This is a book about ideal landscapes and Feng-Shui. Using evolutionary and anthropological approaches, Peking University professor Kongjian Yu – who holds a doctorate degree in Design from Harvard – explores the origin, structure, and meanings of Feng-Shui in juxtaposition to the ideal landscape models in Chinese culture. Using illustrative site observations and literature, Yu argues that Feng-Shui landscapes share similar structures with other Chinese ideal landscapes – the implications of which are deconstructed into terms of geography, anthropology, ecology, and philosophy.
As a landscape architect and urbanist, Professor Yu respects the role of Feng-Shui in the making of places, yet still is in opposition to its superstitious nature. Well illustrated and poetically written, this book is a must-read for those who are interested in Feng-Shui, as well as those who care about their daily living environment – especially those who practice architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism.
The career of architect Sergei Tchoban, born 1962 and educated in St. Petersburg, follows multiple yet closely linked trajectories in his native Russia and in Germany. He is a founding partner with the Moscow-based firm SPEECH as well as with Tchoban Voss Architekten, with offices in Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden. His designs reflect a deep interest in local and historical contexts of a project rather than an aim to create singular iconic structures. His design process is deeply rooted in sketching and drawing by hand. In 2009 he established the Tchoban Foundation and in 2013 opened the Museum for Architectural Drawing in Berlin as a home to his vast collection comprising ancient and modern masterpieces from around the world.
In four conversations with Kristin Feireiss, Tchoban offers very personal insights into his design process, his understanding of architecture, and his engagement as a collector and museum founder. An essay by the British writer and broadcaster Deyan Sudjic as well as some 130 illustrations round out this beautiful volume.
1941. War is raging in Europe and now sweeps through Southeast Asia.
In Bangkok, Kate Fallon, an American nurse, who came to Thailand to leave her past of poverty and a broken heart behind, and Lawrence Gallet, a wealthy English journalist, are trapped in the chaos of conflict, believing their love can overcome their differences before being torn apart.
Lawrence flees to China to escape the advancing Japanese army, while the net closes slowly around Kate, who has remained behind, increasingly threatened and forced to hide her identity.
A sweeping saga moving from a Thailand uneasily poised between Japan and the west to the ravaged battlegrounds of Burma and India, from the charity ward of the Bangkok hospital to bombed airfields, from the Thai domestic resistance movement to the deadly jungles of the Arakan, Bangkok in Times of Love and War is the story of life and death, passion, loyalty and loss, and of a man and a woman caught up in the upheaval of history.
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 the autumn of 2020, Christo will wrap the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in silvery fabric for 16 days, returning to his signature style – after realising The Floating Piers in Italy, the London Mastaba, and a quarter of a century after he and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag building in Berlin. As a prelude, a major exhibition at PalaisPopulaire in the German capital will celebrate this 25-year anniversary in the spring of 2020. At the same time, the Pompidou Center will pay tribute to Christo and Jeanne-Claude by staging The Pont Neuf Wrapped Documentary exhibition as well as a comprehensive show highlighting their early years in Paris.
To accompany these events, Matthias Koddenberg, art historian and long-time friend of both Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude, who was the other half of the artistic duo until her death in 2009, has edited an elaborate collection of interviews. The book is composed of many conversations held between Koddenberg and Christo in the artist’s New York studio over the last few years.
With rare frankness, Christo describes how he fled from Bulgaria and made his way into the Western world. He talks about his time in Vienna and Geneva, his vibrant life in Paris that was full of hardship, and the fateful moment when he met Jeanne-Claude.
This publication provides an exceptional inside view, uniting texts and numerous archival images and photographs, many of which have never been published before, or depict early works by Christo that have only recently been rediscovered.
Absolutely Augmented Reality
takes as its subject the intersection of technology, fine art and the idea of authorship through a series of richly saturated, theatrical and symbolic images that use costume, character and allegory to create a sense of exploration and melancholic intrigue. In this dream world of strange and alluring portraiture, the viewer is delighted by a host of archetypal images, hybrid creatures, surreal motifs, canonical postures, as well as inversions of iconic art historic references.
Appealing to fine art, design, and photography consumers alike, this new book features some 100 colour images from and Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song’s previously unpublished art project. Alongside the photographs it offers a statement by the two artists and a brief introductory text by art historian Rosa J.H. Berland, as well as critical essays by art critic Anthony Haden-Guest and Lilly Wei, and an interview with Kuzma Vostrikov and Ajuan Song conducted by Iona Whittaker, and Arnau Salvadoe.
British flower painting has its own unique, if relatively recent, history, but it can only be judged in the light of the wider history of the subject and by comparison with other, particularly European, countries. The first chapter of A History and Dictionary of British Flower Painters, therefore, sets the scene with a brief introduction to floral art world wide before the next four chapters concentrate on British flower painting in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The dictionary provides the biographical details of almost 1,000 British flower painters, offering information regarding their specialities, awards and exhibitions.
Whilst many books have been published about war, the role of the prisoner of war has been largely ignored or paid scant attention. This book, along with the author’s other title – The Arts and Crafts of Napoleonic and American Prisoners of War 1756-1816 – aims to correct this imbalance, and is the result of the author’s quest over thirty years into this almost-forgotten field of history. Part One tells of the various wars that saw the men, from many different countries, become prisoners. Tales of individuals and their voyages, mutinies, fortunes and failures also feature, adding more personal touches to the history and, as with the author’s other title, all the accounts are written in a highly evocative style. Part Two is largely devoted to the prison hulks, describing the vessels and the conditions on board that the prisoners would have had to endure. Many of these hulks were former warships. Now stripped of all their equipment, and with their masts, sails and rigging removed, they sat disabled offshore, filled with their human cargo. Part Three concerns itself primarily with the depots and prisons on land, beginning with a general overview, and going on to explore in greater detail individual establishments and the conditions within. The final three chapters in this section deal with the terms and conditions of various types of parole – many officers granted parole were able to live almost as free men, as long as they did not take up arms against their captors – as well as the punishments to be expected should parole be broken. Written with numerous personal accounts, and drawing upon many years of painstaking and dedicated research, this important book fills a significant gap in the literature of military history.
This wide-ranging study is the outcome of the author’s thirty-year quest to collect information about a neglected and almost forgotten field of history – the prisoner of war, the conditions under which he was held and how he employed his time during long years of captivity. In this instance, the whole is set against an historical background dating from the Seven Years War (1756-63) to Napoleon’s downfall in 1816. Information has been painstakingly acquired by detailed searches through the Public Records Offices of England, Scotland and Wales and the archives of numerous county towns. The author has also studied more than one hundred towns and villages, where paroled captured officers were detained, and visited the sites of prison depots – great and small – and ports and rivers where the dreaded prison hulks had once been moored. The gathering and examination of artefacts, relics and other relevant material was a further important aspect of this extensive study. During the course of his lengthy researches, the author assembled what may well be one of the largest private collections of prisoner of war artefacts in existence. Although thousands of items of prisoners’ work have survived to the present day, most have disappeared into private collections and museums, at home or abroad. A representative selection of items from the author’s own extensive collection is featured in the second part of this book and will show the extraordinary high standard of workmanship achieved by many of the prisoners of war.
The project takes its name from the demand for the transfer of power and other things to the newly independent Indonesia in 1945. It travels through time, from European colonial occupation through the development of the republican state to the trans-national contemporary cultures of today. It looks at the various international exchanges that happened in the territories of contemporary Indonesia, through the images and ideas of artists. These exchanges were of different kinds: trade, culture, religion, ideology and war. They produced a variety of results: violence, oppression, racism, creativity, spiritual awakening, and other things. The ideologies and challenges of modernity are common ways in which Indonesia has been depicted by others and has defined itself over the period. As this modern period recedes into history, the project will seek ways to remember how it has influenced contemporary understanding and ask the current generation of artists to look back in order to rewrite the past and potentially create the conditions for a different future. The catalogue and the exhibition will follow a broad chronological narrative, allowing readers and visitors to learn more about how this huge archipelago has changed over the past two centuries and to observe how it has responded and adapted to influences originating from both inside and outside the islands. The influence of the imperial Dutch and Japanese occupations naturally form a significant element in the narrative of the exhibition as does the constant struggle for different forms of independence or equal treatment by the Javanese and other Indonesian cultures. The importance of Chinese and Arab influence on Indonesia’s cultural history will also feature as the exhibition tries to look for alternative ways, alongside the post-colonial, for understanding the present. The presentations will include work made during the residencies as well as new commissions.
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.
Kwan Architects and their associates Percy Thomas Partnership were founded in 1979. These 3 monographs show off their body of work and include residential, office, hotel and industrial buildings, both in Hong Kong and overseas.
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.
The Lucerne architects Thomas Lussi and Remo Halter Casagrande competently solve the complex tasks involved in heritage renovation today: the ideal preservation of the substance, discovering and restoring often nuanced, detailed qualities in the original building, the careful static stabilisation of the structure and the gentle renewal of individual elements as a result of use in and around the building. The original building was erected in 1951 according to plans by Otto Dreyer – one of the most important Lucerne architects of the time. The library was widely regarded throughout Switzerland. The book documents the original 1951 building using historical plans and photographs, provides insight into the building-historical analysis before the renovation and uses plans and photo material to describe the strategy and measures by the architects in renovating the architecturally important historical building.
Text in English and German.
Features articles by Cony Grünenfelder, Siegfried Moeri, Ulrich Niederer, and Stanislaus von Moos.
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.
Berlin’s Aedes Architecture Forum is one of the best-known centres for architecture and architectural culture in the world. Founded in 1980 by Kristin Feireiss und Helga Retzer, Aedes has since put on 500 important exhibitions on current themes, featuring many of the world’s most eminent architects. After Helga Retzer’s unexpected death in 1994, Aedes has been run by Feireiss, together with Hans-Jürgen Commerell and a large, committed team of collaborators.
Faces & Spaces: 40 Years Aedes Architecture Forum looks back at four decades of the gallery’s lively and multifaceted history. It does so in an engaging and accessible way by showing photos of the 500 protagonists who have spoken at Aedes or put on an exhibition there. Arranged by decade, this results in a captivating and amusing Who’s Who of the international architecture scene from the post-modern era until today. Included are also images that document key exhibitions as well as the various spaces in Berlin which Aedes has used as a venue, along with a complete list of all shows staged between 1980 and 2020.
Text in English and German.
When Antje Freiesleben and Johannes Modersohn opened their own Berlin-based firm Modersohn & Freiesleben Architekten in 1994, the city, which had been divided until 1989, needed to be repaired and re-united. The Potsdamer Platz train station and the office block in the Beisheim Centre in Ebertstrasse, close to this central and now revitalised location, are two significant projects that were designed by the firm in the prevalent spirit of urban renewal of those years.
After the millennium, the architects further honed their approach: whether in the city or the countryside, Modersohn & Freiesleben consistently develop the character of their projects in terms of the site, the materials, the construction, and the lives of their clients. Their deliberate engagement with the given environment while simultaneously aiming at an inventive individuality has created an architecture that ensures their houses are functional objects that combine sustainability with aesthetics.
This new monograph features 12 built houses alongside other projects from the last two decades. They are located in Berlin, Brandenburg, Sweden, and Canada.
Text in English and German.
The new MEETT Toulouse exhibition and convention centre in the French city of Toulouse once again demonstrates how a seemingly dull, functional task results in striking and refined architecture if the Rotterdam-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture OMA and its mastermind Rem Koolhaas take care of it. The vast structure, covering ca 618 by 246 yards of ground, makes for a spectacular spatial experience in its main exhibition hall that offers 484,376 square feet of column-free floor space. OMA also took an unusual path with regard to the configuration and transport connection of the entire complex. Rather than sealing even more ground with tarmac for endless car parks, it concentrated them into a compact multi-storey parking garage at the heart of the complex that also serves as a general traffic hub for MEETT Toulouse.
The book offers impressions of MEETT Toulouse’s enormous dimensions and the vast spaces it provides through images taken by French photographer Marco Cappelletti. The volume is rounded out with selected plans and concise texts on the particulars of the project.
The architectural structuring principle of the cellular compartment floor plan is as simple as it is economical, yet it allows for spatial and combinatorial freedom that can be interpreted in ever-new, ever-different ways. The resulting self-contained units or spatial sequences are suited for residential purposes as much as for office buildings, museums or schools, with the floor plans providing highly dynamic and surprising traffic patterns and views.
The cellular compartment floor plan is the generating principle in many buildings, projects, and competition entries by Basel-based office Luca Selva Architects, who have been continually developing this typology in their many years of practice, modifying it and adapting it for new applications in different projects. It is therefore at the centre of this new book on the work of the prolific office. The numerous plans and photographs are supplemented by a theoretical essay by Christoph Wieser and a conversation between Luca Selva and Patrick Gmür. The book for the first time sheds light on this surprisingly sparsely researched topic, and thus its wider significance for the discourse reaches beyond the exemplary designs by Luca Selva Architects.
Text in English and German.
In Dark & Dystopian Post-Mortem Fairy Tales, Mothmeister pays homage to the muses who have sparked their alienating dream world. From artists worldwide, legendary figures, their collection of taxidermy to lurid places where their figures were born, such as the catacombs of Palermo, Pyramiden or the disaster area around Chernobyl. A special fairy tale world that flirts with the morbid, religious and grotesque and in which stuffed animals are brought back to life in an extraordinary way.
Created with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Tales of the People is a series of children’s books celebrating Native American culture with illustrations and stories by Indian artists and writers. In addition to the tales themselves, each book also offers four pages filled with information and photographs exploring various aspects of Native culture, including a glossary of words in different Indian languages.