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.

Beyond the dense urbanism of Mumbai (Bombay) and the technology centres of Bangalore and Hyderabad lies the Ganges River basin: a fertile alluvial plain of 1.1 million square kilometres in area, which is today home to over one-quarter of India’s billion-plus population. While most of the basin sits within India, it extends into present day Bangladesh, Nepal, and Tibet. Not only is the area one of the most densely populated river basins in the world, but every year it also undergoes radical physical changes. With the arrival of the southwest monsoon between late-June and late-August, over one metre of rainfall drenches northern India. And, what is more, despite these drastic seasonal changes and population density, the basin remains agriculturally productive. This book focuses on the overlaps and juxtapositions of these three conditions: Population Density – Monsoon – Agriculture. It is an atlas of built and unbuilt projects designed to transform the Ganges River basin. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, this watercourse has functioned as a laboratory to test and build a new civilisation around the culture of water management. Jointly authored by human actors and their shifting natural heritage, the Ganges River basin is today a machine in which the entire basin functions as a highly engineered hydrological super-surface. This surface has been constructed from innumerable interventions operating at vastly different scales – from massive state-sponsored canals to individually-drilled wells. Because of the mixture of actors, the scale of inhabitation, and the widely varying techniques of interventions, this landscape of infrastructure requires a different kind of map. Reaching through the very heart of some of India’s most densely populated cities, small towns, industrial zones, sacred sites, and mountainous forests, Ganges Water Machine by Anthony Acciavatti, composed of eight years of field and archival research, explores and theorises the people and infrastructures that shaped this territory. Ganges Water Machine is an atlas of the enterprise to make the Ganges River basin into a highly engineered landscape: it reveals the narratives and explanations that allowed engineers and planners to realise fantasies previously only imaginable on paper or in myth.

This is a book about contemporary Swedish landscape architecture, reflected through the work of the country’s leading landscape designer Thorbjörn Andersson. Three essays by international writers open the book, elaborating on the concepts of Nature, Site, and Restraint. The essays are followed by the project section, including photographs, drawings, and descriptions. The projects are in the public realm; mainly squares and parks in Sweden.

Swedish landscape architecture stands firm in the world, directed towards social use and careful design. Sweden has developed a tradition built on human values, selective design, and an urge to work in a resourceful way. The book covers a selection of recent projects by Thorbjörn Andersson, who is one main interpreter of contemporary Swedish landscape design. Essays are by Annemarie Lund of Denmark, critic, editor and author, Marc Treib, professor emeritus of UC Berkeley and prolific author, and Udo Weilacher, chair of Landscape department at TU Munich and author.

Although this second-century monument located in the heart of Rome has been the object of hundreds of years of study, Trajan’s Hollow uncovers aspects of the column curiously omitted amidst all this attention, manifesting the lacunae in various paradigms of historical inquiry: this work rereads the column and its legacy through the simple act of prioritising the embodied occupation of its interior over the analysis of its exterior narrative frieze. By focusing on traces of workmanship (chisel marks, seam lines, tool dimensions), material attributes (provenance, behavior, constraints, change in qualities over millennia), and the experience of habitation (interior atmosphere, circulation, functional details), the project develops an alternative understanding of the historical artefact and of its role in contemporary design.

Women [Re]Build: Stories, Polemic, Futures is exemplary in its mission to combine in one resource reflections on the renewal of feminist thought in architecture (Framing Stories), challenges to practice made possible by activism (Shaping Polemics), and portrayals of inspiring practitioners who pave the way for future women architects (Building Futures). The goal of this book is to increase the visibility and voice of women who everyday challenge the definition and practice of architecture. Women [Re]Build gathers words and projects of leading women thinkers, activists, designers, and builders who have dared to ask, “where are the women?” Where are the women whose architectural work should be celebrated and recognised for its courage and impact; who have cultivated female leadership while challenging the very principles of the discipline they represent; and who ve asked the most difficult and rigorous of questions of those who build their visions? Contributors: Franca Trubiano; Ramona Adlakha; Ramune Bartuskaite; Joan Ockman; Ila Berman; Mary McLeod; Despina Stratigakos; Marion Weiss; Sadie Morgan; Samantha Hardingham; Lori Brown; Julie Moskovitz; Annelise Pitts; Shirley Blumberg; Nicole Dosso; Winka Dubbeldam; Billie Tsien; Jeanne Gang; Margaret Cavenagh; Department of Architecture, Penn DESIGN.

“Expand your mind and look good doing it with these new boundary-bending works of theoretical exploration by some of the field’s premier thinkers.” — The Architect’s Newspaper
“This jog through the history of physical culture vis-à-vis modern architecture features a series of drawings (beautifully rendered in metallic ink over black paper) and an impressive assortment of archival imagery. Taking the book over the finish line: a collection of somersaulting, weightlifting, and jeté-ing silhouettes that are bound to elicit more than a few smiles.” — Architectural Record
The Advanced School of Collective Feeling explores the advent of radical new conceptions of the body—a phenomenon known in the 1920s and ’30s as “physical culture”—and their impact on the thinking of some of modern architecture’s most influential figures. Using archival photographs, diagrams, and plans, the book reconstructs a constellation of provocative domestic projects by Marcel Breuer, Charlotte Perriand, Richard Neutra, and others. This obscure chapter in the modern movement gestures towards a remarkable synthesis of the individual and the collective, a perspective that holds enormous potential for articulating an architecture of today.

Today, Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is known chiefly for his furniture designs. He is famous also for his erotic polaroid photography of the 1960s, which has been subject of many exhibitions and has lost nothing of its great appeal to the fashion world today. Much less attention has so far been given to Mollino’s architecture, and a comprehensive critical study of his work in this field has been lacking. Yet his built work, although relatively small, constitutes a seminal contribution to modernism that is uniquely marked by a strong relationship with Surrealism.

Based on years of research and drawing on rich archival material as well as on Mollino’s own writings, this new book is the overdue tribute to an extraordinary personality in 20th-century architecture. It features an exemplary selection of his key designs, both built and unrealised, lavishly illustrated with images and reproductions of previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents. Rounded out with scholarly essays by expert authors, this is a long-awaited addition to the library of architecture lovers, professionals, and scholars.

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.

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.

In 2011, Zurich-based architect Fawad Kazi submitted the winning proposal for the rebuilding and extension of a hospital complex in the Swiss city of St Gallen. Over a period of ten years, a number of existing structures will undergo vast rebuilding and new ones will be added, transforming a park with individual buildings into a single continuous complex.

This new, eventually five-part monograph, documents this project in full detail. It highlights the significance of St Gallen’s urban design as well as the specific demands on architectural design and construction and on the hospital’s operations. Volume I features the project’s genesis and the initial new building, a pavilion structure housing a restaurant and, in the basement, an electrical substation.

Text in English and German.

In summer 2012, Architects Group Krokodil, a group of Zürich-based architects from various firms with a special interest in urban planning, published the book Glatt! Manifest für eine Stadt im Werden. This manifesto for a bold vision of future urban development of the Glatt valley, a suburban region north-east of Zürich, has been widely reviewed in the professional and public media in Switzerland and Gemany. Based on this book, participants of the 2012 International Summer Academy Zurich, staged by ETH Zurich and Architects Group Krokodil, focused their work on projects and visions for the Glatt valley area. Studio work of the students from 33 countries was complemented by evening lectures on specific subjects and aspects and also critically discussed. Glatt! From Suburb to City? presents the results of the 2012 International Summer Academy. It comprises an overview of the lecture series and in the second part documents the studio work created during the course. An encyclopedia on the topic rounds out the new book.

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.

The Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace (ALICE), affiliated with the School of Architecture at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is an educational facility dedicated to preparing students for the practice of architecture. To cultivate the ability to create or shape space, students must be confronted with an educational framework that prepares them for the field’s many practical challenges, from cultural, social, environmental, and physical concerns to working with the wide range of collaborators who bring their creativity and expertise together in the design process. The second volume in a four-part series on ALICE, The House 1 Catalogue focuses on a prototype, House 1, developed and constructed throughout the academic year. This mobile structure incorporates ALICE’s core values of communication and collaboration in building processes. It will travel as part of an exhibition to several major cities, where it will be continually modified and reconfigured. With five hundred illustrations, this book continues the experimental narrative Dieter Dietz, Matthias Michel, and Daniel Zamarbide began in The Invention of Space, which will be further developed in the forthcoming third and fourth volumes in the series. ALICE plays a key role in the success of one of Europe’s leading schools of architecture. This book, together with the three other volumes in the series, two of which are still-to-be-published, will provide an opportunity to explore the exceptional learning environment ALICE offers.

The new Vienna headquarters of ÖAMTC, Austria’s motorists’ association, emerged out of an interdisciplinary process from choosing a suitable site to completion. Created in close collaboration between the client, architects Pichler & Traupmann, engineers FCP Fritsch, Chiari & Partner, and strategic consultants M.O.O.CON together with Nofrontiere Design agency and SIDE Studio for Information Design, it is a highly innovative structure in terms of design and technology. Moreover, the building sets new standards for corporate culture and working environments.

This new book tells the entire story of the new ÖAMTC complex. It documents the project comprehensively and is lavishly illustrated with images, plans, and diagrams. The essays look at the project’s complex genesis and architectural concept, completed by interviews with the clients, architects, and with users of and visitors to the building. A glance at the history of comparable ‘houses of speed’ and a photo essay on the topic of mobility round out this book on a unique and exemplary multi-functional structure.

Text in English and German.

In architecture, nothing is ever truly new; everything has been tried before. And nowhere is this more evident than in the architecture of housing. Each proffered solution to a specific architectural problem is actually an amalgam of predecessors’ ideas and new approaches, which itself contributes in turn to a great global ‘pool’ for succeeding concepts. For twenty years, this philosophy has driven the activities of Zurich-based cooperative Pool Architekten, with a special focus on the research and design of residential buildings. Poolology of Housing is an up-close look at the collective’s body of work and a potential font of inspiration for others interested in letting this philosophy guide the creation of innovative architecture. At the core of the book are two hundred floor plans, designed by members of the collective and students during Pool Architects’ tenure from 2013 to 2016 at Technische Universität Berlin. Direct comparison of these floor plans demonstrates the incredible scope an architect has for residential buildings despite the many constraints imposed by external factors. Richly illustrated with both built and unrealised projects by Pool Architekten, as well as of model replicas of iconic historic interiors, Poolology of Housing reflects a novel social culture of housing design. Text in English and German.

Architectural objects confront their environment. They constitute a boundary, a form with an internalised point of view. Understanding architecture as environmental objects suggests a questioning of these dichotomies of separation between the symbolic landmark and the landscape background. It represents an architecture that amplifies nature, attunes to it and makes us aware of it. Portugal Lessons takes Portugal as a case study for such contextualism going beyond an understanding of design as immunisation. Based on the latest research program conducted by EPFL’s Laboratory Basel (laba), it explores the topic of this architectural boundary: with whom we live, to whom we open our house, how permeable the boundary should be. The findings are visualised in striking images, graphics and maps. The book also features proposals for architectural interventions by laba’s students, all of them tackling issues of housing.

Mural Art – Studies in Paintings in Asia is a collection of 10 articles by the best scholars on murals in Afghanistan, China, Tibet, Burma, Thailand and Mongolia – from the 5th to the 18th century. Covering diverse issues including preservation and digital reconstruction of lost murals, this important new book provides information with challenging perspectives based on the latest findings and research. It also reveals murals never before published, recently rediscovered and endangered. This unique publication on murals in Asia counts as a precious testimony of a fragile and inspiring heritage.

Documented Landscape, the seventh volume in the Pictorial Worlds series, presents a selection of images from the archives of the Geobotanical Institute Rübel and of Carl Schröter, which are being kept as part of the ETH Zürich’s extensive image archive. Founded by Eduard Rübel (1876-1960) in 1918 in Zurich and later donated to the ETH, the ‘Geobotanical Institute Rübel’ conducted pioneering research in the area of botanical biodiversity in the Alps. Rübel’s teacher, the botanist and ETH professor Carl Schröter (1855-1939), was himself a pioneer of biodiversity and landscape conservation. Rübel and Schröter were some of the earliest botanists to use photography as a means to document their research, thus making it available to a wider public and drawing attention to their early efforts in environmentalism. While the photo archives bear witness to a bygone era, their depiction of a changing landscape and progressing human interference are still strikingly on topic today. Sometimes showing near-arcadian scenes, the images are nevertheless highly realistic in their exact scientific documentation of the alpine biosphere. An in-depth introduction by historian and writer Ruedi Weidmann accompanies some ninety exceptional images selected from the comprehensive collection. Text in English and German.

Public interest in art created by people suffering from mental illnesses has been growing in recent years, while the topic is still relatively exotic in the academic world. In a unique research project at Zurich University of the Arts ZHdK, art works produced around 1900 by patients in mental asylums and hospitals in Switzerland have been recorded, documented, and examined. Their authors worked on many of them for long periods, always with dedication, and often revealing remarkable technical and artistic prowess. They saw their art as a contribution to public life, as their own invention and expression of their ideas, but also as an act to compensate for the dull life at, and criticism of, the institutions they were being treated. This field of art, and of art history, is subject to the dynamics of academic standards and, consequently, of inclusions and exclusions. This new book, featuring a manifold selection of previously unpublished art works, questions our contemporary understanding of art, making the reader revisit his or her own concept of what constitutes art and to engage with these artists and their work.

Published to accompany exhibitions at Prinzhorn Collection, Heidelberg, Germany from October 2018 to January 2019. at the Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland from February to May 2019, and at LENTOS Kunstmuseum Linz, Austria from June to August 2019.

Text in English and German.

Since it was first published in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas has become a classic in the theory of architecture and one of the most influential architecture texts of the 20th century. The treatise by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour enjoys a reputation as a signal work of postmodernism in architecture and urban planning. None of the book’s editions have ever featured high-quality colour images the authors produced to illustrate their argument. Las Vegas Studio, originally published in hardback in 2008, was the first publication ever to present these significant photographs in large colour reproductions. Now available again in a new paperback edition, this unique book features 102 of these iconic images and film stills, alongside essays by Swiss scholars Stanislaus von Moos and Hans Ulrich Obrist exploring how the pictures contemplate the phenomenon of the modern city. Also included is a discussion with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Swiss artist Peter Fischli that speaks to the strong and lasting influence these images still have on contemporary art and movies. Also available: A Difficult Whole: A Reference Book on the Work of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown ISBN 9783906027845

Since it was first published in 1972, Learning from Las Vegas has become a classic in the theory of architecture and one of the most influential architecture texts of the 20th century. The treatise by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour enjoys a reputation as a signal work of postmodernism in architecture and urban planning. None of the book’s editions have ever featured high-quality colour images the authors produced to illustrate their argument. Las Vegas Studio, originally published in hardback in 2008, was the first publication ever to present these significant photographs in large colour reproductions. Now available again in a new paperback edition, this unique book features 102 of these iconic images and film stills, alongside essays by Swiss scholars Stanislaus von Moos and Hans Ulrich Obrist exploring how the pictures contemplate the phenomenon of the modern city. Also included is a discussion with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Swiss artist Peter Fischli that speaks to the strong and lasting influence these images still have on contemporary art and movies. Text in French.

Paintings from the Indian subcontinent bedazzle the viewer with their minute details, colours and aesthetic qualities. Relatively modest in size, they often illustrate historical events, religious texts and poetry, or document life at court. Painted with water-solved pigments on paper, they invite closer observation and allow insight into the artistic traditions of India. “A Secret Garden” is the name of an outstanding private collection of Indian paintings. It comprises works spanning seven centuries from the time of the Sultans (1206-1526) through to the nineteenth century. This new book features a selection of 105 artworks from Danielle Porret’s collection. Each entry provides a stylistic analysis of the painting as well as a discussion of the subject matter by leading experts in the field of Indian painting.

cook. better should be understood as a promise, because this first-rate, perfectly designed cookbook tells you everything worth knowing about cooking. There are answers to questions every one of us has wondered about: Why does lasagna always taste different, even though we use the same recipe? Those beans had real crunch, but mine are always too soft; why? Why does a simple green salad with a plain dressing taste so good? Finally, answers to these questions and more. Just like in sports, though, the authors don’t send us straight out to the field. Rather, they start us off with a few stretching exercises and some jumping jacks. So we don’t leap right into mixing and stirring, but first gain some good basic knowledge while getting into shape for the stove. It’s not until we’ve absorbed the fundamental knowledge of cooking that we can enjoy experimentation and our own creativity. Our imaginations are set free. And the best thing about cooking is still gathering with friends and family around a table to savour these delicacies. Contents: Garlic; Salad; Tenderness; Flavour; Onions; Soffritto; Butternut; Veggies; White Sauce; Mushrooms; Heat; Flames; The Weber; Potatoes; Chocolate.