“Vandekeybus brought into focus a whole new genre of modern dance… Combat rolls, breakneck sprints and savagely wrestled duets became the defining vocabulary of a new generation.” The Guardian
In 2016, Wim Vandekeybus’ company Ultima Vez celebrates its 30th birthday. Never before has his oeuvre been recorded in a book. Until now. This extraordinary book is a visual trip through the most powerful images from his repertoire, a quest for the ideas and themes that inspire him. It also contains unpublished texts, notes and scripts from his shows and films. A number of compagnons de route, such as David Byrne, Mauro Pawlowski, and Peter Verhelst, offer a personal textual contribution. Text in English, French, and Dutch.
“Although the street art is generally conveyed in a very natural matter, even his dead animal paintings seem at peace.” – Streetartbio.com “Detached from the artist’s identity, his detailed, illustrative animal paintings have brought him back to the world. With local species of animals as his main focus, ROA inevitably starts a dialogue about human interaction with nature and the environment, whether it is painting on the walls of a museum or in an abandoned rural factory.” – Hi Fructose – The New Contemporary Magazine “One of the most influential acts of street art around the world.” – The Huffington Post Fascinated by nature, the anonymous muralist and street artist ROA is inspired by the beauty of its non-human inhabitants. With great attention to detail, ROA draws over-sized black and white creatures of endemic or endangered species on buildings around the world, from Moscow to Mexico City, and from Los Angeles to London. His subjects are frequently survivors; scavengers, rodents, and unusual animals that thrive in their particular milieu.
Two-hundred capitals; one street each; seven years of travelling and collecting photos, stories, facts and figures about each capital. This is not just another photography book. It reveals everything that a street means to society: education, wisdom, youth, experience, happiness, stories, food, and so much more. This is the raw material of life, drawn directly from the experiences of the Dutch photographer Jeroen Swolfs. Seeing the street as a unifying theme, he travelled in search of that one street in each place – sometimes by a harbour or a railway station – that comprised the country as a whole. Each stunning image conveys culture, colours, rituals, even the history of the city and country where he found them. Swolfs sees the street as a universal meeting place, a platform of crowds, a centre of news and gossip, a place of work, and a playground for children. Indeed, Swolfs’s streets are a matrix for community; his photographs are published at a time when the unique insularity of local communities everywhere has never been more under threat.
Benjamin West’s The Death of a Stag, a tour de force of pictorial theatre and his own unique Scottish masterpiece, has been the focus of high drama for over two centuries. Painted for the Clan Mackenzie in 1786, the gigantic canvas, measuring twelve by seventeen feet, is still the largest in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. The painting almost left these shores for America, but after a successful campaign, it was purchased in 1987. In 2004, the work was conserved in situ in the National Gallery of Scotland and this book tells the story of the picture, both in terms of its history and the conservation process.
Joan Eardley (1921-1963) is one of Scotland’s most admired artists. During a career that lasted barely fifteen years, she concentrated on two very distinct themes: children in the Townhead area of central Glasgow, and the fishing village of Catterline, just south of Aberdeen, with its leaden skies and wild sea. The contrast between this urban and rural subject matter is self-evident, but the two are not, at heart, so very different. Townhead and Catterline were home to tight-knit communities, living under extreme pressure: Townhead suffered from overcrowding and poverty, and Catterline from depopulation brought about by the declining fishing industry. Eardley was inspired by the humanity she found in both places. These two intertwining strands are the focus of this book, which looks in detail at Eardley’s working processes. Her method can be traced from rough sketches and photographs through to pastel drawings and large oil paintings. Identifying many of Eardley’s subjects and drawing on unpublished letters, archival records and interviews, the authors provide a new and remarkably detailed account of Eardley’s life and art.
The Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) is one of the most celebrated paintings of the nineteenth century. It was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2017. In this new book, the first to focus in detail on this iconic picture, Christopher Baker explores its complex and fascinating history. He places Landseer’s work in the context of the artist’s meteoric career, considers the circumstances of its high-profile commission and its extraordinary subsequent reputation. When so much Victorian art fell out of fashion, Landseer’s Monarch took on a new role as marketing image, bringing it global recognition. It also inspired the work of many other artists, ranging from Sir Bernard Partridge and Ronald Searle to Sir Peter Blake and Peter Saville. Today the picture has an intriguing status, being seen by some as a splendid celebration of Scotland’s natural wonders and by others as an archaic trophy. This publication will make a significant contribution to the debates that it continues to stimulate.
Established following the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the Chair of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh and named after the painter Sir John Watson Gordon, the Watson Gordon Lectures typify the long-standing and positive collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland: two partners in the Visual Arts Research Institute in Edinburgh. This lecture, the third in the series, was given by Neil Cox of the University of Essex, one of Britain’s leading scholars of Cubism and Surrealism, and a particular authority on Picasso, approaching the Spaniard’s work from intriguing angles. He concentrates on a single work, Picasso’s Head of 1913, and in doing so demonstrates how scrupulous focus can open out challenging perspectives in the work of a great master.
Also Available: Roger Fry’s Journey ISBN: 9781906270117 Sound, Silence, and Modernity in Dutch Pictures of Manners ISBN: 9781906270254
Assembly of the Exalted presents some 50 pieces from the remarkable collection of Alice S. Kandell. The works, dating from the late 13th century to the early 20th, include great masterpieces and emblematic examples of Tibetan Buddhist art. They are all presented here as the constituents of a Tibetan Buddhist shrine. Shrines, both modest and grand, are the primary sites of Tibetan Buddhist practice, whether it be reciting scriptures, performing rituals, saying prayers, or engaging in meditation. The introductory essays thus focus on the Tibetan Buddhist shrine, describing its evolution over the history of Buddhism, its special role in Tibet, and how the pieces in the Kandell Collection came to be assembled and displayed in shrines at institutions across America. Illustrated with vivid photography, forty short essays, each centered on a single work or set of objects, describe the pieces in terms of their importance for the practice of Buddhism, highlighting the many essential functions of Tibetan Buddhist art within the space of a shrine.
Many think slavery ended with the demise of the trans-Atlantic trade, but sadly, that’s far from true. An estimated thirty-six million live without dignity or rights and although slavery is illegal in every country, it continues to persist in all – as a crime against humanity. Lisa Kristine’s indelible images seek to unify humanity and inform the viewer of the tangible humanness of individuals enslaved today. Lisa was invited to the Vatican as a witness to the signing of the Declaration to Eradicate Modern Day Slavery by 2020. When Pope Francis gathered twenty-five of the world’s distinguished faith leaders the message was clear – slavery is not a political issue – it is a crime against humanity, against all people. Lisa’s journey sheds light on the need for a global shift from dependence on slave labour, to fair trade labour systems available and active in many parts of the world today. It is not simply a story about slavery, but liberation. In order to create change, we must first visualise what is required to free those enslaved today. Bound to Freedom focuses on inspiring us to engage in the reality of slavery – to make us aware of the depth of its reach and insist we begin to look for solutions across faiths, communities, and the world. The call is for a renewed commitment to cooperate and to empower those enslaved to be seen.
HOK Tall Buildings is a visually engaging, accessible reference guide highlighting some of the world’s most innovative tall buildings. Written by global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK, the book features creative conceptual designs, projects under construction and built high-rises worldwide. Throughout the book, central themes guiding the design of these tall buildings begin to emerge. These include a focus on creating high-performance, sustainable, iconic, efficient and mixed-use structures that increase the density of urban environments. The global teams at HOK excel at designing intelligent, high-performance tall buildings that become symbols of their time and place. HOK Tall Buildings chronicles the firm’s best recent designs for high-rises around the world, including: in Saudi Arabia, an iconic centrepiece that anchors a new office district; in Azerbaijan, a flame-inspired trio of towers that transforms Baku’s skyline; in South Korea, an iconic residential gateway to the neighbourhoods of Incheon’s dynamic northern district. Each high-rise profiled in the book is designed to blend human need with environmental stewardship, value creation, sense of place, and science and art. Gain insight into the minds and approaches of HOK’s global design teams as you peruse floor plans, sketches, renderings and photographs of dozens of dynamic tall buildings. Learn how an integrated design process enables teams to solve profound functional and technical challenges while igniting the imagination. Discover how designers of tall buildings can balance internal functions with the external demands of site, climate, and culture to create memorable, sustainable structures that enrich people’s lives.
This first-person account of a legendary necropolis will delight Francophiles, tourists and armchair travelers, while enriching the experience of taphophiles (cemetery lovers) and aficionados of art and architecture, mystery and romance. Carolyn Campbell’s evocative images are complemented by those of renowned landscape photographer Joe Cornish. City of Immortals celebrates the novelty and eccentricity of Père-Lachaise Cemetery through the engrossing story of the history of the site established by Napoleonic decree along with portraits of the last moments of the cultural icons buried within its walls. In addition to several ‘conversations’ with some of the high-profile residents, three guided tours are provided along with an illustrated pull-out map featuring the grave sites of eighty-four architects, artists, writers, musicians, dancers, filmmakers and actors, including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison of the Doors. Frédéric Chopin, Georges Bizet, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Isadora Duncan, Eugène Delacroix, Gertrude Stein, Amedeo Modigliani, Sarah Bernhardt, Simone Signoret, Colette and Marcel Proust.
Experiences of Art: Reflections on Masterpieces is a book that explores the history of art through the insights of students and critics. It engages with challenging, thought-provoking themes such as the origins of creativity in prehistoric art, the meaning and significance of the classical paradigm in art history since antiquity, the actual application of Renaissance art theory to an examination of famous masterpieces, and the tradition of individual subjectivity and expression in modern art reaching back to Van Gogh. In addition, one of its special features is an exploration of a new area of philosophical inquiry, which re-examines the 18th century as both a period of rationalism and anti-rationalism (rather than the “Age of Reason”, as it is commonly referred to). With its focus on well-known and often-discussed masterpieces, this work is adept at including both the mandatory framework of current critical thought and introducing fresh ideas and perspectives.
Artificial mountains are a worldwide reality. Their presence influenced the history of urbanism, architecture, and landscape architecture. Burial sites use, very frequently, the intimidating shape of the man-made mountain. Incense burners in ancient China evoked the Five Sacred Mountains. Mount Parnassus in Greece became an important element in European garden history and a symbol of the Renaissance. In the Baroque Rome of the 17th century the most important artists worked on the constructions of huge ephemeral mounds in order to express more or less codified messages. The model of the artificial mountain was used as well during the French Revolution: the famous celebration of the Supreme Being took place on a gigantic faux mountain. The history of landscape architecture is characterized by the construction of architectural mounds, often built by using local excavation material.
The industrial revolution acted as another source for the rise of an anthropic topography, creating forms, which we do not recognise anymore as totally artificial. Architects have found in the form of mountains a model and a gestalt with which to play in an ironic way. In twentieth-century art, mountains are ubiquitous, culminating in Robert Smithson’s masterful exploration of reversed, displaced, and rebuilt mountains. Michael Jakob’s study is the first one to address this fascinating worldwide phenomenon stretching from Antiquity to our days
Chapter 1: Urban Play: A Project from Start to Finish: What does a landscape architect do exactly? Here, we peel back the finished project, which has won several design awards, to show the major steps in the making of the garden. We start with the clients wishes for an outside play area for their young twin girls that will be visually pleasing when viewed from the living rooms several stories above. And the condition of the site: an odd-shaped and impossibly steep and tilted small plot covered in brambles. We present a ‘before’ picture, early drawings, problem solving, the gradual articulation of the design, how the Blasens work together, choice of fabrication materials, planting design, the construction period, and the final finished garden and how it is used. Illustrations throughout.
Chapter 2: Gardens: From the Mountains to the Shore: This photographic presentation of a dozen gardens is the bulk of the book. Some projects are covered in 2 spreads; others in 3 spreads, one in 5 spreads. The gardens range from a city courtyard to a beach garden, to an 22-acre estate with a California wildflower meadow, and an extensive green roof on a Herzog & de Meuron designed house that s set into a natural hillside. Some have been published in top design magazines; a few particularly exciting new large projects are now being published for the first time. Each project is introduced with a) descriptions of the garden and how the clients use it and b) a paragraph about the planting design and key plants.
Chapter 3: Lexicon: The Blasens Aesthetic: This chapter-an alphabetical list of terms/phrases that appear often in the Blasens conversations about their work investigates the Blasens aesthetic. We hear what they most deeply care about, often in their own words: for example, seamlessness of design, color, geography, lightness, plants that thrive where they are, rhythmic sequencing of experiences in a garden, retaining what already is. And also their influences in the art, design, and architecture worlds, and what’s catching their attention right now. This collage of fragments builds a fascinating picture of their sensibilities, and how they earned the title of the new tastemakers in House and Garden magazine. Small photographs, for many entries, give examples.
Moody Nolan has come a long way since 1982, when it was formed in a small office with just two employees. Since then, the Columbus-based architectural firm has grown from a local Midwestern business to a national practice with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Covington, Ky., Dallas, Houston, Nashville, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Moody Nolan is diverse by design, thriving on the unique experiences and viewpoints that each of its 200 employees brings to the table. This has allowed it to become not only one of America’s most respected firms, but the largest, most award-winning, African-American-owned architecture firm in the nation. Moody Nolan Design, Vol. 2 spans 2013 to 2019 and reflects the completed projects and conceptual ideas of a firm committed to excellence with a purpose. With a focus on ‘responsive architecture,’ Moody Nolan bridges the divides between architecture and engineering, art and science, what is possible and what is purposeful.
Pressing Matters VI is an exciting compilation of design and research performed at PennDesign’s Department of Architecture. It features recent work by students, news, important symposia and lectures, and is printed on recycled paper with non-toxic inks. To summarise, the goal is to be at the forefront of advanced research and design by creating an advanced research institute that focuses on new design methodologies and future manufacturing through the interlinked intelligence of digital design, scripting and robotics. The focus is also on social awareness and responsibility, and being a think-tank for critical exchanges and advanced debates within and across disciplinary boundaries. The aim is to be a connective device, inviting experts for ongoing lectures and publications in order to engage a growing international audience and create an increasing network of experts.
Return on Experience will be comfortable on the shelves of designers and artists and equally comfortable for business leaders and educators. It reflects the fundamental belief that design is integral to everything we do. That all human existence has been a result of a progression of successful design outcomes. It is not in the sense that what we have created is exclusively logical and rational but true success has been the result of sort of emotional intelligence and meaning being infused into a new form that has caused us to progress as a species. Inspiration and innovation are difficult to process from a pure logic as it requires a broader view into the way we think and feel things. It is deeply personal and at the same time shared at a social level. In this sense we naturally view design as possessing enormous value and is an essential part of culture with a broad value and application.
Design is a dialogue. This book is not a treatise on do’s and don’ts of design or business. It is a reflection on the nature of how to see design. Design is and always has been part of a conversation. As such, this book captures a dialogue that author, Tim Kobe has been engaged in for over 25 years at Eight Inc. This conversation is more than a single path but reflects the dialogue and practice of business leaders, designers, colleagues, and collaborators. This book would not exist without those on the other side of the conversation and is more than a lens of a single or individual point of view. Eight Inc. has been incredibly fortunate to design with some of the most successful people and companies that exist today and much of Eight Inc.’s success has been attributed to our time with Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs.
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
At the moment of going to press, a publication irreversibly reaches its final form. Simultaneously, it also reaches an audience. Naturally, this audience very often is oblivious to the many, and sometimes complex, steps towards the construction and montage of (visual) meaning that precedes the actual publication of a book. The contributors to Before Publication consider such construction of meaning as montage and look at materials and processes involved before publication. Their focus is on concrete artistic and visual artifacts such as scrapbooks, book mock-ups, and press layouts by artists, authors, and graphic designers. In particular, they shed light on the relationship between the spheres of privacy and publicity. The new book features a programmatic introduction by the editors Nanni Baltzer and Martino Stierli and eight concisely illustrated topical essays.
Swedish-American architect Lars Lerup’s writings suggest a mindful collector as their author, rather than a scholar or a theoretician. Lerup sharply observes and analyses his urban environment and its properties, before adding his findings to his own theory of the modern city. Lerup wrote the fourteen essays in this new book as self-contained pieces, yet together they still form a coherent entity. The fourteen essays in The Continuous City offer a survey of Lerup’s thinking on identity and monumentality are the relationship between nature and culture. His interest and reflections focus, among other things, on Roberto Burle Marx, a founder of modern landscape design; the ‘dancing floors’ of Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library; Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road project in Miami Beach; and the character of urban icons like Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Dalian International Conference Center. Lars Lerup invites his readers to join him on his journey and to be enriched, rather than instructed, en route.
Experimental Zone documents a remarkable experiment in spatial research at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory Image Knowledge Gestaltung at Berlin’s Humboldt University. Every two months, for four years, researchers reconfigured a 350-square metre workspace for forty scientists. The design-based, collaborative experiment’s focus was on the interrelation of space and knowledge production: what spatial qualities are required by interdisciplinary teams for their research work? With some 300 striking and straightforward graphics, Experimental Zone presents the findings of the experiment. It highlights the spatial conditions under which individual and collaborative research unfold, overlap, or merge, and reveals the characteristics of an architecture that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. The experiment’s innovative interdisciplinary approach is also reflected in the book’s design, with each of the five chapters and the comprehensive visual material reflecting publishing traditions in publishing design, architecture, and the humanities.
HEC Paris is a leading European school of advanced business studies with a global community of students from Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In 2012, HEC Paris’s campus near Versailles was redesigned by renowned architects Martin Duplantier and David Chipperfield to reflect the school’s global character and its focus on open communication and exchange. HEC Campus: Evolution of a Model documents the transformation in close detail and with one hundred illustrations, including twenty newly commissioned photographs by award-winning French photographer Cyrille Weiner. After a brief history of HEC Paris since its foundation in 1881, the book takes readers through the planning and construction of its modern buildings throughout the 1960s by René Coulons, and the careful restoration of many of these buildings by Duplantier and Chipperfield. The architects also conceived an entirely new building and a surrounding park, which has become a key element of campus social life. Through essays and an interview with Martin Duplantier, the book also explores the interplay of preservation and renovation and demonstrates how this exemplary contemporary redesign can be taken as a model for this sort of planning.
Text in English and French.
French architect Stéphane Fernandez creates a ‘silent architecture’ that invests the landscape as much as it takes shape. He is a minimalist in expression and maximalist in attention to detail. He models rough, thick and fragile monoliths by digging, by movement of bodies and the generation of tensions between masses. Fernandez articulates his work around a permanent search for materials, the accumulation of models, sketches, plans and words.
This first monograph on Stéphane Fernandez features five of his realised designs that are emblematic for his approach: a childrens’ pavillion (Saint-Raphaël, 2005), a media library (Carnoux, 2007), a students’ residence and laboratory building (Banyuls-sur-Mer, 2013), a cultural centre (Vertou, 2015) and a primary school (Cannes, 2018).
An essay and a conversation with Stéphane Fenrandez by architectural historian Éléonore Marantz as well as a manifesto by the architect himself complement plans of the buildings and photographs of the five buildings by Berlin-based photographers Schnepp Renou. Preface is by Jean-Christophe Quinton.
Text in English and French.
Founded in 2009, Paris-based PARC Architectes has risen to prominence, winning awards and accolades in its native France and beyond. Just as important as its design work is PARC Architectes’s research on contemporary architecture and urbanism, laid out in the theoretical essay Le parc planetarire (The Planetary Park), published in the firm’s own journal, PRAGMA, and on its blog, CRAPZINE. This first book to focus on PARC Architectes, Architecture as Environment features fifteen foundational designs by the firm, chosen to reflect the firm’s credo that the environment has to become a matter of architecture. At the interface of art and science, PARC Architectes’s designs are installations rather than mere structures, enabling adequate responses to contextual and conceptual issues in the construction of contemporary human environments. In addition to brief essays, the book also includes 150 illustrations, including many in full colour. Text in French.