Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros established their studio in Madrid in 1984 and working together until 2006, when the firm was dissolved. They mainly realised projects in Spain. Both architects are still active internationally, Iñaki Ábalos with Ábalos+Sentkiewicz, based in Madrid and Cambridge (MA), Juan Herreros with Estudio Herreros in Madrid. The archive of Ábalos & Herreros was donated to the Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal in 2012. It comprises some 250 projects dating from 1985-2008: sketches and drawings, collages, related text documents, slides and models.

This new book presents three contemporary encounters with the Ábalos & Herreros archive at CCA. The architects OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Juan José Castellón and SO – IL conducted research into the archive and developed specific readings of the material. The book reframes these research projects, showing archival material in its current state and re-interpreting it. The essays offer more background to the research and also give voice to Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros themselves. Richly illustrated, the book reveals as much about the interests of a new generation of architects as about the work of Ábalos & Herreros.

Revised, updated, and expanded by nearly 100 projects, this new edition of the catalogue for the “a_show,” Architekturzentrum Wien’s (Az W) permanent exhibition on Austrian architecture of the 20th and 21st century, has become a stand-alone reference book. Its scope extends beyond the themes of the exhibition. Apart from condensing the current discourse on Austrian architecture of the last 150 years, it also documents relevance and singularity of the Az W collection.

Featuring more than 2,300 images and plans, accompanied by explanatory texts structured chronologically as well as thematically the book points out both historical connections and contemporary tendencies. Paired with a timeline, and also offering an overview of all relevant media since 1836, brief biographies, and an index, this is the authoritative survey of modern and contemporary Austrian architecture.

Chandigarh Casablanca: How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International Agencies, and Citizens Negotiate Modern Planning documents two different but complementary urban realities that have played a fundamental role in the imagination, the definition, and the redefinition of the 20th-century modern city. Chandigarh built by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry and Jane B. Drew together with Indian architects and Casablanca, designed by Michel Ecochard and young Moroccan and French architects, share the foundation in a European-American understanding of avant-garde architecture and urbanism. Yet life and further development of both places have been decisively influenced by their own respective culture. This new book decenters the dominant European-American view and contributes to a new geography of the modern city. The contemporary gaze shifts from the symbolic use of architecture to construct monumental masterpieces to the formation of public space, housing, and social facilities. Comprehensive essays by Maristella Casciato and Tom Avermaete are complemented by a wealth of photographs, plans, documents and other illustrations. The book also features photo-essays by French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada and Japanese photographer Takashi Homma, counteracting the reading of the two cities as ‘exported urbanism’ . Text in French.

Chandigarh Casablanca: How Architects, Experts, Politicians, International Agencies, and Citizens Negotiate Modern Planning documents two different but complementary urban realities that have played a fundamental role in the imagination, the definition, and the redefinition of the 20th-century modern city. Chandigarh built by Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Maxwell Fry and Jane B. Drew together with Indian architects and Casablanca, designed by Michel Ecochard and young Moroccan and French architects, share the foundation in a European-American understanding of avant-garde architecture and urbanism. Yet life and further development of both places have been decisively influenced by their own respective culture. This new book decenters the dominant European-American view and contributes to a new geography of the modern city. The contemporary gaze shifts from the symbolic use of architecture to construct monumental masterpieces to the formation of public space, housing, and social facilities. Comprehensive essays by Maristella Casciato and Tom Avermaete are complemented by a wealth of photographs, plans, documents and other illustrations. The book also features photo-essays by French-Moroccan artist Yto Barrada and Japanese photographer Takashi Homma, counteracting the reading of the two cities as ‘exported urbanism’ .

For his entire professional life, British architect Cedric Price (1934-2003) reflected on the mechanisation of society and its effect on people’s lives. In the 1960s and 1970s Price searched for a new language in modern architecture. His multifaceted, interdisciplinary approach and his sense of humour and self-irony, also with regard to his own profession, lead him into the fields of art and of social and natural sciences.

Tanja Herdt’s new book on the work and life of Cedric Price for the first time offers a comprehensive demonstration of his architectural concepts and social visions. Herdt focuses on his view of the city as a socio-technical system, the influence of product and everyday culture on architecture, and the role of science and technology in architectural design. Based on extensive research and drawing from rich and largely unpublished material, she features some of Price’s well-known projects, such as Fun Palace (1961) or Potteries Thinkbelt (1964), in context with her new findings. Herdt’s thorough analysis of his lesser-known works from the 1970s, including McAppy (1973-1975) and The Generator (1976), also questions the common perception of Cedric Price as an “anti-architect”.

Following the liberation and subsequent occupation of Austria at the end of World War II in spring 1945 by the victorious powers Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union, Vienna soon became a central stage for the quickly emerging Cold War. The struggle of differing political systems was also carried out in the field of architecture. Cold War and Architecture sheds new light on the building activity in postwar Austria and its main protagonists. For the first time, this book explores the lines of architectural debates of the time in the context of the global political and cultural conflict of East vs. West. With its transnational perspective, it changes our view of architectural history and postwar society.

During the ten-year occupation period, Austria experienced a transition from authoritarian government to democratic consumer society. Each of the four Allied powers established its own extensive cultural program. Architectural exhibitions became important instruments of such educational schemes with the objective of a new social order. British, American, French, and Soviet cultural policies served as catalysts for ideological convictions.

Founded in 2007, G8A Architects gained rapid renown for its projects in Switzerland. Drawn to new opportunities in Southeast Asia, founding partners Manuel Der Hagopian and Grégoire Du Pasquier soon expanded the firm’s operations to include an office in Vietnam’s capital city, Hanoi, where they now attract a range of commissions in a completely new environment. In 2010, upon winning the commission for a major public housing development in Singapore that set them amongst a new generation of designers for residential projects in the region, they also opened a branch in the booming city-state. The first book to document G8A Architects’ achievements to date, Contrast and Cohesion reflects the firm’s work in these starkly contrasting parts of the world. Featuring twenty-seven of the firm’s projects through drawings, photographs, plans, and descriptive texts, the book also brings together essays that expand on the different concerns and challenges that accompany the creation of architecture in Central Europe and Southeast Asia. Climatically, culturally, and economically, the rapidly growing cities of Southeast Asia are a world away, but Der Hagopian and Du Pasquier pursue a strategy of cohesion, which seeks to resolve the contrasts between East and West with resulting benefits for both.

Romeo and Julia, two residential high-rises in Stuttgart, built 1954-59 and designed by Hans Scharoun (1893-1972), constitute the most original and far-reaching of the various attempts to re-design the entire ‘process of living’ that this extraordinary protagonist of Germany’s modern architecture undertook. Over decades, Scharoun had woven an extensive network of research and knowledge systems as a basis for his floor-plan designs. His unpublished writings and, even more importantly, his lectures from between 1947 and 1958 reveal the countless threads of research and discourse, which his work in residential architecture referenced and absorbed. They highlight the sometimes contradictory, yet constant renewal and consolidation of his knowledge in the field of housing.

This new book, based on extensive research in collaboration with Berlin’s Akademie der Künste, demonstrates how closely interlocked Romeo and Julia are with their architect’s immense engagement with the topic of housing. Drawing on previously unpublished archive material held at the Akademie der Künste, the authors for the first time allow the reader an insight into Scharoun’s design process. Alongside reproductions of original plans and drawings, the book features excerpts from Scharoun’s unpublished text fragments. New images by Swiss architectural photographer Georg Aerni, illustrating the two towers’ highly expressive appearance, round out this volume.

This book sheds new light on the work of German-born modernist architect Konrad Wachsmann (1901-1980) and his legendary knotted joints. It is based on years of research on Wachsmann’s work by Swiss architect Christian Sumi. At the core of this book is Wachsmann’s dynamic ‘Grapevine Structure’, a universal construction element developed with students in the early 1950s at the Chicago Institute of Design. The book also investigates the ‘Local Orientation Manipulator’ (LOM), an apparatus developed in 1969 by Wachsmann at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles that anticipated the robotic assembly of building components. Moreover, it explores Wachsmann’s ‘Packaged House System’ and his designs for relocatable hangars for the US Air Force. The book features these through concise texts and rich illustrated material, the majority of which are published here for the first time. Fabio Gramazio, Matthias Kohler, and Hannes Mayer (Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich) revisit Wachsmann’s ideas from a contemporary perspective where robotic building processes become increasingly common. An essay by neuroscientist Andreas Burkhalter looks at the phenomenon of knotted joints in the context of similar structures in the human brain. Architectural historian Marko Pogacnik highlights the significance of Wachsmann’s lectures at the Salzburg Summer Academy in the late 1950s. Published to accompany the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, 26 May – 25 November 2018.

Aldo Rossi (1931-97) is a key figure in 20th-century architecture. Discarding utopian pretences, his work claimed the autonomy of architecture with formal restraint, and remains highly influential both in theory and practice until the present day. In this new book, Diogo Seixas Lopes looks at Rossi’s work through the lens of a term often used to describe the great architect’s work: melancholy. While the influence of melancholy on literature and visual arts has been debated extensively, its presence in architecture has been largely overlooked. By exploring Rossi’s entire career, Lopes traces out the oscillation between enthusiasm and disenchantment that marks Rossi’s oeuvre. Through a close exploration of one of his landmark works, the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena, Lopes shows how this brilliant, innovative architect reinterpreted a typology of the past to help us come to terms with representations of death and the melancholy that inevitably accompanies it. Beautifully illustrated and drawing on rich archival sources, Melancholy and Architecture both illuminates the work of the 20th century’s most interesting architects and offers a new perspective on the long cultural history of melancholy.

Learning to construct is the objective of the architecture student, who seeks to bring sketches, sophisticated visualisations, material and component choices, and detailed plans and diagrams together in a single grand composition. Plans & Images offers insight into how architects are trained by examining the teaching and research approach of the Laboratory of Elementary Architecture and Studies of Types EAST (Laboratory EAST), a satellite studio of the EPFL School of Architecture in Lausanne. Going beyond the traditional notion of functionally determined typologies, Laboratory EAST is concerned more broadly with the principles of typology in architecture. Richly illustrated with drawings and plans by Laboratory EAST’s students, the book also includes essays by faculty and other experts, and an interview with the renowned Spanish architect Rafael Moneo, who discusses the research topics pursued at Laboratory EAST. Four photo essays by Swiss photographer Joël Tettamanti round out the book.

Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of his death (August 27, 2015), one of Le Corbusier’s most significant books becomes available again in English. The “Precisions”, as the book is commonly known, emerged from a spontaneous and exuberant series of 10 lectures Le Corbusier gave in Buenos Aires in 1929, reflecting a new maturity in his thinking. They contain some of his most compelling aphorisms, covering technique as the basis of architecture, the human scale in design, furniture, the private house, apartments and office buildings, the city, the League of Nations competition, teaching architecture.

As he spoke, Le Corbusier improvised colour drawings on large sheets of paper. The drawings and lectures are unique in their eloquent and concise summary of his philosophy of architecture and urban design, stating the principles that informed his work from the 1920s on.

This new edition for the first time features all of Le Corbusier’s drawings in colour. A new essay by British scholar Tim Benton, written for this new edition, contextualises the “Precisions” within Le Corbusier’s oeuvre and comments on their lasting significance.

Water and Asphalt proposes a project of extended requalification for the territories of settlement dispersion and diffusion; a project on a territorial scale and imagined in a context of economic, social, and environmental crisis. To indicate its principal characteristics, the research study uses the term Project of Isotropy. The metropolitan area of Venice, criss-crossed by dense networks of roads and waterways, is the test case for imagining the concept.

The Project of Isotropy is the acknowledgement of a territorial specificity, a scenario to be investigated in its manifold consequences, and a design hypothesis that can be concretely devised in terms of intervention regarding the water system, roads and public transport, alternative mobility, forms of diffused welfare, innovative agriculture, and the decentralised production of energy. The hypothesis is that new conditions now exist for re-devising the isotropic space in the Metropolitan area of Venice.

Vincent Mangeat became internationally renowned in1988 following the construction of his building for the Cantonal High School in Nyon. Influenced by his work experience in Paris, training under Jean Prouvé and a spell as Assistant to Hans Brechbühler and Pierre Foretay at the EPF Lausanne, Mangeat s work bridges the gap between two architectural eras, namely the Tessin Tendenza of the ’70s and ’90s architectural styles with their exponents in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. But his work has always remained independent and rooted in western Switzerland. From his first residential building in Evolène (1969) to his current projects, including a house for writers at the foot of the Jura mountains, his wealth of architectural achievements form a important a part of his life and work as his permanent, valuable teaching activity.

Text in English, French and German.

Pablo Picasso’s artistic output is astonishing in its ambition and variety. This handsome new publication examines a particular aspect of his legendary capacity for invention: his imaginative and original use of paper.

He used it as a support for autonomous works, including etchings, prints and drawings, as well as for his papier-collé experiments of the 1910s and his revolutionary three-dimensional ‘constructions’, made of cardboard, paper and string. Sometimes, his use of paper was simply determined by circumstance: in occupied Paris, where art supplies were hard to come by, he ripped up paper tablecloths to make works of art. And, of course, his works on paper comprise the preparatory stages of some of his very greatest paintings, among them Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937).

With reproductions of more than 300 works of art and additional texts by Violette Andres, Stephen Coppel, Emmanuelle Hincelin, Christopher Lloyd, Johan Popelard and Claustre Rafart Planas, this sumptuous study reveals the myriad ways in which Picasso’s genius seized the potential of paper at different stages throughout his career.

Rabbit Cloud and the Rainmakers is an endearing folktale brought to life in the 21st century. An engaging quest on one level, it introduces themes of social responsibility and environmental issues.

The fight against human trafficking, improvements in public health, or combating the international drugs trade- these are some of the most pressing problems Thailand and the world are facing today. Remarkably, these topics were already high on the international political agenda over 80 years ago during colonial times, when the League of Nations, the United Nations’ predecessor, was created. This first in-depth study of Thai foreign relations in well over a decade traces how these and other policy areas brought Siam in contact with the League of Nations, after the kingdom had signed the Treaty of Versailles and became an original member of this first global body. Based on never before consulted primary sources in Thailand and Europe, this study unfolds the story of a unique relationship between the only independent country in Southeast Asia and the League during the inter-war period of 1920-1940. The book highlights both the importance of the League for the modernisation of Siam and the shaping of its foreign policies, as well as the intriguing role Siam played on the world stage in the early development of the multilateral political system we live in today.

100 years ago Siam declared war on Germany. In the early morning hours of 22 July 1917, army units and gendarmerie called the roughly 200 completely unsuspecting German and Austro-Hungarian men in Bangkok out of their beds, presented them with the declaration of war and went on to arrest them. At the same time, marine units boarded the nine ocean going German ships anchored on the river, capturing what was considered by all to be the greatest prize. With these events began Siam’s 17 months at war with two European powers.

The story of how these 17 months unfolded in Siam and in Europe is at the heart of this book. It is a complex tale interweaving political, diplomatic, military, cultural and social history. The book introduces adventurous and scared Thai soldiers on the battlefields of the Western Front, arrogant European politicians and diplomats convinced of their racial and cultural superiority, shrewd Thai officials beating the West at its own game of imperialism, princes rivalling over influence and power, German businessmen imprisoned by “Orientals”, Thai students caught up in world events and submarine attacks, and the King of Siam himself.

Siam’s participation in World War I was the single most important international event for contemporaries in the kingdom, its symbolism unmatched by any other occurrence of the times. The book is the first-ever extensively researched study of Siam and World War I in all its facets. By combining primary sources from Thailand, Germany, France, Great Britain, and Austria, the study describes local events in a global context and explains how world events manifested themselves in the royal palaces and on the streets of Bangkok. The legacy of the events a century ago is remarkably tangible even today, and the book connects the reader with this legacy.

The book is easily accessible to the non-specialist reader interested in history and political affairs, as it describes numerous colourful episodes and vignettes, and includes over 300 rare photographs and illustrations, reproduced in high-quality print.

Thai silver and Nielloware display exquisite craftmanship and design that rivals better-known genres of silver from Asia. However, there has to date been little written about this fascinating subject. Examining the history and scope of specified Thai silver and Nielloware production dating from the early 19th century to the present, as well as the various forms and designs utilised, long-term collector Paul Bromberg provides a single reference source for both newcomers and seasoned collectors alike.

Thread and Fire is a fascinating journey through the centuries-old trade networks that developed across a group of archipelagos along the equator. Of the 18,000 islands, more than 900 are permanently settled by over 360 ethnic groups, speaking 700 languages and dialects. For centuries this vast and rich environment favoured local and regional exchanges, and it was only later that people visited from afar. New connections integrated these archipelagos with the distant civilisations of continental Asia: first India, later China and from the 13th century onwards, the Islamic world. Finally, with the arrival of Europeans in the early 16th century, global trade and connections grew rapidly. Spices and forest & sea products were the focus of foreign interests, and textiles were the currency for their acquisition. These imported textiles, complemented with ornaments and jewellery, soon became part of the region’s social fabric, indispensable items of gift and exchange, essential markers for the indictment of ceremonies, rights of passage and signifiers of rank and prestige.

Thread and Fire explores and illustrates those ancient connections and traditions through Indonesian and Timorese textiles, regalia and jewellery from the Francisco Capelo collection, assembled over a 20-year period and now part of the permanent collection of Casa Asia-Colecao Francisco Capelo in Lisbon.

“‘The Fox and the Hare’ is Yuri Norstein’s take on an old Russian folk tale and as in all of his films, we are pulled into the characters’ lives through the beautiful simplicity of the character designs, done by the artist Francesca Yarbusova. They create personalities full of soul and emotion. I’ve always admired Yuri for his honesty and absolute devotion to the art of animation and his talent of creating an enchanted and very unique world for each of his masterpieces. I like to take time and study his beautiful graphics, discovering new details each time I look at them.” Helena Giersz, Designer/Co-creator of Nickelodeon series Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go, Founder of Funline Animation, Inc

The Fox and the Hare is a Russian folk tale retold by Vladimir Dal. This book is based on Francesca Yarbusova’s sketches for the award-winning animated film directed by Yuri Norstein.

This beautiful tale is a simple story about the insidious Fox who takes over the Little Hare’s house when her own palace of ice melts in the Spring. After enlisting the help of several animals, still the ferocious fox remains in the Little Hare’s house. Is there anyone who can help him?

Also available in the Norstein & Yarbusova Collection – a beautiful series of children’s picture books based on the art of famous Russian artists and animators Yuri Norstein and Francesca Yarbusova are: Mishmash ISBN: 9780984586745 and The Hedgehog in the Fog ISBN: 9780984586707.

We are happy to share that The Silly Parade and Other Topsy-Turvy Poems won a Silver Medal at the 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards: www.independentpublisher.com (Category 33 – Children’s Picture Books (all ages). Have you ever seen a horse drive a sleigh? Can you count up everyone participating in the silly parade? Or do you want to meet Old Man Igor, who does everything topsy-turvy and upside-down? In this book you will find nursery rhymes that are based on traditional Russian songs and folk poetry. These funny and charming poems are brilliantly translated and retold by Anne Dwyer. The timeless illustrations by award-winning artist Nikolai Popov add a touch of gentle humour. Other titles like this are: Hedgehog in the Fog ISBN 9780984586707 The Fox and the Hare ISBN 9780984586714 Mishmash ISBN 9780984586745

Born as the youngest of a poor Swiss farming family’s seven children, Adolf Dietrich (1877-1957) supplemented arduous farm work and various jobs in a textile mill, as a woodcutter, and railway worker, with art. Gaining increasing recognition in Germany and Switzerland, his participation in the exhibition Les maîtres populaires de la réalité in Paris, Zürich, and New York in 1937-38 marked his breakthrough internationally. Until today, Dietrich’s work is regarded by some as a prime example of 20th-century naïve painting, while other scholars place him closer to the post-expressionist movement of New Objectivity.

For the first time in nearly sixty years, Dietrich’s work has been shown in a vast retrospective at Kunstmuseum Olten in Switzerland, in summer 2015 in which his pictures were accompanied by paintings of artists such as Cuno Amiet, Otto Dix, Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler, Henri Rousseau, or Félix Vallotton. This coinciding new monograph is richly illustrated in colour throughout, featuring some 160 works by Dietrich and the other artists. The essays contextualise his art and highlight Dietrichs’ lasting significance.

Text in English and German.