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Landscapes are forged by many forces and are dynamic, not static. Yet most landscape designs are designed as static; that is, they are designed not to change substantially for 20-50 years. As cities become the dominant living space for humans, allowing non-human forces to contribute to our designs as landscape architects will make for more resilient landscapes and a healthier planet. Making these dynamic landscapes with our non-human partners will require a new landscape aesthetic, changing the public perception of “landscape,” and changing maintenance practices.

Dynamic Geographies
seeks to address these perceptions with a series of our projects as examples. The book is divided into three segments of overlapping geographies: Invisible geographies, Layered geographies, and Unleashing geographies.

The genesis, development and life-long occupation of the McIntyre house, built in 1972 as part of a multiple-dwelling subdivision, provides possible answers to some very pressing contemporary design questions. How might one live near the city and be respectful of nature? How might efficiently built dwellings also be spacious and dense site occupation still allow for privacy? This history is recounted through text augmented by photographs and site diagrams, house sections and plans. They reveal a modern architecture on the west coast that resulted from an interplay of both the physicality of the land and a culturally imbued landscape.

Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations charter, this visually driven book tells the story of the special relationship between the UN and New York City through the interrelated lenses of architecture, real estate, and urban planning. It is fully illustrated with rare archival photographs and architectural drawings, as well as newly commissioned photographs. The book also includes written contributions from UN-affiliated individuals of note, including current and former UN secretaries-general, ambassadors to the UN, mayors, governors, historians, architecture critics, and other luminaries.

The book begins by chronicling how New York came to be the permanent home of the UN, including the individuals, institutions, and other forces that helped the city secure the headquarters of the UN – among them the Rockefeller family, William Zeckendorf, and Robert Moses. The book then presents the architectural and urban design journey to create the iconic UN campus by a global team of architectural giants such as Wallace K. Harrison, Le Corbusier, and Oscar Niemeyer, with archival photos and architectural drawings and renderings. It also charts how the real estate needs of the UN evolved over time, leading to the creation of the United Nations Development Corporation (UNDC) and its commissioning of three architecturally significant buildings at UN Plaza that have helped keep the UN in New York City. Also included are sections on the $2 billion renovation and restoration of the UN campus and proposals past and present for additional architectural commissions. Additional sections document how New York City and the UN have helped shape each other over the years; and how both continue to change and evolve.

Unique for its architectural and urbanistic focus, A Home to the World: The United Nations and New York City celebrates this important global organisation’s many accomplishments past, present, and future.

In the South of France, sited on a hill of olive trees, pinus pinea, and a vineyard, a family retreat was designed with a key mission of maintaining the vitality of the site. A small agricultural plot, the site offered the possibility of amplification. With the introduction of a garden and many outdoor living spaces, the family had the intention of cultivating the landscape as part of their stewardship. In part a response to a programmatic brief, but moreover, a discursive response to architectural predicaments of geometry, typology, and anomaly, the house is also a response to Preston Scott Cohen’s pedagogies on architecture.

Ever since the firm’s establishment in 1989, Frankfurt-based Stefan Forster Architekten (SFA) had a special focus on housing. A starting point for this was the urgent necessity of refurbishment and modernisation of the vast housing developments constructed of prefabricated concrete slabs as part of the urban rebuilding programmes in the newly founded federal states of eastern Germany following the country’s re-unification in 1990. From the initial ‘Haus 07’ in Leinefelde, Thuringia, SFA have moved on, creating a remarkable body of work in metropolitan housing. Their designs comprise large-scale public multi-unit blocs and single-family town houses on small plots, as well as the transformation of former office and public administration structures.

This first monograph on SFA highlights how the firm has constantly worked on raising the standards in residential architecture, years before the current shortage of housing in urban areas has made such improvements so urgent. The book features 30 designs that exemplify SFA’s approach and philosophy.

Text in English and German.

Richard Manion Architecture creates distinctive residences and estates with a respect for traditional forms and historic imagery adapted to modern living. The curated selection of rarely published projects in this second volume of RMA’s work, Streamlined, demonstrates the firm’s signature classicist style, which draws upon traditional and streamlined classical, regional, and contemporary influences to reflect authentic details, proportions, and a sophisticated sense of place for the 21st century.

In this book, the firm’s focus is on the integration of modernism within an overall framework of simplicity and restraint, discretion and harmony. Academic studies of European modernism, with its visionary approach and embodiment of the machine age, have come back to inspire, but with the understanding that many of its roots can be traced back to the heritage of classical design principles. This exquisite, fully illustrated volume showcases RMA’s goal to unite ideas about tradition, history, and modernity in a synergy and explores the meaning of shared architectural imagery and heritage for our time.

A strong visual identity is hard to miss, instantly catching the eye. In children’s spaces, it is best tailored with their unique outlook in mind as children perceive the world around them differently from the rest of us, responding to specific sets of details.

Design and Visual Identity for Children’s Spaces shares a variety of contemporary creative designs for children’s spaces all over the world; they combine children-friendly visual elements with smart space design to tailor comfortable and conducive environments where they can learn, have fun, flourish, and be themselves.

Over 35 projects that focus on educational institutions, enrichment centres, recreational clubs, play zones, concept stores, and children’s hospitals, among others, share concepts that transform spaces to make them more relatable for children through thoughtfully considered visual identity and interior layouts that resonate specifically with them. Designers dig deep, even consult with children, to create designs that call out to them in fun, inspiring spaces that unleash imaginations, while they foster a sense of connection and belonging.

Discover the rationales and inspirations behind these concepts, which also unify aspects of the business with a cohesive brand identity to promote the desired brand impressions and top-of-the-mind consumer recall. Through the projects in these pages, the reader is offered a host of thoughtful and creative solutions in designing children’s spaces, making this book a handy tool for anyone in the business of managing children’s spaces, or keen on designing children’s spaces.

The concept of Layered Morphologies is a theoretical and methodological approach that investigates the coevolutionary nature of architecture and settlements, to propose an organic and integrated approach to their reading, protection and design enhancement. Transcending some usual spatial ontologies and operating across interdisciplinary fields, it promotes a renewed notion of built heritage as historicised architecture, and landscape as a structure of structures, where any act of modification should start from recognising pre-existing signs, typo-morphological structures, and writing of the ground and formal orders. Advancing critical-theoretical propositions while verifying their operational value in the case study of Fenghuang (Shaanxi) – a famous historic and cultural town in China – the methodology reveals a new reading and the potential underlying of Chinese settlements forms. Architectural and urban-rural design projects are not the colonisation of a void (a tabula rasa) but rather an understanding and interpretation of an existing text with its erasures and absences (tabula plena), which also presents the principles for future writings.

In 2015, the Cologne photographer Harald Schwertfeger travelled to Istanbul for the first time. His initial aversion to the noisy, overcrowded urban jungle quickly turned into profound fascination. For Schwertfeger, ‘Polis’ – quite simply the ‘City’, as the Greeks used to call it – became a photographic treasure trove that transcended the purely geographical divide between Orient and Occident. His works present a kaleidoscope of overwhelming images and impressions.

Schwertfeger was spellbound not so much by the Ottoman palaces and monumental mosques – his photos focus above all on Istanbul’s hectic hustle and bustle and the people with their vastly different attitudes and lifestyles.

In capturing the metropolis with all its scars, vulnerability and roughness, Schwertfeger creates a moving portrait of the city that challenges the usual stereotypes.

Text in English, German and Turkish.

Swiss artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943) was a pioneer of 20th-century avant-garde. Remarkably versatile and immensely gifted, she produced an oeuvre that encompasses the entire range of the modernist movement from applied and fine art and dance to architecture, interior design, and teaching.

Equlibre, created in 1931, marks the beginning of Taeuber-Arp’s career as an accomplished painter. She moves away from figuration to focus on shape and colour. Circle, square, and rectangle define her future vocabulary. While in her earlier textiles she used multiple shades and hues, she now reduces her palette to primary colours alongside black and white, signalling a markedly changed sense of colour.

The painting’s posthumous title emphasises Taeuber-Arp’s constant striving for an ideal balance of colour, shape, and indeed all the elements in her paintings. From here, she sets out to explore movement, circles, and spaces, and later gradations and lines. Equilibre, a landmark of Taeuber-Arp’s oeuvre, looks ahead to her future subject matter, while at the same time referencing her earlier work.

Text in English and German.

McInturff Architects are renowned for their innovative and creative zeal and have been awarded hundreds of awards for their beautiful, stylish houses plus other projects. For this book, McInturff’s fourth with IMAGES, this award-winning firm takes us on a journey through nearly 50 works, which include dozens of stunning new homes and interiors, incredible renovations of residences, and innovative and modern commercial and cultural centres, hotels, stores, and much more. Complete with beautiful photographs and detailed plans and diagrams, the architects walk us through this significant selection of works, celebrating craft, light, and site. Looking back and looking forward, this book summarises many lessons learned over more than 35 years of a very successful architectural journey.

“…a significant contribution to the study of Chinese photography.” – The Art Newspaper

From political leaders to celebrities, photographic portraits exert considerable influence over our reaction to public figures. As the first academic publication focused on the Taikang photography collection, this book explores both the mechanics of portraiture and its psychological effects.

Taikang Space is one of the most important non-profit art institutions in China. Based in Beijing, they focus on contemporary art and photography. The Chinese Portrait: 1860 to the Present is based on the framework of the eponymous exhibition, which ran at Taikang Space from March 2017. This book introduces the curator and researchers involved with the exhibition, as well as researchers such as Shi Zhimin, Jin Yongquan, Liu Jianping, Liu Zhangbolong, who deliver their own unique angles on the topic of portrait photography. The Chinese Portrait: 1860 to the Present also features the curator’s interviews with Qia Sijie, Chen Shilin and Zhang Zuo – respectively the personal photographer, standard portrait re-toucher and darkroom technician of Chairman Mao.

“A stunning collection of photographs by Alex Saberi, which illustrate the rich diversity of wildlife in Richmond Park throughout the seasons.” – Discover Wildlife.com

“Alex’s ethereal, fairy-tale-like images are a real wonder. His grasp of light, location and atmosphere make these photographs ones that border on the unique.” – Amateur Photographer

Sir David Attenborough has described Richmond Park as “A very special place” – and with good reason. This vast oasis of green, just eight miles from the centre of London, is an ecological pearl in the midst of sprawling urbanisation.

The park, most famous for its herd of 630 Fallow and Red Deer, is not only Europe’s largest park, but is as big as the seven other royal parks combined. Since King Charles I enclosed the park in 1637, it has provided a haven of tranquillity and diversion for all its visitors. Today, some 77 million people pass through its gates each year.

In this beautiful book, Alex Saberi captures Richmond Park’s unique blend of rare and diverse wildlife, plant life and rolling landscapes. From a crow perching on a bench in the morning haze to a foolhardy Labrador, breaking impatiently away from its owner, the photographs capture its inherent beauty as well as those rare moments of wildlife action and majesty that only yield themselves to the most patient and knowledgeable of observers.

How does one envision architecture? Forays
gathers the work of Joe Day and Deegan-Day Design into six diptychs, unified by this question. Working in a wide range of media and scales, Day’s work mines the differentials between perspective and projection.

Forays
is organised in six diptychs, the first two paired projects are books in their own right; the second pair, a clothing line and a first building; the third, two houses; the fourth, two plays on brand identity and design methodology; the fifth, permanent and transient cinema proposals; and the sixth, two series of speculative work in local and global registers. Modelled on a comparison of two classic cameras – the Leica M3 and Polaroid SX-70 – each diptych includes a project with more ‘Leica’ to it – a more bounded, Cartesian clarity or distilled focus – and another closer to an SX-70 in its moving or folding parts, its shape-shifting adaptability.

Way Beyond Bigness is a design-research project that studies the Mekong, Mississippi and Rhine river basins, with particular focus on multi-scaled, water-based infrastructural transformation. The book proposes a simple, adaptive framework that utilises a three-part, integrative design-research methodology, structured as: Appreciate + Analyze, Speculate + Synthesize, and Collaborate + Catalyze. To do such, Way Beyond Bigness realigns watersheds and architecture across multiple: scales (site to river basin), disciplines (ecologists to economists), narratives (hyperbolic to pragmatic), and venues (academic to professional). The research critiques and recasts Oxford Dictionary’s two very different definitions for a ‘watershed’: 1) “An area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas” and 2) “An event or period marking a turning point in a situation in a course of action or state of affairs” and its two very different definitions for ‘architecture’: 1) “The art or practice of designing and constructing buildings” and 2) “the complex or carefully designed structure of something.” The book highlights the author’s comprehensive work of over more than a decade, including in depth field research across the Mekong, Mississippi and Rhine, along with a diverse body of academic and professional collaborations, ranging from the speculative to the community-based.

Textile is a vector of identity – something more important than ever in times of war and crisis in particular. It is connected to the body it covers like a second skin. It both conceals and reveals, and contains a history and iconography whose roots often lie deep in a culture’s customs and traditions.

As part of its extramural programme, and in collaboration with award-winning photographer Mashid Mohadjerin and journalist Samira Bendadi, Antwerp Fashion Museum (MoMu) have created a new exhibition and accompanying publication on the importance of fabric and clothing to issues of public concern today, such as migration, resistance, tradition, spirituality and decolonisation.

The focus is on nine stories of people whom curators Bendadi and Mohadjerin – in whose own personal stories migration features prominently – met during their travels to Paris, Antwerp, Lebanon, Africa, Morocco and Iran. Sometimes the stories are warm and moving; at other times they are tough and heart-wrenching. In them, textile embodies the ideas and emotions coupled with forced or voluntary departure, the yearning for what has been lost, letting go and holding on.

This storytelling and photography exhibition will run from 15 November 2019 until 16 February 2020 at Texture Kortrijk, and will travel on to Kunsthal Extra City Antwerp in spring 2020.

Text in English and Dutch.

The Hinder/Reimers Collection – which has been owned by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate since 1993 – is one of the most important collections of modern ceramics in Germany. It was built up from the early 1950s through the combined efforts of Jakob Wilhelm Hinder (1901-1976) and Lotte Reimers (* 1932). The focus of this large collection is on West German ceramics from the 1950s to about 1990. Since the mid-1970s it has been enlarged by Lotte Reimers to include outstanding works from outside Germany. These 1,587 objects provide insights into the crucial trends and stylistic movements in art ceramics after the Second World War as represented by the most distinguished ceramicists of the day.

Featuring explanatory texts and colour illustrations, the present publication presents the entire collection and, therefore, goes beyond the scope of Ceramics in Germany 1955-1990. The Hinder/Reimers Collection, published in 1997, which dealt with only a selection of works from the collection. The new publication, on the other hand, draws on the Hinder/Reimers Collection to survey the broad field of developments in studio ceramics in the latter half of the 20th century in western Germany while looking well beyond the borders of Germany.

Text in English and German.

The work of Kohn Pedersen Fox is international in scope, collaborative in design, and a product of individual voices focused on a single objective – making an architecture, of our time, which creates strong bonds with the the specific place it occupies.

While William Pedersen founded the firm, with partners Gene Kohn and Shelley Fox, he never aspired to be a ‘director of design.’ They had the components with Gene’s entrepreneurial drive, Shelley’s management and Bill’s design leadership – to be a large firm. ‘Directing’ the work of a large firm was not Bill’s desire, instead he wanted to focus on a body of work which he could call his own. The example that work set would inspire others, and it did. Now there are several voices leading their design – all of them rose to their position within the office.

The purpose of this book is to define the work of one of the voices – Bill Pedersen’s. Pedersen has worked with many different designers, in close collaboration, throughout his career, though his work speaks with a singular voice. Here it is represented chronologically and concludes with the latest phase – furniture. Working from the largest scale to the smallest has always been a preoccupation of those who lead design in KPF. Many of Pedersen’s architectural heroes designed chairs, and he strives to follow in their footsteps.

Water is far too valuable of a resource to be disposed as a waste. Working Water presents the work of Denver landscape architecture firm Wenk Associates, highlighting their projects that treat stormwater, and the infrastructure that controls it, as a resource that supports functioning natural systems and enhanced urban open space. Built projects illustrate how stormwater runoff can be directed to support an intimate private garden, to the large-scale redevelopment of derelict industrial lands in Milwaukee organised around a stormwater park and open space system. Planning projects range from a plan for a surface stormwater system developed incrementally for a redeveloping urban district in central Denver, to a multi-generational plan for restoration of the Los Angeles River that will require profound changes in stormwater management policies and practice for full implementation. The final chapter describes the challenges, strategies, and lessons learned over the firm’s 37-year history as part of implementing new approaches to infrastructure design that can withstand the test of time.

Collage is one of the most popular and pervasive of all art-forms, yet this is the first historical survey book ever published on the subject. Featuring over 200 works, ranging from the 1500s to the present day, it offers an entirely new approach. Hitherto, collage has been presented as a twentieth-century phenomenon, linked in particular to Pablo Picasso and Cubism in the years just before the First World War. In Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, we trace its origins back to books and prints of the 1500s, through to the boom in popularity of scrapbooks and do-it-yourself collage during the Victorian period, and then through Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. Collage became the technique of choice in the 1960s and 1970s for anti-establishment protest, and in the present day is used by millions of us through digital devices. The definition of collage employed here is a broad one, encompassing cut-and-pasted paper, photography, patchwork, film and digital technology and ranging from work by professionals to unknown makers, amateurs and children.

Contents:

Collage Over the Centuries, an introductory essay by Patrick Elliott; Collage Before Modernism by Freya Gowrley; On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology by Yuval Etgar; catalogue of exhibition works; a Chronology of Collage.

EUROPAN is an initiative that puts on competitions for young architects. Founded in 1989 and supported by 13 countries in the EU, it runs a competition every two years for innovative and experimental models in urban development. The 2017 and 2019 EUROPAN competitions focused on the topic Productive Cities. The 2019 edition involved more than 900 planning teams from all over Europe, who prepared proposals for 47 towns.

This book features the 12 winning submissions to the 2019 Productive Cities 2 competition for the Austrian cities Graz, Innsbruck, Villach, Weiz, and Vienna. They are presented in great detail through photos, drawings and visualisations, along with commenting texts. The projects focus on architectural and urban-planning interventions and processes. They offer innovative concepts for the use of public space as well as holistic solutions for sustainable construction and models for cross-functional use of space. The book is a rich source for trend-setting ideas about our future cities and the development of a new urban lifestyle.

When do painterly gestures become objects or spaces? When the colours and lines in a picture become the subject, do they then flirt with or repel one another? Fascinated by the gaudy banality of day-to-day life, Anna Nero (*1988) scratches on the surface of things with the help of quotes from advertising, fashion, and comics as well as samples of abstract and concrete painting. The question of the ‘thingness’ of a picture as a painterly image or real ceramic object, the question of its material characteristics, its use, its “essence” is central to her work and also the focus of her first monograph.

Text in English and German.

Shanghai-based Atelier Deshaus, founded in 2001 as one of the first private architectural firms in China, is one of the country’s most important and innovative design studios. The architects made their name worldwide in 2014 with the much-acclaimed West Bund site for Shanghai’s Long Museum, which has since been followed by a series of further museum and other art-related projects. Such cultural and community buildings of various scale are the main focus of Atelier Deshaus, who refuse the usual commercial construction tasks in China. Their formally strong buildings are developed from reading the site with special attention being paid to the preservation of Shanghai’s industrial heritage after decades of a tabula rasa policy in the city’s urban development.

At the core of this first monograph are Atelier Deshaus’s 20 most important designs from two decades. They are documented in rich detail through plans and images as well as concise explanatory texts by the architects. In an extensive conversation with Hubertus Adam, the firm’s principals Liu Yichun and Chen Yifeng offer insights into their way of thinking, their understanding of Chinese tradition, their relation to art, and the challenges of working as a non-governmental office in China. Additional essays place Atelier Deshaus in the context of contemporary international architecture and discuss their key projects with regard to constructive qualities and atmosphere.

Eleanor Moty (b. 1945) from the US is a seminal figure in the field of contemporary international studio jewellery. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years, she has been both a dedicated practitioner and a devoted teacher who has inspired succeeding generations of artists, collectors, and fellow professionals. She began to attract national attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s for her experiments with photoetching and electroforming metal. Later, mid-career, Moty made what seems like an abrupt shift in style and focus, with more abstract works whose designs were inspired by the natural inclusions within the non-precious gems used in their fabrication. While her works have been published in prominent books, catalogues, and journals internationally, this monograph is the first comprehensive in-depth examination of her career from its inception in 1967 through the present day.