Rome, the ‘Eternal City’, is not only enriched by buildings and monuments that preserve the culture of Italy in the symbolic center of Christianity and the hub of the Italian Republic. The architecture of Rome also tells the story of a process of restoration and innovation. During the 1930s, the social and cultural revolution led to calls for functionality and practicality, which are represented by impressive modern public and residential works, as well as by major initiatives from architectural forces of urban change in the capital. This handy pocket guide to modern and contemporary architecture in Rome has entries for 87 buildings, and a clever folding map with thumbnail photographs which correspond to marked locations. It includes indices by architect and by project, accessibility to the public, and directions by bus and metro.

“Showcasing 25 residences by today’s leading classical architects, this wonderful new book also addresses the fundamental issue of collaboration between architect, decorator, landscaper, and the enormous cast of characters who bring their formidable talents to the realization of every project. An Ideal Collaboration is an important addition to the literature of architecture and design.” – Ellie Cullman

“An Ideal Collaboration shares a place in my library next to volumes on great 20th century Classicists. It is essential as a visual reference to the continued evolution of timeless style.” Steven Gambrel

In the follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Art of Classical Details, Phillip James Dodd continues his look at some of the finest examples of contemporary classical architecture in Great Britain and the United States, while also examining how collaboration is the key to their successful design. In reality, collaborative relationships are rare, especially amongst designers, where each is often focused on their own individual objectives and unable to transcend their own egos. Often used as a catch phase, but not often realized, true collaboration requires an understanding and an appreciation – of the role that all parties play in the design and construction of a home. An Ideal Collaboration includes the work of some of the most notable names in contemporary residential design. Architects, decorators, landscape designers, consultants, builders, craftsmen, artists and vendors, all address the design process and the pivotal role that collaboration plays in creating cohesive timeless designs.

Relationships between architects and clients – built upon expressed values, as well as their import into the final work of architecture – are typically not discussed in architectural education, rarely considered in architectural criticism or theory, and usually missing in most writing about architecture. This monograph seeks to highlight and address this deficiency. The book focuses on the process that the firm uses to help their clients to define values, and to intone them through architectural design. Exquisitely presented throughout, this volume presents a range of built and in-process works at a variety of scales, complexity, and locations, with various clients. Most of these projects have not been previously published. The projects will be documented and discussed within the context of the value proposition and design process that distinguish Pickard Chilton’s approach to architecture.

The new architecture series Sections on Italian Architecture, an editorial project that aims to highlight the multiplicity of contemporary Italian architecture, dedicates this second volume to the work of the FTA – Filippo Taidelli Architetto studio, a dynamic and multidisciplinary laboratory led by Filippo Taidelli, operating with his architecture and design studio in Milan since 2005. The studio deals with integrated design on various scales, focusing on research and innovative interventions in the health sector and in the urban retrofit sector for the energy redevelopment of existing buildings.

The series, directed by architect Maurizio Carones, dedicates small monographs to the most interesting Italian professionals, a series of agile bilingual volumes that identify examples of qualified design commitment. Each contains essays, project sheets and apparatus, to put in synthetic order the complex research and professional work of each protagonist. The texts, edited by Alessandro Benetti, include an introductory essay, descriptions of projects chosen between 2012 and 2024 and information apparatus that illustrates the great quality of one of the most interesting design studios on the contemporary Italian scene.

Text in English and Italian.

Architecture Asia, as the official journal of the Architects Regional Council Asia, aims to provide a forum, not only for presenting Asian phenomena and their characteristics to the world, but also for understanding diversity and multiculturalism within Asia from a global perspective.

This issue reveals how old buildings can be updated to realize innovation through renovation, and features three essays and eleven projects that elaborate this perspective. The three essays discuss regenerative architecture in Pakistan that create contemporary examples of traditional architecture, the revitalization of old buildings in Hong Kong, China for heritage conservation—along the concept of updating the “hardware” and “software” of the building—and the sharing and regeneration of historical heritage spaces in old towns in Xiamen, China. The 11 projects, accompanied with full-color photos and text descriptions, highlight architectural works that showcase the theme of renovation and innovation across projects that include a house, library, chapel, and clinic, to reveal how these buildings embody sustainability and innovation, and re-energize cities.

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 globalized 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.

New York City is a metropolis in a constant state of metamorphosis. Amidst continuous construction, the redevelopment of the existing cityscape plays a fundamental role in the evolution of the Big Apple as a place to live, work, and visit. This pocket guide to highlights of modern and contemporary architecture features 85 famous skyscrapers, cutting-edge projects with abandoned infrastructure, post-industrial buildings, and inventive low-cost housing models. Each building is accompanied by text describing its history, use, materials, and architectural profile, in addition to directions, and public accessibility.

Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership: Public/Private presents the first monograph from the award-winning New York-based architectural firm. Covering over 40 years of work, the book – presented in a unique double-sided, two-cover format – exhibits projects in both the public and private sectors. Included in the public section is a sprawling center for entrepreneurial education, a science center built in an old turbine hall, a sky-lit synagogue, two colorful and bright public libraries, and a children’s museum inspired by Leonardo da Vinci. The private side features a serenely spatial six-story townhouse, a sublimely linear beach house, a residence and matching studios for two painters, and luxurious twin villas in Anguilla. With text by principal architect Lee Skolnick, and a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic Paul Goldberger; each chapter provides valuable insight into the extensive planning and highly intellectual process that goes into each project. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership: Public/Private celebrates the accomplishments of a firm still operating at the top of their game.

Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, is known as one of the most beautiful cities in the world because of its perfect blend of nature, environment, architecture and people. With almost complete preservation of architecture from all historical periods, Prague is second to none among other World Heritage cities for its richness, integrity and diversity. The city is like a European open-air museum of architectural art, and one of the indispensable destinations for architects and architecture lovers to travel in Europe.

Based on years of field and literature research by the authors, this book showcases the achievements of Prague’s thousand-year urban architectural changes and the protection of complete heritage.

Through the interpretation of 43 historic buildings from different periods, this book explores Prague’s urban characteristics and changes. Though priceless, most of these built heritages are beyond the focus of Western architectural history research, and their status and significance need to be readdressed and reassessed.

Text in English and Chinese.

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

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

a+u February issue features the architecture office E2A based in Zurich, Switzerland. E2A, which represents architects by 2 brothers, Piet and Wim Eckert, was started in 2001.

The E2A architecture dominates our eyes with their solid design of strong truss structure and clear vertical and horizontal lines. This is the result from the work of resolving contradictions caused by the diverse functions, programs, ambitions and wishes, site constraints and conditions required of architecture, as symbolically explained in E2A’s statement, before finally putting them into the form of an architecture. E2A has clear strategies, finds methodologies, but at the same time recognizes that they must not lose resilience. The solutions derived from these points, that is, architecture, are clear and simple to understand. It is as if there was no struggle to unravel such contradictions and confusing issues. This is probably why their architecture which is vigorous seems overwhelming at first glance; but it is not.

Text in English and Japanese.

This book presents innovative examples of hidden architecture: buildings that are designed to disappear into their surroundings or hide in plain sight. In the city, hidden buildings are often designed to provide the occupants with privacy and protection from the busy world outside or they can be incorporated into the streetscape to free up space for public use. In the countryside, buildings should not spoil a scenic landscape, so they can be designed to become a part of it. Buildings can be buried underground, hidden amongst trees, covered with greenery or even sunk into the sea. They can be clad in mirrors to reflect their surroundings, disappear beneath an urban plaza or be hidden from view on top of another building. Each of these imaginative solutions offers a way for architecture to blend in rather than stand out. Hidden Architecture tells the stories of projects from around the world that are cleverly disguised but still beautifully detailed and outstanding in their execution.

Rome is not only enriched by the works that have led it to be known as the “eternal city”, or with those monuments that still preserve the stories of a strong people, such as the Colosseum, the Roman Forum or Castel Sant’Angelo. It is not only the symbolic center of Christianity thanks to St. Peter’s Basilica, or the central and figurative hub of the Italian Republic because of the Palazzo del Quirinale. The history, art, and culture of Rome tell the story of a process of restoration and innovation that sees the participation of some timeless places and the birth of other contemporary community services that join those already known to the public. During 1930s, the social and cultural revolution and call for functionality and practicality are represented by impressive modern public and residential works, as well as by major operations from architectural protagonists in the urban change of the capital. Works such as the university city of Sapienza and its institutes, or the EUR district tell the story of the formal transition between modernity and contemporaneity.  

This book has been designed to present several Ipostudio architecture projects produced in different periods that feature assonances and shared conceptual characteristics and principles. Ipostudio is a working group that was founded in Florence 40 years ago. It carries out architectural design in the sphere of civil architecture, specializing in the areas of social and health structures, schools, special types of residence, and social housing. The works presented in this book are unborn projects that never saw the light. Now, many years later, it seems only fair to give them another chance and, in a sense, a new life. The primary intention of this book is to tell the story of the origin and development of the design process. What do these unborn projects tell us? They have a great advantage: they will never be put to the test of reality but will remain a potential of outstanding ideas. Almost all the projects presented were conceived as entries in Italian and international architecture competitions. The book is divided into six chapters addressing various aspects of architectural composition through the critical interpretation of a series of works.

This new monograph celebrates the creative accomplishments of one of the world’s most influential architects, Cesar Pelli. The book surveys this extraordinary body of work in terms of the AIA’s Gold Medalist’s design, architecture, and planning, tracing Pelli’s motivation as a leading designer and teacher, and the evolution of his work over the span of half a century. More than 50 projects from around the globe – museums, theaters, offices, laboratories, airports, cultural centers, civic works, master plans – are presented in rich full color with insights from Pelli that delve into the design and construction of these landmarks from a practice that has thrived for nearly 40 years.

The NKTP (People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry) Sanatorium was commissioned in 1934 by Grigory Ordzhonikidze, one of Stalin’s closest allies and head of the Commissariat for Heavy Industry (he committed suicide after falling out with Stalin in 1937, the year of the sanatorium’s completion). Despite the prevailing ideology that sought to outlaw modernism in favour of Stalinist neoclassicism, architect Moisei Ginzburg, with a team that included Ivan Leonidov, Evgeny Popov and Nikolai Paliudov, succeeded in creating an architectural ensemble that essentially retained its modernist integrity – and today remains a masterpiece of 1930s modernism – while making only minor concessions to the new Stalinist orthodoxy. In the early Soviet period, Kislovodsk in the northern Caucasus became known as a center for health spas and sanatoria – ‘palaces of health for the workers’. Ginzburg’s sanatorium still functions as a therapy center, and retains many of its original features, including windows, light fixtures, some of the furniture etc. This first English-language publication of the original book documenting its creation is an important addition to the Ginzburg canon.

When we think of Barcelona, the eclectic art of Antoni Gaudí immediately springs to mind. It is present in every corner of the city. Or we think of the Olympic Ring with the tower designed by Santiago Calatrava; but these are only two aspects of the exquisite beauty of the Catalan capital which has been able to blend old and new in a unique and unpredictable way. The traditional Gothic architecture has a discreet historical flavor, while the buildings that have appeared in the past 10 years reflect modern art trends like Cubism, Neo-plasticism, and Futurism. Named the European capital of innovation in 2014, the city boasts extremely distinctive urban planning because of the unusual bevelled corners on city blocks that provide more open street intersections, with extra space for outdoor cafés and seating, that give the city its particularly sociable community atmosphere.

The terms ‘analogue architecture’ and ‘oldnew architecture’ are key aspects of the teaching of Miroslav Sik at the ETH Zurich. During his first period there (1983-1991), Sik worked as Senior Assistant at the Chair of Fabio Reinhart and was in effect the spokesman of an architectural movement that became renowned far beyond the borders of Switzerland and is still influential today. In 1986/1991, the compact movement presented itself to the public with a touring exhibition and an accompanying large-scale ‘Swiss Box’, including chalk perspective drawings of its projects. Miroslav Sik worked as a Full Professor at the ETH Zurich between 1999 and 2018 during his second period there. Since the 1990s, Sik’s theory and teaching have formed an important pillar of Swiss and international architectural history.

This extensive volume contains the best 90/120 works respectively by students from both periods of Miroslav Sik’s teaching, including plans, project descriptions and perspective diagrams. Some of the presented students went on to become renowned contemporary Swiss architects. This volume also includes the most important manifesto-like texts by Miroslav Sik and enlightening essays on the movement of analalogue and oldnew architecture.

Inspired by the book Made in Tokyo, Shanghai architectural scholar Li Xiangning and his team worked closely with its author, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, to edit this book about the features of Shanghai city and its architecture. This book is a celebration of the particular elements of the architecture and urban design of Shanghai, and brings together 54 places that contribute to the unique DNA of the city. The photography, detailed drawings, and written pieces reveal Shanghai as it is to its residents. Whilst including well-known architectural features of Shanghai, the book also explores the less well-known elements that make Shanghai the city that it is.

Architecture Asia, as the official journal of the Architects Regional Council Asia, aims to provide a forum, not only for presenting Asian phenomena and their characteristics to the world, but also for understanding diversity and multiculturalism within Asia from a global perspective.

This issue discusses the topic of globalization and locality through four essays and eleven projects. The essays attempt to observe the tension between the different forces of globalization, which is being widely debated as a distinguishing trend, and also highlight globalization’s impact on local architecture, as well as the various efforts being taken to ensure local identity and distinctive locality in architecture design. The projects, accompanied with full-color photos and text descriptions, demonstrate the many successful attempts in developing design concepts and methods to cope with the globalization trend while maintaining locality. These essays and projects are carefully selected to represent diversity in project locations, and includes locations such as Thailand, India, Japan, and China.

Opening with the reflections of Indian architects Rohan Varma, Charles Correa and Rahul Mehrotra on the past, present and future of architecture and planning in Mumbai, the book maintains its expert local focus through a number of interviews, made with a wide variety of local and foreign architects and planners who work in Mumbai. The ins-and-outs of practising architecture and planning in this megacity are explored through their eyes. Small but exciting firms (such as Brio Architecture) find a place beside massive commercial architecture firms (including Hafeez Contractor) and activist architects (such as PK Das and Somaya & Kalappa). Teaching architecture in Mumbai is also discussed extensively. This book features several micro-initiatives that have come up with creative solutions for making the city more liveable and beautiful. A special acknowledgment must be reserved for Bas Losekoot, whose luxurious high-quality photography covers the many faces and facets of Mumbai. In his photo essay, he projects an intriguing new light on Mumbai and its inhabitants. Learning from Mumbai will be of interest to architects, planners, architecture and planning students, and for those thinking of starting an architecture or planning firm in India, as well as for anyone interested in Mumbai and Mumbai’s built environment.

Previously in a+u 12:01 Architecture in The Netherlands 2000-2011, which highlighted the country’s architecture scene after the 2008 global financial crisis, the construction industry faced a slowdown, and what we saw then as typically Dutch has gradually faded. Looking away from the ‘SuperDutch’ stigma, we now see projects combining broader social issues and since, take on a new form of cultural energy. In this issue, we examine the recent ten years of Dutch architecture discourse. Together with guest editor, Kirsten Hannema of nai010, 19 projects are selected and placed into three themes – ‘Reshaping the Polder’, ‘Tabula Scripta’, and ‘After the NAi’ – to introduce a new attitude on today’s architecture in The Netherlands the ‘SuperNormal’.

Text in English and Japanese.