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.
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.
Meyer Davis: The Language of Home offers an intimate glimpse into the creative partnership of Will Meyer and Gray Davis, co-founders of the globally recognized architecture and design firm known for shaping award-winning hospitality and residential spaces. This publication presents a curated selection of Meyer Davis’s residential projects—spanning city penthouses, lakeside retreats, coastal sanctuaries, a Mexican villa, and a luxury yacht—each reflecting intimacy, elegance, and individuality. Framed as a dialogue between Will and Gray, interwoven with anecdotes from their lives and collaborators, the narrative reveals the art of design, the joy of collaboration, and how personal context shapes their vision. Will’s bold, instinctive approach balanced with Gray’s thoughtful, detail-oriented perspective creates a conversational rhythm that mirrors their architecture: layered, collaborative, and alive.
Richly illustrated with photography, sketches, and material boards, this book is both a showcase of design excellence and a personal journey into the minds of two of today’s most influential voices in contemporary architecture.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
a+u’s April issue, guided by guest editors Ko Nakamura, Keigo Kobayashi, and Mamiko Miyahara, investigates the interconnection of architecture and food. Food insecurity is a major challenge that cities face in the Anthropocene that architects and urbanists must rise to meet. Presenting more than 20 projects of varying scales, this issue highlights alternative strategies that architecture and urban design may adopt in the urgent effort to address this shared global burden. Five key themes – New Ways of Production, Globalism and National Strategies, In Community, Meeting the City, and Exploring Food Space – organize the projects. Real-time examples, such as Vertical Urban Farm, reveal possible directions that could be followed, while other projects interrogate existing notions, like Floating Farm Dairy, which aims to reintegrate isolated industrial harbor spaces with the rest of the city by introducing space for animal husbandry. Food is an integral part of not only basic survival but also of fostering community and the conviviality of the built realm. Thus, architecture acts as the crucible where agricultural innovation, forms, community action, and environmental sustainability meet.
Text in English and Japanese.
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.
From its foundation in 1948, the state of Israel has felt isolated and under threat from enemies. This collective siege mentality manifests itself with over 1 million public and private shelters. The Israelis have integrated these ‘Doomsday spaces’ into their everyday life and transformed them into spaces that look like normal dance studios, bars or temples. For many people in Israel who live with a personal history of exile and persecution, these shelters are the architecture of an existential threat both real and perceived. Adam Reynolds shot the images in this book over the course of three years, from 2013 to 2015. The photographs offer a broad cultural and geographical typology of the shelter spaces by documenting them on either side of the Green Line, throughout Israel and the Occupied Territories, in an effort to offer the broadest survey possible. They straddle the distinct worlds of fine art and reportage. “Working in a country like Israel, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate art from social reality,” says Adam Reynolds.
Traditional country parks, which originated in the United Kingdom, are very different to the country parks we know today. With the development of urbanization and the improvement of living standards, city dwellers were no longer satisfied with small urban green spaces, and a new style of country park was born. Conveniently located in the outer city suburbs, with tranquil, natural environments, this new type of park met society’s desire to return to nature, and theses spaces have since become hotspots for tourism and leisure. Country Parks includes detailed theory and case studies showcasing outstanding international country park design; analyzes and promotes the current status and development of the country park and its role in urban development; and provides valuable guidance for professional designers working in the field today.
Kengo Kuma is an acclaimed Japanese architect whose work masterfully engages architectural experimentation, traditional Japanese design, and 21st-century technology. This results in highly advanced yet beautifully simple, gentle, human-scaled buildings.
Kengo Kuma: Substance, the follow up to Topography (2021), explores the work of Kengo Kuma and Associates through six materials: wood, fabric, metal, bamboo, stone, and paper. The beautifully illustrated volume presents more than 30 projects, from captivating wood pavilions, ethereal textile installations, and sculptural woven structures to abstract stone fountains, aluminum chain screens, and monumental wood-and-steel bridges.
The featured projects are from around the world and range in typology and scale. Highlights include the Taoist temple in Shinpu; Kusugibashi bridge in Yamaguchi; Ephemeral Tent in Shanghai; Namako pavilion for Design Canberra Festival; a bamboo tea house in China; and the Wakuni Shoten tobacco store in Tokyo; among many others. Each project is illustrated with exquisite imagery that showcases how Kuma’s architectural designs are conceived and crafted to reveal the inherent qualities of the materials.
As Kuma continues to forge a new design language, he offers readers insight into how he has engaged with different materials to further progress his ideas and advance the world of architecture and design.
Tectonism is the most advanced and most sophisticated contemporary architectural style. There are, to date, only relatively a few fully satisfactory built examples, and most of them are still of a relatively modest scale. It is the thesis of this book that tectonism, as defined and illustrated here, represents the future of 21st century architecture. This thesis is optimistic with respect to the long-term rationality of the discipline of architecture, i.e. with respect to its capacity to discern and ascertain, via its internal discourse, the superiority of tectonism, and to spread its influence and impact as global best practice accordingly. This optimism also extends to the rationality of the wider society, as represented through private clients, public clients, and through end-user acceptance, to be susceptible to the guidance it will receive from its architectural expert discourse. This optimism is based on a critical analysis and appraisal of architectural history. The avant-garde intuitions of the early modernists in the 1920s, backed up by sound theoretical arguments, did win over the discipline in the 1930s and 1940s, and spread its real impact on the global built environment throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The current avant-garde intuitions within the movement of tectonism, although very different from modernism, are equally well thought through as the arguments in this book will attempt to demonstrate. — From the Introduction, by Patrik Schumacher
King Charles III’s affection for architecture is well-known, but the extent of his engagement has never been fully presented to the public. This is the first book to draw together the many threads, from the ‘carbuncle’ speech, made at Hampton Court in 1984, until his accession to the throne. He has created model settlements such as Poundbury through the Duchy of Cornwall, Dumfries House in East Ayrshire has been made a beacon of social regeneration, and his educational initiatives have changed lives.
The four decades of the King’s commitment to architecture have coincided with Clive Aslet’s career as a journalist, during which he has followed the story and often written about it, not least during the 13 years for which he was editor of Country Life. King Charles III: 40 Years of Architecture is based on new research including many interviews with the architects, critics, advisors and academics who worked with the (then) Prince of Wales on his far-reaching endeavors.
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.
Award-winning firm MDSzerbaty Associates Architecture (MDSA) reflects on past work to explore its use of materiality and the inherent qualities of texture, color, and light.
Architects design, build, and move on to the next project. How often do they reflect on their decisions and the evolution of their work over time, looking back at the choices they made?
MDSA carefully considers texture, color, and light, and explores these inherent qualities of materials in its architectural designs. At first sight, they may seem disparate with adjacent elements, but ultimately exhibit a refined and sophisticated appearance.
In Light, Color, Texture: The Work of MDSA MDSzerbaty Associates Architecture, principal Michael D. Szerbaty examines recent works by the firm to provide a reflective reassessment of the impact of light, color, and texture. Each project contains a discussion revealing how the materials were selected, the decision behind the use of color, and the deliberate window placement to allow natural lighting. Szerbaty’s review across the selected body of work provides evidence of the firm’s evolutionary approach, and an awareness of how buildings alter in place over time.
With full-color photography and insightful commentary, this monograph offers an unparalleled opportunity to gain clear and informative insights into the decision-making process of an award-winning architecture firm.