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Bars are more than drinking spaces – they also provide a place to socialise. Interior design can make or break a bar; it has great influence over the establishment’s future prospects. Bars should be both functional and aesthetically striking, to leave a strong first impression on customers and guarantee their continued patronage.

This book is a trailblazer in the niche field of bar design. Over 40 award-winning international bar design projects are included. Each case study is presented alongside a concept brief, photos, plans, and concise analysis, so the reader can understand how the bar’s design suits its function.

The buildings of the past were constructed with readily available and local materials, such as stone, wood, or handmade bricks. Architects in the modern era, however, can choose from an ever increasing number of new materials, each one allowing for different advances in design. And yet the traditional materials have never been entirely supplanted; they still form an important part of the architectural range and are still used by architects the world over. The humble brick, for example, has remained a constant throughout the history of architecture, as has timber with its flexibility and warm tones. But today such elements can be used in conjunction with newer materials to highlight their natural beauty in many different ways: creating a stunning metal facade, wrapping a building with a cool, sleek stone finish, designing a wall with an eye-catching interesting texture, or adding depth or warmth to an internal design. Traditional metals are also finding new use, being employed to coat a structure in a light metal skin that reflects the sunlight, or embedded onto a building to add interest and texture. This book journeys through a curated selection of stunning examples from across the world, showcasing how each material is creatively used over a diverse range of building types and styles, and illustrating the myriad possibilities and forms available to the modern architect who chooses to rework these age-old materials into a brand-new decorative yet functional form.

Based in a historically distinguished town near New York City, the firm of Bentel & Bentel Architects has been led for over 50 years by two generations – men and women – of one family. The interweaving of their experiences, lifestyles, and personal philosophies has produced a uniquely elegant series of works including public buildings, restaurants, and hotels. The buildings are equally notable for their thoughtful relationships to the structures they occupy or adjoin, the communities in which they stand, and the experiences of their intended users. Bentel & Bentel’s accomplishments reflect not only its cumulative design experience but the insights the partners bring to their work from a variety of related activities: painting, sculpture, dance, design of furnishings, architectural history, and education. Reflecting the lives and accomplishments of the firm’s partners, this monograph is composed of three narratives: Who We Are, What We Do, and Who We Were.

This highly anticipated monograph focuses on the architectural output of Enrique Browne, a talented and prolific Chilean architect and co-founder of Browne & Swett Arquitectos, based in Santiago. Over the last 40 years, this South American architect has been trying to reconcile natural and artificial worlds through architecture. They are one indissoluble unity. This book showcases in rich photographic detail how his innovative projects incorporate multiple environmental aspects that result in a complex, layered response to the challenges of place, form and identity in Chile.

Browne’s practice has developed architectural designs in a diverse range of scales, with emphasis on sustainability and energy efficiency. This volume delves into Browne’s processes, such as developing variations of the “grapevinestructure typology” to create a “double green skin” as a green wall (or roof), to protect dwellings from the region’s strong westerly sun; or combining vegetation and its oxygenation benefits with building to counter pollution; or using both artificial and natural light as a material for illuminating spaces or volume. This book also includes commentary on the new zeitgeist surrounding modernity and the impacts of the digital and globalised world on architecture today. Highly regarded, and a prolific writer and designer, Enrique Browne has a unique way of looking at the world. Showcasing the wide range of his design, this title is sure to impress.

Moshe Safdie explains that probably more than half of his lifetime design work is unbuilt, and he considers his unbuilt work to be some of his most significant work. In this richly illustrated book, replete with detailed diagrams, sketches, models and studies, Moshe Safdie explains that for those who design in order to build, not succeeding in building is never a failure (there are many reasons why a project might not be built) because these designs are part of the evolution of an architect’s work. This volume is a fascinating journey through Safdie’s thoughts and career, and also a historical reference of the social and political forces at play at the time. Not only a treatise on Safdie’s unrealised concepts, this book is also a wonderful affirmation that there is valuable heritage in the unbuilt.

Includes a number of significant projects from around the globe, including the following:
Habitat Original Proposal, Montreal, Québec, Canada 1964; Habitat New York II, New York, New York, United States 1967; San Francisco State, College Student Union, San Francisco, California, United States 1967; Pompidou Centre, Paris, France 1971; Western Wall Precinct, Jerusalem, Israel 1972; Supreme Court of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel 1985; Columbus Center, New York, New York, United States 1985; Ballet Opera House, Toronto, Ontario, Canada 1987; Museum of Contemporary Art, Stuttgart, Germany 1990; Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory, Waxahachie, Texas, United States 1993; Incheon Airport, Incheon, Korea 2011; Jumeirah Gateway Mosque, Dubai, UAE 2007; National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China 2012.

The KfW Foundation and the cultural centre Künstlerhaus Bethanien are collaborating on a studio programme offering a twelve-month residency in Berlin to young artists from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Verlag Kettler presents the artistic work of the grant holders in an ongoing book series. Matheus Rocha Pitta (born 1980 in Tiradentes, Brazil, lives and works in Rio de Janeiro) has created a new group of works entitled For the Winners the Potatoes. At the time of publication, this work an be found at the exhibition room of Künstlerhaus Bethanien, as well as in two of Berlin’s underground stations, Hermannplatz and Gesundbrunnen, and in a showcase at SOX in Berlin’s Oranienstraße. Rocha Pitta’s performative installations at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and in the underground stations allow him to interact with the public. He presents trophies that are made of plastic bags or concrete instead of gold, silver or bronze, and invites visitors to take along potatoes as victory trophies. His work deconstructs the concept of victory and the hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a dense network of historical references going back to Ancient Greece and asking fundamental questions about the meaning of gestures, the community and its value. Rocha Pitta portrays his trophies with a mocking sense of humour. By connecting glory with mundane, everyday objects, he aims to subvert the hierarchy of winners and losers and invites the spectator to rethink the meaning of victory and defeat. Text in English and German.

Nevin Aladag was born in Van, Turkey, in 1973. Between 1993 and 2000, she studied sculpture under Olaf Metzel at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Aladag became renowned particularly for her role in the documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel (2017) and in the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale (2017). This book focuses on two series of works by the artist that explore issues of self-determination, identity, and community in society and culture. For her series Social Fabric (2017-2018), Aladag cut out pieces of different carpets with characteristic patterns representing distinct cultural identities and combined them into new, unifying pictures. Her photo series entitled Best Friends (2012-2018) presents snapshots of friends who Aladag met randomly while walking the streets of Dortmund, Berlin, Basle, Los Angeles, Mons, and Hanover. Remarkably similar in appearance, body language, and manner of dress, the friends portrayed almost seem to merge into one person, contrasting with our desire to set ourselves apart as individuals.

Text in English and German.

Collapsing industrial buildings and overgrown wastelands suggest that Berlin’s Schöneweide district once experienced a different present. Today, the numerous abandoned sites provide a place for many young people to meet in secret. Over three years, photographer Janina Wick established contact with them and visited them, explored the abandoned sites, portrayed the youngsters and also captured the architectural changes. With fresh design, the book documents her perceptive observations and research into youth culture.

Text in English and German.

Bentu is an award-winning, cutting-edge Chinese design company founded in 2011. It is known for innovative and engaged product and lighting design and manufacturing, with an emphasis on day-to-day functionality and attention to raw materials. The design teams have experimented extensively with the detritus of industry, including concrete, ceramic, metal and plastic pipes, and terrazzo.

In this beautifully photographed book, the evolution of a product is shown, more than told. A stunning series of photos of raw materials and work sites follows the process from beginning to end, creating a visual storyline of environmental impact, innovative design, sustainability, reusability, local sourcing, and usage.

This exhibition catalogue presents a meticulous selection of ‘illustrated’ works encompassing Picasso’s entire career. Shining a light on this relatively unknown aspect of the artist are some 200 illustrated works as well as some of his major masterpieces, archival documents, films and extracts of recordings, which together capture the inventive diversity and wealth of his oeuvre and further underpins the major role Picasso played – and still plays to this day – in art history.

Text in English, French and Dutch.

In his new book of photographs Tobias Bärmann goes on the search for the hidden sides of Los Angeles, City of Dreams. He traverses the gigantic metropolis, designed to accommodate cars, on a bicycle. By slowing down he discovers the aesthetics of transition and incompletion outside of the city’s glamorous surface. Many of the motifs are evidence of the past acts of unknown protagonists. With a cryptic eye for the poetry of the ephemeral and the supposedly trivial, Bärmann steers our attention to everything that our civilisation seems to evoke accidentally.

Wolfram Ullrich (*1961) oscillates between painting and sculpture. For decades, he has used his refined techniques to amaze viewers with his perfect trompe l’oeils. Optically speaking, his intensely colourful, often multi-part wall reliefs develop an enormous sense of physicality and practically seem to project into the space. Their dynamic arrangement transforms the entire appearance of a space. In this publication the MKK Ingolstadt presents Ullrich’s multifaceted, consequential oeuvre all together for the first time, covering all stages of his work.

Text in English and German.

Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop: Bioclimatic Ceramic Assemblies IV presents terra cotta design research, conducted under the auspices of the annual Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop (ACAW), between architectural firms and terra cotta manufacturer Boston Valley Terra Cotta. It chronicles the work of architectural firms Kieran Timberlake, Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF), HKS, Payette, Pelli Clarke Pelli, SHoP Architects, Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM), Studios Architecture and two academic teams from Alfred University and the University at Buffalo. The book presents a unique model for exploring the state of the art in terra cotta design through the production of experimental prototypes. These include rain screen facade systems, urban sound devices, structures, massive wall systems and furniture. Now in its fifth year, this invitation-only workshop has teams collaborate with the manufacturer to develop a design that engages bioclimatic concerns and pushes material and manufacturing possibilities.

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 landscape and architecture of a city like Berlin possess a great deal of under-track information. Inexplicable, yet perceptible, sometimes barely whispered.” – Vincenzo Castella

Vincenzo Castella went to Berlin for the first time between August and September 1989, without imagining that an epochal turning point was preparing in that city, with the imminent fall of the Wall, on 9th November 1989.

The volume publishes for the first time the shots of that residency. A photographic cycle which, although presenting itself as a ‘digression, an experiment with open outcomes’ as explained by Frank Boehm in his text, with respect to the themes of his research at the time is fully inserted in a wider reflection on landscape, understood as a context built and modified by man, which is also the common thread of all of Castella’s oeuvre.

For today’s readers, this is not just an unpublished visual document that, through a silent and essential revival, gives us a glimpse of how the city looked before history intervened to cut its boundaries, but also a crucial element to approach and deepen the work of one of the most appreciated masters of contemporary photography.

Text in English, German and Italian.

To be a skateboarder today is a much different experience than it was for much of the 1990s. The photographs, quotes, and anecdotal text in ‘93 til captures a time in skateboarding when making a liveable income as a professional skater was a luxury and public understanding of skateboarding was at an all-time low. It was a time when skateboarding was searching for an identity, a time before Instagram and big corporate influences. Street skating was coming of age, testing its limitations and aligning itself with a new and innovative style of hip-hop culture that was emerging. Looking back, many skaters today feel as though the ’90s were the golden years of skateboarding. ‘93 til is a captivating portal into a decade and a culture that is remembered with warmth and nostalgia. Much of the photography that Pete has unearthed for ‘93 til was buried in boxes for close to two decades and has never been seen or published before. The 250-page book also contains several timeless images from his years shooting for SLAP and Transworld Skateboarding Magazine that will be familiar to the initiated. In addition to his stunning action shots are plenty of portraits and unguarded, candid moments that span from the late ’80s up through 2004. The book reveals a raw, unapologetic perspective of a world that no longer exists.

Also included in the book alongside Pete’s imagery are quotes and anecdotes from legends like Tony Hawk, Arto Saari, Jamie Thomas, Guy Mariano, Nyjah Huston, Geoff Rowley, Stevie Williams and others.

In 1946 (after a stint as a World War II military hospital), quintessential American decorator Dorothy Draper was brought in to restore the Greenbrier hotel. She created a signature look – described at the time as ‘Romance and Rhododendrons’ – that has influenced and delighted not only designers and decorators but also travellers, weary of the grey and beige colour schemes that permeate most hospitality properties even now. Draper transformed the interiors with bold colours, classical influences and modern touches.

When Carleton Varney arrived in Mrs. Draper’s office in 1961 to work as an assistant in the design department, one of his first tasks was to accompany the design icon by train to one of her most well-known and publicised projects. Since that time, he has been involved with every aspect of the hotel’s design, maintaining and continuing the look that Draper designed, as well as modernising, upgrading and putting his own stamp on it. Working with his experienced and innovative team, Varney has turned the historic hotel into a resort for the 21st century.

Julius Baer, established in Zurich in 1890, is the leading Swiss wealth management group and an icon of Swiss banking tradition. For nearly as long, the founder family has been engaged in supporting visual and performing arts and in 1981, on the initiative of Hans J. Bär (1927-2011), the company began to build its own collection of contemporary art, guided by a firm belief that art in a business environment enhances the culture of discussion and is inspirational to employees and clients alike. Today, the Julius Baer Art Collection comprises more than 5,000 works in a range of media painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and video-by Swiss artists, internationally renowned ones as well as emerging talents.

This book offers a survey of the collection that is on rotating display at the bank’s offices around the world and highlights its origins and development over the past four decades. Artistic positions of 35 contemporary Swiss artists, such as John M Armleder, Silvia Bächli, Miriam Cahn, Lutz & Guggisberg, Markus Raetz, Shirana Shahbazi, and Roman Signer, are introduced through brief texts and illustrated with some 300 works from the collection.

This monograph presents a thorough overview of the work of the Danish artist Thomas Bang (b. 1938). Essays by four Danish art historians trace his years as a painter in the early 1960s, his subsequent development as a sculptor in the late 1960s, and his activity on the New York art scene through the 1980s. The primary emphasis of the book is on Bang’s three-dimensional work and the analysis of the range of issues on which his object- and installation-oriented work has been focused for several decades.
Thomas Bang has throughout his career focused on various issues of fragility and vulnerability as physical as well as psychological states. The emphasis of his sculpture is on creating a broad field of operations, where alterations of apparent initial intentions and meaning are gradually established in the development of the work.

Source Books in Architecture No.14: Rem Koolhaas / OMA + AMO Spaces for Prada is the most recent volume in the Source Books in Architecture series. Among the topics discussed in the book are the longstanding relationship with Prada and how the early objectives in that relationship have both maintained and shifted. An underlying theme to the conversations held with students and faculty of the Knowlton School community is the topic of architect client relationships, their history, their problems, and how they have contributed to the discipline over time. Explicitly, a focus of the conversation is on a number of projects that OMA has developed or completed with Prada, a large number of which are installation scale environments that manifest in the form of runway shows and exhibitions. The challenge of such projects is to retain a commitment to the political and cultural agenda that OMA embeds in the larger and permanent buildings. Given the ephemerality and role of these environments as literal backgrounds to highlighted events, the projects are ideal scenarios in which to develop an architecture that lacks the permanence of buildings while still carrying potency and contributing to larger cultural discussions involving, for example, event, place, concept, product, staging, the crowd, lighting, and materiality.

Source Books in Architecture No.14 contains project documentation from the OMA and Prada archives, transcripts from Koolhaas’ conversations with students at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University, and commentary and critique from architects, critics, and theorists.

Close to one million people are unhoused in the United States today. Millions and millions are ill—housed – people living in shanties or leaky, mouldy trailers. And millions more are mis—housed – in houses that are abusive in their loneliness, forlorn and empty at so many levels. We can do something about it. Actually, it’s low hanging fruit, should we choose to do something; impossible, if we do not. And it’s essential, not only for the wellbeing of the individual, but also for the wellbeing of the State, and the society.

Current studies are overwhelmingly show that it is more cost effective, in terms of tax dollars earmarked for city, county, state, and federal governments, to house people than it is to just leave them outside. About $20k to $40k cheaper for each person per year. In the case of the unhoused, it also taxes our psyches and our emotions to see our neighbours sleeping on the sidewalk. It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain to our children and grandchildren how we Americans leave people outside in the cold — mentally challenged or not. Then, there is the moral issue.

If you are motivated to get a new homeless housing project moving in your town, this book is the best place to start.

Almost, Not: The Architecture of Atelier Nishikata is the story of a remarkable architecture practice in Tokyo. Partners Reiko Nishio and Hirohito Ono have built just four residential works, until now remaining little-known outside of Japan. But the extraordinary, almost-ordinary quality of their work warrants the spotlight. It has much to teach students of architecture and experienced architects alike.

This book is a hybrid between an architectural monograph and a magic instruction book. Author Leslie Van Duzer, a former magician’s assistant and author of four monographs on 20th-century architecture, draws parallels between the effects and methods of architects and magicians.

The introductory essay, “Almost, Not,” presents an overview of Atelier Nishikata’s approach, describing the effects engendered by their architecture and the methods behind the them. The essay is followed by four detailed project descriptions that elaborate on the strategies behind the work. These texts are richly illustrated with process work, diagrams, detailed drawings, and photographs, including before and after views of the renovated spaces, and views post-inhabitation. The volume closes with a lengthy interview with the architects to help flesh out the methods behind their madness.

The choreographer, performance and installation artist Angie Hiesl has been presenting her interdisciplinary projects since the 1980s, always and exclusively at “art-unrelated” locations in private and public urban spaces. Since 1997 she has been realising her artistic projects together with the director, choreographer and visual artist Roland Kaiser. Her works, which have received many awards, are shown worldwide.
Twenty-five years ago, she made ageing in our society the subject of an artistic intervention in public space. With x-mal Mensch Stuhl she created a project that was performed in 16 countries in Europe, North and South America. Since the premiere of the project in Cologne in 1995, Roland Kaiser has documented the guest performances worldwide and created a large body of photographs.
What role does ageing play in our society?
How do we deal with older people?
These questions are not only important for each individual, but are also of great social and ethical relevance – in all societies worldwide. Against the background of the international corona pandemic, the issue of old age is all the more explosive.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the photo exhibition in Cologne, which will take place from September 17, 2020 to January 31, 2021.

Text in English and German.

A dedicated collector and advocate of contemporary art since the late 1940s, Giuseppe Panza has played a fundamental role in the artistic culture of his time, introducing American phenomena such as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Pop Art, Environmental Art, and Conceptualism to the museums of Europe. Now, in a brilliant response to everyone’s primary question about Modern Art – ‘What does it mean?’ Panza shares philosophical insights and personal reflections that bridge a half-century of discovering new artists and movements.

Panza was among the first to buy the works of Rothko, Kline, Lichtenstein, and many of the other major figures of post-WWII art, watching as their works skyrocketed in monetary value as well as historic importance. He pursued collecting with undiminished enthusiasm through the 1980s and 1990s, all the while searching for the best venues in which to display his latest acquisitions. Sections of his private collection were exhibited by and acquired into major collections, particularly the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim in New York. 

Among his signature innovations was the juxtaposition of contemporary art with historic settings – Baroque palaces, ancient European public buildings, his own eighteenth-century villa – in order to create unexpected and stimulating dialogues between the architectural context and the work of art.

Complete with 110 full-colour illustrations, spanning decades of transformation in art and world culture, Giuseppe Panza: Memories of a Collector provides a unique glimpse into the movements and trends that have defined modern art. It is also the fascinating life story of a man who helped define the trends themselves, through passion, insight, and prophetic taste.