel writer originally from the UK but based in Valencia, where she spends her time weaving through the narrow streets, past honey-yellow stone cathedrals and sun-drenched plazas to find the city’s best places to eat, drink and visit. In this guide she shares 500 great spots she would recommend to visiting friends, categorised into original lists such as ‘5 dreamy places to dine outdoors’; ‘5 cool eco-friendly shops’; ‘5 stunning Modernismo Valenciano buildings’, ‘5 secluded parks for picnics and sunbathing’ and much more.

Opened in 1992, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam is a key design in the portfolio of Rem Koolhaas and OMA, the renowned firm Koolhaas co-founded in 1975. It is part of the Museumpark, a park designed by OMA as well and the location of the Nederlands Architectuurinstituut NAi, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and the Museum of Natural History. The Kunsthal’s exhibition space is divided into three large exhibition halls and two smaller galleries. The building houses also an auditorium and a restaurant.

This outstanding space for art is a prime destination for countless architecture fans every year. Tibor Pataky, architect and architectural historian, celebrates it in this inspiring book. He explains the history, the programmatic background, and the cultural references of the design, which has been adapted several times, and places it in the context of OMA’s work of the 1980s and of the intellectual environment of Deconstructivism. Ten captivating photo series highlight the structure’s outstanding qualities and its embedding in the park. New plans, especially drawn for this book, illustrate the shear points of OMA’s design. The volume is a hugely attractive tribute to one of the most significant works of post-WW II architecture in Europe.

This richly illustrated publication explores the work of contemporary artist Nathan Coley. It offers a detailed look at three of his most significant sculptural works: The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh 2004, 2004; Paul, 2015; and Tate Modern on Fire, 2017, which is reproduced and discussed here for the first time. In a newly commissioned text, award-winning novelist, screenwriter and director Ewan Morrison focuses on these three sculptures to explore the complexity and ambiguity of Coley’s artistic practice. Morrison brings into play different narrative forms and voices to draw attention to the realms of history, art history and politics that Coley’s work inhabits, as well as the deeply personal responses that Coley’s work can generate.

This book challenges the conventional idea of what constitutes the physical form of the contemporary city. Observing the absence of extended urban fabrics – the missing urbanism – in the new global cities developed today, it argues that these cities are merely statistical accumulations of density that lack the positive attributes of a genuine urban condition. Cities as urban places cannot be made by individual buildings alone but rather depend on the intertwined combination of an architecture that is bound to the creation of public spaces and streets, and engaged in the structure of urban blocks to form a complex field pattern of interactive solids and voids. Broad in scope, the book explores the nature of the fundamental relationship between architecture and urbanism as one of spatial formation. As an independently designed entity, the city forms the ordering framework in which architecture is partially subordinated to the mutual sustainability of the overall urban fabric. If a new urban architecture is to be an integral constituent of public place making, it must be composed using a radically different paradigm of positive, figurally constructed ‘space’ rather than the indefinite background of ‘anti-space’ as exemplified in the chapter on Mies van der Rohe’s architectural quest for the ineffable modern void. These two different spatial models are explored in depth in the eponymous article, ‘Space and Anti Space,’ first published in the Harvard Architectural Review in 1980, which forms the core of the book and postulates that the underlying attitudes toward spatial formation, at both domestic and urban scales, determine our ability to shape place and human experience. In a series of essays, articles and urban projects extensively illustrated by plans, analytic diagrams, and dramatic images, this book makes a visual and verbal argument for the steps that need to be taken to re-urbanise the city in order to achieve an urbanity consisting of multiple discrete places that depend on the essential concept of contained geometrical space. These spatial ideas are illustrated in this book in three proposals: for Rome, in ‘Roma Interrotta,’ 1979; Paris, the ‘Consultation Internationale pour L’Aménagement du Quartier des Halles,’ 1980; and New York in the ‘World Trade Center Site Innovative Design Study,’ 2002.

In The 500 Hidden Secrets of Istanbul, Feride Yalav-Heckeroth shares all of her favourite insider tips, tricks and places to explore Istanbul. Her book contains fun and interesting lists such as 5 restaurants to discover modern Turkish cuisine, the 5 most beautiful beaches, 5 unknown architectural gems from the Ottoman Empire, the 5 best spots for live music, 5 cafes with a breathtaking view and much more.

Also available: The 500 Hidden Secrets of Berlin, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Tokyo, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Miami, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Paris, The 500 Hidden Secrets of New York, and many more. Discover the series at the500hiddensecrets.com

For centuries artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in travel sketchbooks. Over a period of fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America’s most distinguished landscape architects, has recorded aspects of France: its cities and countryside, streets and cafés, ancient ruins, vineyards, and parks – from humble to grand, things that interested his designer’s eye – taking the time to see things carefully. Paris in its seasons, agriculture in Provence and Bordeaux, trees, dogs, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolour or pen and ink.

Originally intended for the pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this personal selection from his many sketchbooks is accompanied by transcriptions of notes and observations, along with introductory remarks for the different regions included: Paris, Haute Loire, Provence, Haute Provence, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Entre des Meures.

The city is, first and foremost, an experience. It’s made of architecture, but the experience goes beyond the expression of each individual building forming a collage of images created by the work of many over time. In the book Frank Wolden presents 35 years of work illustrating the evolution of his ideas on the art of city design. The projects presented range from creative infill in downtown San Diego to visionary master plans for cities across the globe. Frank’s design philosophy starts with a creative view of the city where everything from background buildings to iconic super stars are part of a larger urban experience. At the core of his design approach is the breakdown of the architectural object into smaller parts and pieces that connect with the surrounding urban context and result in a human scale experience. Beyond response to context is a search for ideas that drive design, Frank’s background in fine art inspires a fusion of art, architecture, and urban design focused on the design of places that promote creative experiences and enrich urban life. The Art of City Design illustrates Frank Wolden’s philosophy on urban architecture through the presentation of 21 high profile projects from San Diego to Shanghai China.

Like all mega-cities around the globe, São Paulo faces huge challenges. Yet despite these manifold and daunting tasks, the Brazilian metropolis has since the 1960s maintained a prudent policy of investing in communal infrastructure, thus providing inclusive places and spaces for all of its 20m-population. While many cities aim for a ‘Bilbao-effect’ by funding iconic, tourist-orientated projects such as museums or theatres, São Paulo persistently supports programs and usages that serve its permanent residents. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition at A.M. Architekturmuseum der TU München, features a selection of these buildings and programs from five decades. Ranging from a simple canopy over a public park to vast multifunctional buildings, they provide spaces for sports and culture, education, healthcare, or gastronomy. Rather than merely serving a specific purpose, their key role is to be places for people spending time together. With contributions by Renato Anelli, José Tavares Correia de Lira, Fraya Frehse, Vanessa Grossman, Andres Lepik, Ana Luiza Nobre, Daniel Talesnik, and Guilherme Wisnik; and a conversation with Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Marta Moreira by Enrique Walker. Photographs by Ciro Miguel Also available: Wherever You Find People ISBN 9783038600268

Where to go for the best pints of Guinness in Dublin? Or when you’re craving the ultimate sandwich? And what are the 5 shops you absolutely have to visit on Grafton Street? Shane O’Reilly knows! With lots of love and enthusiasm, he shares hundreds of his favourite places in his hometown of Dublin, like the wood-panelled and plush club serving as a multi-purpose arts centre, Ireland’s oldest reggae shop, or the stunning and family-run delicatessen serving up delicious seafood straight from the ocean half a mile away. The 500 Hidden Secrets of Dublin is the perfect book for those who wish to discover the city, but avoid all the usual tourist haunts, as well as for residents who are keen to track down the city’s best-kept secrets.

Discover the series at the500hiddensecrets.com

This volume explores the interconnected social, sustainable and spatial principles that underpin the design of more environmentally conscientious buildings and places, illustrated through models, drawings and images of selected key projects by the award-nominated London-based architecture practice Mæ. Each project outlines beneficial strategies for creating more sustainable designs, achieving social equity and working within our planet’s limits to elevate the human spirit in the long-term.

This book posits strategies to design buildings and places that enrich culture and society, offering insight from researchers and practitioners, as well as richly illustrated documentation of key architectural schemes that put these principles into practice. It is a call to arms for ways to create more environmentally regenerative architecture, applying its ideas to architectural practice worldwide.

A decade after the Swiss National Bank had opened its neo-baroque building in Berne, the bank’s Zurich-based Governing Board moved into its own grand office building in 1922. This major work of the local firm of Otto and Werner Pfister is a prime example of neo-classicism in Switzerland and provided Zurich with an architectural landmark at the top end of its famous Bahnhofstrasse.

Marking its centenary, this book celebrates the Zurich home of the Swiss Franc. It describes in detail and lavishly illustrated the architecture and building history from planning stage until today. This is supplemented by essays on bank architecture since the Middle Ages, the urban formation of Zurich and the city’s development into a financial centre in the late 19th century. In his contribution, the renowned Canadian-British architect Adam Caruso compares it from today’s perspective with other central bank buildings and places it in context of the Pfister brothers’ other public commissions, many of which are occupying prominent locations in Zurich’s cityscape.

Richly illustrated with historical and new photographs, original plans and other historical documents, the volume pays tribute to a piece of public architecture that combines monumentality with pragmatism and republican modesty.

Dignity is a state of being, a quality of humanness inherent to each individual. It describes a sense of value, worth, honour, and respect for one’s personhood—how we all individually navigate, independently experience, and uniquely perceive the world around us. It is the ultimate quality of being, a celebration of the human spirit, and the potential of each of us to live as fully as we define and determine.

Dignity in design, therefore, requires an intentional examination of the human experience—how we process information and connect with the world around us, how we fundamentally seek survival and pleasure in all we do, how we react in the presence of adversity and stress, surprise and delight. And with this understanding comes empathy for what it means to navigate the world as a complex, conscious, affectable human beings.
Designing for Dignity
recognises the role of our built environment in supporting and fostering the health of individuals, neighbourhoods and communities. It acknowledges that nothing we design is neutral and that the places we inhabit shape our ideas about who we are and what we deserve. Drawing on broad multidisciplinary evidence and more context-specific lived expertise of end users in the spaces we design, Designing for Dignity aims to create places that protect, promote, and celebrate the dignity of life. 

The 500 Hidden Secrets of Rome helps you set out to discover the most attractive, fun and unique places in Italy’s capital. Luisa Grigoletto and Christopher Livesay share 500 addresses and facts that many tourists don’t know, sometimes off the beaten track, but always loved by the locals and worth a visit.

This book lists, among other things, the 5 best gelaterías, the 5 most beautiful historic shops, 5 breathtaking palazzi which played an important role in art history and 5 sites where major Italian films were shot. It is the perfect book for those who wish to discover the city, but avoid all the usual tourist haunts, as well as for residents who are keen to track down the city’s best-kept secrets.

His mostly precisely composed, large-format paintings, with deserted spaces as their main motif, made Ben Willikens (*1939) famous in the second half of the 1970s. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue present nearly 50 works created between 1971 and 2021 and thus span the artist’s entire oeuvre. Three groups of works form the central pillars: the Anstaltsbilder of the 1970, in whose motifs Willikens processes a dark chapter in his life, and the series ORTE (PLACES) And ORTE 2 (PLACES 2), which deal with Willikens’s examination of the architecture of the National Socialist period. There are also various works from the series Räume der Moderne (Spaces of Modernity).

Text in English and German.

The 500 Hidden Secrets of Chicago reveals 500 off-the-beaten- track places and interesting details for anyone who’s keen to explore Chicago’s best-kept secrets, e.g. 5 cafes for sitting a spell, 5 iconic Chicago merchants, 5 ways to enjoy the Chicago river, 5 unlikely art destinations, 5 historic music spots… and much more.

This second edition is fully revised and updated.

Also available: The 500 Hidden Secrets of New York, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Tokyo, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Miami, The 500 Hidden Secrets of Seattle, The 500 Hidden Secrets of San Francisco, and many more. Discover the series at the500hiddensecrets.com

Open House discusses the topic of temporary housing in architecture, art, design and humanitarian aid. The phenomenon of tiny houses fascinates and is currently trending in various media. In times of large migratory movements from poor to rich countries there is also an urgent demand for temporary housing in many places.

Eighteen international authors explore the intentions behind such constructions, their underlying principles and the lifestyle they convey. Their contributions reveal how these concepts relate to the very notion of habitat, to space, to pragmatic criteria, as well as to the time in which they are elaborated. Moreover, addresses various issues of individual housing through the featured original installations, and spatial experiments.

Open House is published in conjunction with a two-year research project and an open-air exhibition of the same title in Geneva in summer 2022. Book and exhibition comprise around 40 designs by artists, architects, designers, architecture schools and research institutions, as well as humanitarian organisations, such as Andrea Zittel, EPFL Laboratoire ALICE, Global Shelter Cluster, Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zurich, Jean Prouvé, John Armleder, Kengo Kuma, Kerim Seiler, Matti Suuronen, Maurizio Cattelan and Philippe Parreno, the UNHCR, and others.

Text in English and French.