Up until the 1940s, records were sold in plain, uniform jackets. In the post-war years, musicians and record companies discovered that graphically designed record covers had the potential to boost sales. Significantly, in the 1960s contemporary artists began to create record jackets that became an inspiration for others on account of their radical, ground-breaking designs. Many of them have become symbols recognised not only by fans but by the wider public, symbols of an era where artistic freedom, experimentation, and innovation were encouraged.
This book is the first-ever comprehensive introduction to these resplendent album covers . They have been taken from the extensive archive of the Dutch designer Jan van Toorn, one of the most active collectors and a leading expert in the field. The book includes surrealist designs by Salvador Dalí; covers by famous pop artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat; works by the Vienna-based group ‘Wiener Aktionismus’; and contemporary designs by Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Banksy, and Ai Weiwei. Special importance is given to the designs from the circle of Fluxus artists, a radical sixties group who often produced music during their multimedia performances. The Fluxus artists frequently published their artwork on records, as did John Cage and Yoko Ono. Another focus of the book is Raymond Pettibon, who shot to fame when his legendary cover for the punk band Black Flag exploded into the record stores.
Full of famous names and artists deserving of greater recognition, this book is the perfect gift for any vinyl-lover.
The new scholarly series Van Gogh Studies offers an international platform for research into nineteenth century, West European art history. The contributions focus on Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries and are written by internationally acclaimed scholars and provide a richly variegated impression of this area of study. The first issue reveals the diversity of the Eminence grise series. Robert Herbert presents a major study about decorative arts; the nineteenth century French art market and the Salon system is the centrepiece of Robert Jensen and David Galenson’s contribution, while Elise Eckermann, June Hargrove and Caroline Boyle-Turner provide remarkable monographs about Gauguin as a painter and sculptor. Joan Greer elucidates in great detail on the publication of Van Gogh’s letters in the Flemish journal Van Nu en Straks (Today and Tomorrow) in 1893,while Louis van Tilborgh researches and dates Van Gogh’s stay in French painter Fernand Cormon’s studio.
North Korea, the world’s most closed off country, has begun to make a different move. Kim Jung-un has opened dialogue with South Korea and is also preparing to correspond with other countries. There are both doubtful and positive responses to this change. However, this opens a new possible scenario for North Korea in the future.
This book is focused on the potential that the country has. Of course, they have lots of issues, but they can be a sustainable country. Research begins with the past and existing condition of the country, a Socialist government, and eludes to the future. To set the strategies for future development, we need to focus on two types of precedents: Post-socialist countries and megalopolis. Based on these two features, this book suggests a new North Korean national planning, called H-city.
H-city will be the main structure for future development. However, at the same time, micro-scale developments should be encouraged too. What could be the catalysts for that? This book is focused on train stations, markets, and the area between them. The H-city with the small catalysts can make people imagine a new possibility of North Korea.
“A clearly articulated manifesto for those trying to preserve Tokyo’s emergent properties, Emergent Tokyo helps distil lessons for other cities”
—Benjamin Bansal, Urban Studies Journal
This book examines the urban fabric of contemporary Tokyo as a valuable demonstration of permeable, inclusive, and adaptive urban patterns that required neither extensive master planning nor corporate urbanism to develop. These urban patterns are emergent: that is, they are the combined result of numerous modifications and appropriations of space by small agents interacting within a broader socio-economic ecosystem. Together, they create a degree of urban intensity and liveliness that is the envy of the world’s cities.
This book examines five of these patterns that appear conspicuously throughout Tokyo: yokocho alleyways, multi-tenant zakkyo buildings, undertrack infills, low-rise dense neighbourhoods, and the river-like ankyo streets. Unlike many of the discussions on Tokyo that emphasise cultural uniqueness, this book aims at transcultural validity, with a focus on empirical analysis of the spatial and social conditions that allow these patterns to emerge. The authors of Emergent Tokyo acknowledge the distinct character of Tokyo without essentialising or fetishising it, offering visitors, architects, and urban policy practitioners an unparalleled understanding of Tokyo’s urban landscape.
“It amazes me that after all these years and countless books, the scope of subject matter on The Beatles is so amazingly large that writers always find a new angle. This book does that in a very unique and clever way. It’s a must for every Beatles fan.” —Billy J. Kramer
“…It’s a magical mystery tour through the band’s life and times.” —Yahoo Entertainment The It-List
“Part biography and part map to the stars, The Beatles: Fab Four Cities is your “Ticket to Ride” and walk in the footsteps of John, Paul, George and Ringo. It’s the next best thing to actually driving their car…”—Nina Violi, Capitol File. and Gotham magazine
“While the book can be used as a handy tour guide filled with addresses, maps and photos, it also makes for great reading.” —Steve Matteo, The Vinyl District
“But now comes a “magic carpet volume” for Beatles fans that blends travel guide with historical reference in an expanded study of The Beatles’ homes, schools, pubs, venues, and important historic sites…” —Jude Southerland Kessler, Culture Sonar
John Lennon said: “We were born in Liverpool, but we grew up in Hamburg.”
To paraphrase Lennon, we could say that: “The Beatles were born in Liverpool, grew up in Hamburg, reached maturity in London, and immortality in New York.”
Four cities. Four stars. The Fab Four – the Beatles – are revered the world over, but it is in these urban centres that their legacy shines brightest. Liverpool: where the band graduated from church halls, leaving their initial line-up as ‘The Quarrymen’ far behind. Hamburg: where their raucous stage act was honed; where arrests earned them a more notorious celebrity reputation, but they became a true emblem of rock ‘n’ roll. London: where The Beatles produced Sgt Pepper, and home to the iconic album cover for Abbey Road. And New York: the city that became John Lennon’s home, where their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show announced them to 73 million Americans.
The Beatles: Fab Four Cities invites the reader on a cosmopolitan trek across continents, tracing the Beatles’ rise to fame from one metropolis to the next. Flush with timelines, stories, trivia, the numerous links and connections between the cities and both pop cultural and local history, this is a travel guide like no other.
Bentu is an award-winning, cutting-edge Chinese design company founded in 2011. It is known for innovative and engaged product and lighting design and manufacturing, with an emphasis on day-to-day functionality and attention to raw materials. The design teams have experimented extensively with the detritus of industry, including concrete, ceramic, metal and plastic pipes, and terrazzo.
In this beautifully photographed book, the evolution of a product is shown, more than told. A stunning series of photos of raw materials and work sites follows the process from beginning to end, creating a visual storyline of environmental impact, innovative design, sustainability, reusability, local sourcing, and usage.
In 1908 Peter Behrens recruited the young Walter Gropius in his architect’s office – but threw him out again in 1910. Gestalt und Hinterhalt [Form and Attack]
places a tongue-in-cheek focus on relationships among artists that revolved around the Bauhaus and Darmstadt’s artists’ colony Mathildenhöhe, Germany. We gain insights into the numerous love affairs of Alma Mahler, and follow Herbert Bayer, who set off from Darmstadt to Weimar, and soon toppled Walter Gropius’s second marriage.
This book narrates the story of Bauhaus in a way never told before – through not only the successes and talents of those involved, but also through their failures and failings.
Text in German.
What do the Parisian chocolatier and sculptor Patrick Roger, the makers of the trendy Oslo fashion label Norwegian Rain, T-Michael and Alexander Heller have in common with the Stuttgart optician Andreas Kraft? They all believe in the magic and allure of well-designed shops. And that is not all – as entrepreneurs, they must make their shops the ambassadors of their brand, philosophy and products. This book is an exploratory tour of offbeat retail hotspots worldwide. The focus is on interesting personalities who make a relevant contribution to the topic of shop design and product presentation.
Text in English and German.
“To my mind, Koen is the photographer of the instant. Whatever the subject, the format, the colour may be, the emotion that is implied is always expressed vigorously; either with a sense of humour, seriousness, or with lots of tenderness. Unlike other photographers, he is not the prisoner of a style; his goal is to express the sincerity of the moment in its widest variety. Koen’s freedom also lies in a real physical need to be in motion, on a journey. In this way, systematically taking pictures beyond the borders allows him to focus, to find himself, and to come as close as possible to the essence of his soul.” Antoine Reyre, CEO CAPA Pictures
Shot in Time
is the first anthology by the Belgian photographer Koen Lauwaert, who displays his talent for developing an original and poetic language that alternates the different registers of contemporary photography, from portraiture to abstraction through reportage. Partly academically trained, studying at the Brussels Filmschool and the Photo Academy Rhok, Koen Lauwaert devised his own language in the field, working as a film operator during his military service and for an agency specialising in portraits of children and families as well as a cover author for rock band albums. Shot in Time is an autobiographical narrative in which the passion for photography goes hand in hand with Koen’s nomadic soul, the images are taken all over the world, notably in Italy, a country for which the author has a predilection.
Text in English and Italian.
‘Essays in Context’: all results of the investigations into Bruegel’s drawings and paintings collected in a special anniversary edition
The focus is on insights derived from the artworks themselves. The results of the investigations into Bruegel’s drawings and paintings using modern imaging techniques, the natural sciences and dendrochronology, as well as the observations by the paintings’ restorers, provide brand-new information. The analysis of Bruegel’s compositions and what he actually depicted (objects, clothes, gestures) is seen within the wider context of the life and times of the artist and his patrons. Rounded up by the latest research into Bruegel’s life, the historical art market and previous attitudes to his oeuvre, the entire volume is intended to offer new directions for future study.
Bruegel’s inventions and stories create artworks with a timeless power, and this volume, containing 24 essays and more than 500 illustrations, provides a comprehensive survey of the artist’s oeuvre and will be an indispensable resource for Bruegel fans and scholars alike.
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.
The effervescent, creative synergy among Italian artists and designers in the post-war, post-fascist period is the subject of this exhibition catalogue for a show in Paris held at the end of 2019. Forty works of avant-garde art and design highlight the common aspirations and experimental spirit of this visionary generation, featuring artists and works that mirror each other in their approach to the world. Included here are works by Lucio Fontana, Carlo Mollino, Ettore Sottsass, Gaetano Pesce, Carlo Scarpa, Gino Sarfatti, Dadamaino, Alighiero Boetti, Mimmo Rotella, Gio Ponti, and Piero Manzoni, among others. In this show, Italian artists, architects, and designers reveal their exceptional ability to overturn the boundaries between art and design. Their visionary modernism is still influential today.
This book serves as a critical review of Social Urbanism, defined as a socio-political and practical approach to urban globalisation, deriving from a planning strategy and portfolio of built projects that seek to alleviate the social consequences of urbanisation.
It emphasises both the political processes and the urbanism projects that simultaneously consider socio-economic and ecological components of space, and which highlight a greater focus on social sustainability. In a context in which geography defines space and culture, and through challenges of a global magnitude, we are inextricably united in an era of environmental uncertainty, where shared experiences and values place us within a collective culture, inspiring mutual agency in service of this vision for Social Urbanism.
Through the work presented here, Social Urbanism is expanded as a worldview that considers the cultural values of a given place as interconnected to the geographical landscape of the region, and therefore, as the driving forces behind future models of globalisation and urban growth. The points of view of multiple colleagues and experts across differing fields provide introspection on the implementation of Social Urbanism. These shared opinions strengthen the significance of this work and affirm the joint values and visions for the global urbanisation challenges we are confronting in the 21st century, and which continue into the future.
Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop: Bioclimatic Ceramic Assemblies IV presents terra cotta design research, conducted under the auspices of the annual Architectural Ceramic Assemblies Workshop (ACAW), between architectural firms and terra cotta manufacturer Boston Valley Terra Cotta. It chronicles the work of architectural firms Kieran Timberlake, Kohn Pederson Fox (KPF), HKS, Payette, Pelli Clarke Pelli, SHoP Architects, Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM), Studios Architecture and two academic teams from Alfred University and the University at Buffalo. The book presents a unique model for exploring the state of the art in terra cotta design through the production of experimental prototypes. These include rain screen facade systems, urban sound devices, structures, massive wall systems and furniture. Now in its fifth year, this invitation-only workshop has teams collaborate with the manufacturer to develop a design that engages bioclimatic concerns and pushes material and manufacturing possibilities.
Landscapes are forged by many forces and are dynamic, not static. Yet most landscape designs are designed as static; that is, they are designed not to change substantially for 20-50 years. As cities become the dominant living space for humans, allowing non-human forces to contribute to our designs as landscape architects will make for more resilient landscapes and a healthier planet. Making these dynamic landscapes with our non-human partners will require a new landscape aesthetic, changing the public perception of “landscape,” and changing maintenance practices.
Dynamic Geographies
seeks to address these perceptions with a series of our projects as examples. The book is divided into three segments of overlapping geographies: Invisible geographies, Layered geographies, and Unleashing geographies.
The genesis, development and life-long occupation of the McIntyre house, built in 1972 as part of a multiple-dwelling subdivision, provides possible answers to some very pressing contemporary design questions. How might one live near the city and be respectful of nature? How might efficiently built dwellings also be spacious and dense site occupation still allow for privacy? This history is recounted through text augmented by photographs and site diagrams, house sections and plans. They reveal a modern architecture on the west coast that resulted from an interplay of both the physicality of the land and a culturally imbued landscape.
Coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations charter, this visually driven book tells the story of the special relationship between the UN and New York City through the interrelated lenses of architecture, real estate, and urban planning. It is fully illustrated with rare archival photographs and architectural drawings, as well as newly commissioned photographs. The book also includes written contributions from UN-affiliated individuals of note, including current and former UN secretaries-general, ambassadors to the UN, mayors, governors, historians, architecture critics, and other luminaries.
The book begins by chronicling how New York came to be the permanent home of the UN, including the individuals, institutions, and other forces that helped the city secure the headquarters of the UN – among them the Rockefeller family, William Zeckendorf, and Robert Moses. The book then presents the architectural and urban design journey to create the iconic UN campus by a global team of architectural giants such as Wallace K. Harrison, Le Corbusier, and Oscar Niemeyer, with archival photos and architectural drawings and renderings. It also charts how the real estate needs of the UN evolved over time, leading to the creation of the United Nations Development Corporation (UNDC) and its commissioning of three architecturally significant buildings at UN Plaza that have helped keep the UN in New York City. Also included are sections on the $2 billion renovation and restoration of the UN campus and proposals past and present for additional architectural commissions. Additional sections document how New York City and the UN have helped shape each other over the years; and how both continue to change and evolve.
Unique for its architectural and urbanistic focus, A Home to the World: The United Nations and New York City celebrates this important global organisation’s many accomplishments past, present, and future.
In the South of France, sited on a hill of olive trees, pinus pinea, and a vineyard, a family retreat was designed with a key mission of maintaining the vitality of the site. A small agricultural plot, the site offered the possibility of amplification. With the introduction of a garden and many outdoor living spaces, the family had the intention of cultivating the landscape as part of their stewardship. In part a response to a programmatic brief, but moreover, a discursive response to architectural predicaments of geometry, typology, and anomaly, the house is also a response to Preston Scott Cohen’s pedagogies on architecture.
Ever since the firm’s establishment in 1989, Frankfurt-based Stefan Forster Architekten (SFA) had a special focus on housing. A starting point for this was the urgent necessity of refurbishment and modernisation of the vast housing developments constructed of prefabricated concrete slabs as part of the urban rebuilding programmes in the newly founded federal states of eastern Germany following the country’s re-unification in 1990. From the initial ‘Haus 07’ in Leinefelde, Thuringia, SFA have moved on, creating a remarkable body of work in metropolitan housing. Their designs comprise large-scale public multi-unit blocs and single-family town houses on small plots, as well as the transformation of former office and public administration structures.
This first monograph on SFA highlights how the firm has constantly worked on raising the standards in residential architecture, years before the current shortage of housing in urban areas has made such improvements so urgent. The book features 30 designs that exemplify SFA’s approach and philosophy.
Text in English and German.
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 strong visual identity is hard to miss, instantly catching the eye. In children’s spaces, it is best tailored with their unique outlook in mind as children perceive the world around them differently from the rest of us, responding to specific sets of details.
Design and Visual Identity for Children’s Spaces shares a variety of contemporary creative designs for children’s spaces all over the world; they combine children-friendly visual elements with smart space design to tailor comfortable and conducive environments where they can learn, have fun, flourish, and be themselves.
Over 35 projects that focus on educational institutions, enrichment centres, recreational clubs, play zones, concept stores, and children’s hospitals, among others, share concepts that transform spaces to make them more relatable for children through thoughtfully considered visual identity and interior layouts that resonate specifically with them. Designers dig deep, even consult with children, to create designs that call out to them in fun, inspiring spaces that unleash imaginations, while they foster a sense of connection and belonging.
Discover the rationales and inspirations behind these concepts, which also unify aspects of the business with a cohesive brand identity to promote the desired brand impressions and top-of-the-mind consumer recall. Through the projects in these pages, the reader is offered a host of thoughtful and creative solutions in designing children’s spaces, making this book a handy tool for anyone in the business of managing children’s spaces, or keen on designing children’s spaces.
The 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.
Arnaldo Coen (1940) is one of the most prominent Mexican artists. As a result of his restless, transgressive and irreverent creativity, his work has never ceased to be fresh.
He has made important individual exhibits in the Museum of Modern Art and in the National Hall of the Palace of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited in Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, featuring in important collections and exhibitions in different cultural venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, Tlatelolco Cultural Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, Isidro Fabela Cultural Center, Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago and the Bank of Mexico, to name a few. This award winning artist has also been the focus of several recognised art critics such as Octavio Paz, Raquel Tibol, Carlos Monsivais, Juan Garcia Ponce, Salvador Elizondo, Teresa del Conde, Sigrunn Paas, Josephine Siller.
Arnaldo Coen is the first monograph covering the artist’s pictorial and sculptural works from the 1960s to date, with some 300 images complementing this contemporary, provocative and irreverent compendium of Coen’s legacy.