Albert Dros has a passion for landscape photography. Although he travels the world in search of the most beautiful images, the Netherlands is still his favorite subject. After all these years, Albert has created extremely atmospheric, colorful and almost romantic photographs of the Netherlands. His dream images in this book show everything that makes the Netherlands the Netherlands: from tulips to windmills, from purple moors to vast river landscapes and from picturesque towns to animals in meadows and in the wild. The Beauty of the Netherlands is the result of ten years of craftsmanship by an internationally renowned photographer who captures a Netherlands that few people will ever see with their own eyes.
This new book is the long-awaited successor to Rendez-Vous and Visite Privee. Sense of Style showcases artists and creatives who continuously fascinate us – not only because of their creative work, but also because of the inspiring home in which they live and work.
The journey begins in the vibrant heart of New York’s Tribeca, and finishes in Stockholm, via Antwerp, Copenhagen, Brussels, Berlin, Long Island, Rio de Janeiro, and Milan.
The founder and patron Reinhard Ernst planned a home for his unique collection; the city of Wiesbaden provided a site in the heart of the city and the Japanese star architect Fumihiko Maki delivered the plans. The result is the Museum Reinhard Ernst for abstract art, an architectural gem, but also a building open to the public and a magnet for the international art public alike.
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), one of the great visionaries of European art, spent all his life in Northern Germany, apart from four years studying in Copenhagen, and his output appears to consist almost entirely of German landscapes. But far from being parochial, he was, in the words of the French sculptor David d’Angers, the artist who ‘discovered the tragic in landscape’. His paintings assemble minutely observed elements of nature into compositions that celebrate the riches and the melancholy of a cosmos fully imbued with the divine, while never losing an almost hallucinatory engagement with reality. For all their clarity, they are the quintessence of Romanticism.
Almost too familiar today, to Friedrich’s contemporaries these extraordinary paintings were astonishing and challenging. This volume records the reactions of some of the most prominent figures of German Romanticism: Kleist, Brentano and Arnim (in a witty series of dialogues between gallery visitors alternately bewitched and bewildered by Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea), the painter and physiologist Carus, the psychologist Schubert, the Russian poet and translator Zhukovsky. A piece by Goethe and his colleague Heinrich Meyer records the somewhat baffled admiration of the earlier generation; and Friedrich’s own Commandments of Art breathes the almost overwhelming passion with which he approached his vocation. An introduction by the leading scholar Johannes Grave situates Friedrich’s art and its reception in the context of the Romantic movement both in Germany and in Europe as a whole.
This outstanding jewelry collection of the Cologne Museum of Applied Arts (MAKK) will be showcased for the first time in a dedicated exhibition. Featuring cross-epochal and cross-cultural themes, the exhibition successfully presents diverse approaches to the art of jewelry-making. The photographs of around 370 objects and the accompanying descriptions demonstrate just how multifaceted jewelry design is. The social, societal, emotional, and symbolic aspects of jewelry are also evaluated and discussed in an essay by Beatriz Chadour-Sampson. The MAKK’s jewelry collection of around 1600 works spans a period of 7000 years: from ancient oriental gems from the 5th millennium BC to contemporary jewelry. This is what makes this collection so unique and diverse.
Text in English and German.
This volume explores the interconnected social, sustainable and spatial principles that underpin the design of more environmentally conscientious buildings and places, illustrated through models, drawings and images of selected key projects by the award-nominated London-based architecture practice Mæ. Each project outlines beneficial strategies for creating more sustainable designs, achieving social equity and working within our planet’s limits to elevate the human spirit in the long-term.
This book posits strategies to design buildings and places that enrich culture and society, offering insight from researchers and practitioners, as well as richly illustrated documentation of key architectural schemes that put these principles into practice. It is a call to arms for ways to create more environmentally regenerative architecture, applying its ideas to architectural practice worldwide.
For Belgian architect Jef Van Oevelen (b. 1955) architecture is more than merely solving a technical puzzle or playing with volumes. Architecture is about materializing goals and values within a historical, sociological, political and economic reality. His internship and co-operation with the legendary Antwerp avant-garde architect Georges Baines was pivotal in the development of this vision and philosophy. Only by contextualizing architecture correctly and by respecting materials, people, possibilities and boundaries one can achieve authenticity and sincerity.
From these principles, he has been working since 1987. Next to designing smaller projects and renovating private houses, participation in various competitions also made him familiar with large-scale projects. Something that has already resulted in contracts for schools, office buildings, libraries, cultural institutions and above all many public and social housing projects.
Text in English and Dutch.
In the twelve years since Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders was formed, the firm has created a significant body of wooden buildings that are rooted in the seaside vernacular of the fabled region of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. As a design/build firm led by architects, Polhemus Savery DaSilva Architects Builders is able to reach a level of aesthetic control not normally associated with light construction today. Each project is approached as an individual work of art and craft specifically associated with its site and client. The eclectic, evolutionary use of architectural history infuses the firm’s designs with fresh interpretations of architectural tradition, subtle playfulness, and wit. The compositional and planning strategies ground the work in the vernacular tradition that evolved into the shingle style, the ‘architecture of the American summer’ to use the words of historian Vincent Scully. The experience of the firm’s principal designers, John and Sharon DaSilva, includes several years at Venturi Rauch and Scott Brown and Cesar Pelli and Associates. The book features over twenty houses and a handful of small institutional buildings in photographs by some of the world’s best architectural photographers and drawings by the firm. Includes essay by noted architecture writer Michael J. Crosbie. Also Available: Ken Tate Architect, Vol. 1: New Classicists, 1864701013, $95.00 Ken Tate Architect, Vol. 2: New Classicists, 1920744436, $90.00 William T. Baker: New Classicists, 1920744576, $90.00 Appleton & Associates: New Classicists, 1920744606, $90.00 Wadia & Associates: New Classicists, 1864702338, $90.00
“The well-judged employment of classical detail in a new home has an additional significance that cannot be underestimated. It is an expression of an informed personal choice and an evocation of the delight in the human senses. This is true of all the houses featured in this book.” Jeremy Musson
“The architects and craftsmen that Phillip has featured in this wonderful book all have a love for classical detail. The art is alive and well, as can be attested to in these pages.” David Easton
In The Art of Classical Details, Phillip James Dodd takes a close-up look at some of the finest examples of contemporary classical architecture. The book consists of two chapters: The Essays and The Projects. Starting with a foreword by renowned decorator David Easton, The Essays are written by some of today’s most sought after architects, scholars and craftsmen. Accompanied by sumptuous full page photographs and renderings that illustrate a use of fine materials, intricate detailing, and superb artisanship, these insightful texts are essential reading for anyone with an interest in the theory, practice and craft of classical design. The Projects presents an illustrated look at 25 of today’s finest classically-designed homes. Employing the theories prescribed in the writings of the first chapter, this portfolio of contemporary buildings exhibits the work of some of the most recognizable and celebrated architects in Great Britain and the United States. The work featured in within this book demonstrates the timeless beauty of classicism, and delights in the role that superbly crafted details play in creating art.
a+u’s March issue presents Irish architecture through 20 houses by six architecture firms. These houses, nestled in the landscape of Ireland, paint a portrait of the physical conditions of the island. Architects Tom de Paor and Andrew Clancy serve as guest editors and begin the feature in conversation. They describe Ireland as being gently exhausted and without past glories, but not yet melancholic. The 20 houses responding to the island are practically designed yet with sensitive qualities of “dry and wet,” “soft lighting and fleeting shadows,” and “modeling and its staining.” These houses are individual attempts by their architects to find something that was already “constructed, abandoned, found” and to discover their own architectural language in Ireland. Their images, drawings, and give form to a notably new Irish architecture.
Text in English and Japanese.
This catalog for an exhibition at the Fondazione Cini in Venice presents stories of places and cities to the east of Italy, and highlights the tales and experiences of Italian architects and travellers. Six internationally famous Italian architects – Renzo Piano, Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, Archea Associati, Piuarch, Michele De Lucchi and Mario Cucinella – will showcase projects in Russia, China, Albania, Georgia and Vietnam, with the addition of contextual materials from the Fondazione Cini archives. The narrative of convergence and dialog between Italian culture and these places emphasizes the significance of the unique Italian relationship to these countries and their cultures through the centuries.
This richly illustrated monograph delves into the innovative output of one of the world’s most prolific international design and architecture practitioners, Tokyo-based Shigeru Ban. Canvassing an enormous compilation of works, this title is a significant contribution to IMAGES’ stable of works showcasing renowned architects from around the globe. This book features an array of innovative projects, from commercial and residential innovation strategies to humanitarian works, such as emergency shelters made from paper and modular shelters for earthquake victims. Shigeru Ban’s visionary residential design philosophies encompass timber hybrid structures, including a building constructed from cardboard tubes; the tallest hybrid timber structure in the world for a residential tower in Vancouver; as well as the new home designed for the Aspen Art Museum, which features woven wooden cladding. His innovation extends to the industrial design of an architect’s scale pen used for drawing. This book also helps to relay Shigeru Ban’s contemporary discourse on architectural culture, and how it is moving in new directions. This title is a must-have for any serious aficionado of modern architecture, innovative thinking, and design.
LO2 is an interior design studio founded in 2004 that covers architectural projects (private residential, corporate and hospitality), interior design and landscape architecture – the latter through Locus Landscape Architecture – both in Spain and abroad.
Luisa Olazábal and Luis Ojeda, as well as their partners, have formed a multidisciplinary team that approaches projects with a holistic approach and fits them optimally into the environment in which they are located, as can be seen in the exquisite selection published in this book.
Architecture has the power to condense within itself many different desires that make the built space an organism that lives and changes with us over time, influencing our lives and visions of the world, as well as the lives of the communities that will see it, pass through it and inhabit it in different ways each time.
Traveling and dialoguing with such different and particular clients, between Asia and Europe, not only offers the public a different and unsettling view of Archea’s work, but above all, it allows a correct reading of the degrees of complexity that every architectural practice today has to face when moving around the world, on scales and images and places. The words of the clients play, with the world of the Archea studio – one of the Italian studios with more branches and offices in the world than any other, with its working methodology, with its protagonists, with the obsessions that have become identity elements indicative of the maturity of the Florentine studio, founded by Marco Casamonti, Giovanni Polazzi and Laura Andreini, who were joined by Silvia Fabi in 2001, when Archea Associati was born.
Exhibition at La Galerie d’Architecture from 8 November to 7 December 2024. Opening on 7 November in the presence of the architects from Archea Associati / Marco Casamonti & Partners.
a+u’s July issue showcases post-digitality in architecture. Recent years have seen significant changes in architectural practice, driven by the evolving zeitgeist of the 2010s and beyond, where digital technology is widespread and commonplace – a condition referred to as “post-digital.” Technological and ecological disruptions are forcing architects to adapt and restrategize. This issue presents architectural research and education institutions where such explorations are being actively pursued: Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich. These institutions are at the forefront of incorporating cutting-edge technology into their curricula and research projects, creating environments that foster new ideas to apply in the real world. This issue examines the advanced research and educational programs offered by these institutions, introducing pioneering projects by architects and spin-off companies that push the boundaries in their respective fields. Through this lens, we explore the urgent challenges posed by technology and ecology, and feature the evolving practice and profession of architecture being redefined by the post-digital context.
Text in English and Japanese.
This beautifully illustrated book showcases the Hindu and Jain temples of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka built prior to the invasion of peninsular India by the Delhi sultans at the end of the 13th century. Unlike temples in many other parts of India, those of the Deccan are well preserved, with their wealth of figural and decorative carvings miraculously intact. They demonstrate the development of Indian sacred architecture and art over a span of more than 600 years.
Focusing on some 50 historical sites, the Temples of Deccan India begins with artificially excavated “cave” shrines dedicated to various Hindu deities, before proceeding on to examine free-standing Hindu and Jain monuments sponsored by successive rulers of the Deccan. Attention is paid to the beautiful sculptures found on temple basements, walls, brackets and ceilings. Carved in crisp relief, and sometimes even in three dimensions, these carvings are among the greatest glories of Indian stone art.
Among the featured highlights are the cave temple on the island of Elephanta, with its stupendous representation of three-headed Sadashiva; the colossal, monolithic Kailasa temple at Ellora, a technical feat unsurpassed in the entire history of Indian architecture; the magnificent columned pavilion at Hanamkonda, now currently being reconstructed; and the temple at Belur, with its exquisitely carved female figural brackets. Specially commissioned plans of temple layouts accompany 300+ photographs. and clarify the succession of dynasties that governed the Deccan during the centuries covered here. Maps locate the temple sites, while passages of text illuminate the succession of dynasties that governed the Deccan from the 7th to 13th centuries. Educational, accessible and beautifully illustrated, this book will be of interest to anyone fascinated by Indian architecture.
Catalogue of the TECHNOSCAPE exhibition, which will be held at MAXXI in Autumn 2022, focusing on the relationship between artistic and scientific disciplines, nowadays closer than ever, and the consequent contacts between technique, creativity and social awareness.
Architecture, engineering and science have overlapped on numerous occasions during the 20th century. First in the heroic phase and then in the mature phase of the reinforced concrete, then with the affirmation of hi-tech construction methods in the 1970s and 1980s and finally with the eruption of digitally controlled technologies.
TECHNOSCAPE explores this alliance, responding to MAXXI’s mission to look towards the future of our planet and the disciplines that modify its spaces.
The volume follows the dual register of the exhibition, first dealing with how technology is making architecture, urban planning and other related disciplines more aware of their technical and scientific responsibility and capable of opening up new lines of research. The focus shifts then to structural engineering, comparing current masterpieces with previous historical modernist examples.
To many, it was the utopian holiday homes that brought Chilean architecture into the international scene, such as those previously featured in a+u 06:07. However, following 2010, we began to see a different group of architects looking into less individualistic visions. Architects now engage with the public or take up non-profit projects focused on social and sustainable issues that had come to a halt during the time of oppression. In an introductory essay, Diego Grass, architect and tutor at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, shared his insights into Chilean architecture from the 1990s, describing how having gone through the years of persistent domestic unrest, the country seeks to forge a new cultural identity that would bring a divided Chile together. 18 projects are selected to broaden our perspectives towards architecture in Chile, and how Chilean architects respond to their landscape and urban territory contexts.
Text in English and Japanese.
This book illustrates the extensive design and construction work in Milan over the past 20 years by the notable Milanese architectural firm ARAssociati. This award-winning firm has been involved in a wide range of projects, including new construction in the residential, hospitality, office and retail sectors, as well as work on prestigious historic buildings. Projects in the historical heart of the city are counterbalanced by those in the new areas of Milan, which is undergoing a transformation to a multicentric metropolis. The result is an expertize based on a deeply rooted knowledge of the city and its history, sensitive to the context and stratification over time, allowing the firm to retrace and map out the large-scale transformations that have changed and are still changing the face of Milan.
Text in English and Italian.
ABS Bouwteam is a high-end contractor of exclusive residential projects: villas, country houses and mansions in timeless and contemporary style. This first monograph highlights the most important projects by the company, with an overview of 30 years of exceptional architecture and interior design.
Inès Lamunière, Vincent Mas Durbec and Afonso Ponces de Serpa are head of dl-a, designlab-architecture, a leading Geneva-based architectural practice. Their designs convey a dedicated commitment to context and sustainability at all levels, transforming these concerns into distinctive and atmospheric buildings. Their unique control of architectural form and space, detail and materiality, is at the centre of their widely acclaimed projects.
Text in English and French.
Inès Lamunière, Vincent Mas Durbec and Afonso Ponces de Serpa are head of dl-a, designlab-architecture, a leading Geneva-based architectural practice. Their designs convey a dedicated commitment to context and sustainability at all levels, transforming these concerns into distinctive and atmospheric buildings. Their unique control of architectural form and space, detail and materiality, is at the centre of their widely acclaimed projects.
Text in English and German.
In his office Urbana, Bangladesh, Kashef Chowdhury designs architecture that is rooted in the history and nature of the location. Nature in this sense not only consists of vegetation, plants and forests, but also the spiritual and cultural context of a specific environment and landscape. The range of his works includes the transformation of ships, the development of housing and the construction of mosques, museums and corporate headquarters. All of his projects have the common feature that they are based on comprehensive research work, aimed at applying an awareness of a specific location and its nature to achieve a high degree of innovation and original expression. This combination of traditional building styles and contemporary architecture often has an inspirational effect.
Das Bewusstsein des Ortes/The Consciousness Of Place is Chowdhury’s philosophical engagement with his own understanding of architecture, based on his research and lectures. It focuses on the significance of architecture, which is able to connect us to nature and liberate us from hectic urban life. Buildings and workplaces should be transformed into oases of peace and relaxation in order to benefit from nature’s regenerative and relaxing qualities.
Chowdhury stresses the need to listen to nature and appreciate its beauty. Accordingly, he prefers natural materials in his projects, while also using the interplay of light and shadow as a key element to create spaces that inspire us to pause and think.
This publication is a manifesto of a form of architecture that harmonizes with the respective location, reflecting the identity of its culture and people. Chowdhury regards his task not so much as work and more as an activity stemming from his love of an art form that serves the people – which he believes is the nature of architecture.
In recent years, Chowdhury’s constructed works have attracted international attention and have been awarded prizes such as the 2022 RIBA International Prize and the 2016 Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
Text in German.