Way Beyond Bigness is a design-research project that studies the Mekong, Mississippi and Rhine river basins, with particular focus on multi-scaled, water-based infrastructural transformation. The book proposes a simple, adaptive framework that utilises a three-part, integrative design-research methodology, structured as: Appreciate + Analyze, Speculate + Synthesize, and Collaborate + Catalyze. To do such, Way Beyond Bigness realigns watersheds and architecture across multiple: scales (site to river basin), disciplines (ecologists to economists), narratives (hyperbolic to pragmatic), and venues (academic to professional). The research critiques and recasts Oxford Dictionary’s two very different definitions for a ‘watershed’: 1) “An area or ridge of land that separates waters flowing to different rivers, basins, or seas” and 2) “An event or period marking a turning point in a situation in a course of action or state of affairs” and its two very different definitions for ‘architecture’: 1) “The art or practice of designing and constructing buildings” and 2) “the complex or carefully designed structure of something.” The book highlights the author’s comprehensive work of over more than a decade, including in depth field research across the Mekong, Mississippi and Rhine, along with a diverse body of academic and professional collaborations, ranging from the speculative to the community-based.
Textile is a vector of identity – something more important than ever in times of war and crisis in particular. It is connected to the body it covers like a second skin. It both conceals and reveals, and contains a history and iconography whose roots often lie deep in a culture’s customs and traditions.
As part of its extramural programme, and in collaboration with award-winning photographer Mashid Mohadjerin and journalist Samira Bendadi, Antwerp Fashion Museum (MoMu) have created a new exhibition and accompanying publication on the importance of fabric and clothing to issues of public concern today, such as migration, resistance, tradition, spirituality and decolonisation.
The focus is on nine stories of people whom curators Bendadi and Mohadjerin – in whose own personal stories migration features prominently – met during their travels to Paris, Antwerp, Lebanon, Africa, Morocco and Iran. Sometimes the stories are warm and moving; at other times they are tough and heart-wrenching. In them, textile embodies the ideas and emotions coupled with forced or voluntary departure, the yearning for what has been lost, letting go and holding on.
This storytelling and photography exhibition will run from 15 November 2019 until 16 February 2020 at Texture Kortrijk, and will travel on to Kunsthal Extra City Antwerp in spring 2020.
Text in English and Dutch.
The Hinder/Reimers Collection – which has been owned by the state of Rhineland-Palatinate since 1993 – is one of the most important collections of modern ceramics in Germany. It was built up from the early 1950s through the combined efforts of Jakob Wilhelm Hinder (1901-1976) and Lotte Reimers (* 1932). The focus of this large collection is on West German ceramics from the 1950s to about 1990. Since the mid-1970s it has been enlarged by Lotte Reimers to include outstanding works from outside Germany. These 1,587 objects provide insights into the crucial trends and stylistic movements in art ceramics after the Second World War as represented by the most distinguished ceramicists of the day.
Featuring explanatory texts and colour illustrations, the present publication presents the entire collection and, therefore, goes beyond the scope of Ceramics in Germany 1955-1990. The Hinder/Reimers Collection, published in 1997, which dealt with only a selection of works from the collection. The new publication, on the other hand, draws on the Hinder/Reimers Collection to survey the broad field of developments in studio ceramics in the latter half of the 20th century in western Germany while looking well beyond the borders of Germany.
Text in English and German.
The work of Kohn Pedersen Fox is international in scope, collaborative in design, and a product of individual voices focused on a single objective – making an architecture, of our time, which creates strong bonds with the the specific place it occupies.
While William Pedersen founded the firm, with partners Gene Kohn and Shelley Fox, he never aspired to be a ‘director of design.’ They had the components with Gene’s entrepreneurial drive, Shelley’s management and Bill’s design leadership – to be a large firm. ‘Directing’ the work of a large firm was not Bill’s desire, instead he wanted to focus on a body of work which he could call his own. The example that work set would inspire others, and it did. Now there are several voices leading their design – all of them rose to their position within the office.
The purpose of this book is to define the work of one of the voices – Bill Pedersen’s. Pedersen has worked with many different designers, in close collaboration, throughout his career, though his work speaks with a singular voice. Here it is represented chronologically and concludes with the latest phase – furniture. Working from the largest scale to the smallest has always been a preoccupation of those who lead design in KPF. Many of Pedersen’s architectural heroes designed chairs, and he strives to follow in their footsteps.
Water is far too valuable of a resource to be disposed as a waste. Working Water presents the work of Denver landscape architecture firm Wenk Associates, highlighting their projects that treat stormwater, and the infrastructure that controls it, as a resource that supports functioning natural systems and enhanced urban open space. Built projects illustrate how stormwater runoff can be directed to support an intimate private garden, to the large-scale redevelopment of derelict industrial lands in Milwaukee organised around a stormwater park and open space system. Planning projects range from a plan for a surface stormwater system developed incrementally for a redeveloping urban district in central Denver, to a multi-generational plan for restoration of the Los Angeles River that will require profound changes in stormwater management policies and practice for full implementation. The final chapter describes the challenges, strategies, and lessons learned over the firm’s 37-year history as part of implementing new approaches to infrastructure design that can withstand the test of time.
In this new book, the publisher presents the top gardens of eleven master gardeners from the Netherlands. The members of the Association of Master Gardeners (Vereniging van Tophoveniers) have voluntarily submitted themselves to high quality demands and want to bring their profession to the highest possible level. Tophoveniers guarantee top quality for the complete package, not only as garden contractor, but also as designer, advisor, and person to talk to. Among the participants are Harry Esselinck, Groenpartners Tuinen, Hoveniersbedrijf Louis van der Meijden and Rien Van Mierio. In this beautiful publication the focus is on the architecture of the gardens. Because of the unique photographic material the book has become very attractive and insightful for every garden lover. In order to give the reader a complete image of the work of their participants, the author shows gardens of different sizes and from different parts of the Netherlands. Text in English and Dutch.
Collage is one of the most popular and pervasive of all art-forms, yet this is the first historical survey book ever published on the subject. Featuring over 200 works, ranging from the 1500s to the present day, it offers an entirely new approach. Hitherto, collage has been presented as a twentieth-century phenomenon, linked in particular to Pablo Picasso and Cubism in the years just before the First World War. In Cut and Paste: 400 Years of Collage, we trace its origins back to books and prints of the 1500s, through to the boom in popularity of scrapbooks and do-it-yourself collage during the Victorian period, and then through Cubism, Futurism, Dada and Surrealism. Collage became the technique of choice in the 1960s and 1970s for anti-establishment protest, and in the present day is used by millions of us through digital devices. The definition of collage employed here is a broad one, encompassing cut-and-pasted paper, photography, patchwork, film and digital technology and ranging from work by professionals to unknown makers, amateurs and children.
Contents:
Collage Over the Centuries, an introductory essay by Patrick Elliott; Collage Before Modernism by Freya Gowrley; On Edge: Exploring Collage Tactics and Terminology by Yuval Etgar; catalogue of exhibition works; a Chronology of Collage.
EUROPAN is an initiative that puts on competitions for young architects. Founded in 1989 and supported by 13 countries in the EU, it runs a competition every two years for innovative and experimental models in urban development. The 2017 and 2019 EUROPAN competitions focused on the topic Productive Cities. The 2019 edition involved more than 900 planning teams from all over Europe, who prepared proposals for 47 towns.
This book features the 12 winning submissions to the 2019 Productive Cities 2 competition for the Austrian cities Graz, Innsbruck, Villach, Weiz, and Vienna. They are presented in great detail through photos, drawings and visualisations, along with commenting texts. The projects focus on architectural and urban-planning interventions and processes. They offer innovative concepts for the use of public space as well as holistic solutions for sustainable construction and models for cross-functional use of space. The book is a rich source for trend-setting ideas about our future cities and the development of a new urban lifestyle.
When do painterly gestures become objects or spaces? When the colours and lines in a picture become the subject, do they then flirt with or repel one another? Fascinated by the gaudy banality of day-to-day life, Anna Nero (*1988) scratches on the surface of things with the help of quotes from advertising, fashion, and comics as well as samples of abstract and concrete painting. The question of the ‘thingness’ of a picture as a painterly image or real ceramic object, the question of its material characteristics, its use, its “essence” is central to her work and also the focus of her first monograph.
Text in English and German.
Shanghai-based Atelier Deshaus, founded in 2001 as one of the first private architectural firms in China, is one of the country’s most important and innovative design studios. The architects made their name worldwide in 2014 with the much-acclaimed West Bund site for Shanghai’s Long Museum, which has since been followed by a series of further museum and other art-related projects. Such cultural and community buildings of various scale are the main focus of Atelier Deshaus, who refuse the usual commercial construction tasks in China. Their formally strong buildings are developed from reading the site with special attention being paid to the preservation of Shanghai’s industrial heritage after decades of a tabula rasa policy in the city’s urban development.
At the core of this first monograph are Atelier Deshaus’s 20 most important designs from two decades. They are documented in rich detail through plans and images as well as concise explanatory texts by the architects. In an extensive conversation with Hubertus Adam, the firm’s principals Liu Yichun and Chen Yifeng offer insights into their way of thinking, their understanding of Chinese tradition, their relation to art, and the challenges of working as a non-governmental office in China. Additional essays place Atelier Deshaus in the context of contemporary international architecture and discuss their key projects with regard to constructive qualities and atmosphere.
Eleanor Moty (b. 1945) from the US is a seminal figure in the field of contemporary international studio jewellery. In a career that has spanned more than 50 years, she has been both a dedicated practitioner and a devoted teacher who has inspired succeeding generations of artists, collectors, and fellow professionals. She began to attract national attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s for her experiments with photoetching and electroforming metal. Later, mid-career, Moty made what seems like an abrupt shift in style and focus, with more abstract works whose designs were inspired by the natural inclusions within the non-precious gems used in their fabrication. While her works have been published in prominent books, catalogues, and journals internationally, this monograph is the first comprehensive in-depth examination of her career from its inception in 1967 through the present day.
The completion of David Chipperfield’s distinctive new building for Kunsthaus Zürich in December 2020 has nearly doubled the museum’s overall space. In combination with the preceding refurbishments of the earlier buildings, this has made it fit to meet the demands of an art museum in the 21st century.
A sequel to The Architectural History of the Kunsthaus Zürich 1910-2020, this book comprehensively introduces the new Kunsthaus Zürich, demonstrating how the task of building an art museum in the 21st century can be fulfilled. Concise texts, statements by protagonists and by future users and visitors as well as numerous illustrations trace the project’s evolution and the construction process and look at the completed building from various perspectives. The book also highlights what features contemporary museum infrastructure has to offer and the architectural and urban design qualities it requires, and what financial and organisational challenges the entire undertaking implied. A conversation between experts exploring the expanded museum’s impact on its immediate neighbourhood and Zurich’s urban fabric as a whole rounds out the volume.
Text in French.
The fifth volume of the Laboratorium
series spans the space between topics and positions at the institute. The texts deal with various aspects and questions on the subject of the built and perceived space. Energy issues, dealing with urban rural areas or working with models are featured. In addition to content-related topics, the focus is on methods and approaches. Edited by Dieter Geissbühler.
Text in German.
The completion of David Chipperfield’s distinctive new building for Kunsthaus Zürich in December 2020 has nearly doubled the museum’s overall space. In combination with the preceding refurbishments of the earlier buildings, this has made it fit to meet the demands of an art museum in the 21st century.
A sequel to The Architectural History of the Kunsthaus Zürich 1910-2020, this book comprehensively introduces the new Kunsthaus Zürich, demonstrating how the task of building an art museum in the 21st century can be fulfilled. Concise texts, statements by protagonists and by future users and visitors as well as numerous illustrations trace the project’s evolution and the construction process and look at the completed building from various perspectives. The book also highlights what features contemporary museum infrastructure has to offer and the architectural and urban design qualities it requires, and what financial and organisational challenges the entire undertaking implied. A conversation between experts exploring the expanded museum’s impact on its immediate neighbourhood and Zurich’s urban fabric as a whole rounds out the volume.
Blackburn Architects leads the world in the design of equestrian facilities that are beautiful and innovative. The firm’s common-sense approach delivers impressive facilities for horses, while at the same time designing a structure that fits into the regional vernacular architecture with pleasing results. This is an exciting journey through a body of work spanning nearly four decades, with reviews of a plethora of designs that highlight discoveries and innovations made along the way. The firm also looks forward to a more sustainable future, as it continues to push for the inclusion of ever-more innovative systems and environmental protections. This lavishly illustrated monograph is a celebration of the history of this specialist architecture firm, a beautiful showcase of some of the most jaw-dropping designs of horse stables and barns.
Source Books in Architecture No.14: Rem Koolhaas / OMA + AMO Spaces for Prada is the most recent volume in the Source Books in Architecture series. Among the topics discussed in the book are the longstanding relationship with Prada and how the early objectives in that relationship have both maintained and shifted. An underlying theme to the conversations held with students and faculty of the Knowlton School community is the topic of architect client relationships, their history, their problems, and how they have contributed to the discipline over time. Explicitly, a focus of the conversation is on a number of projects that OMA has developed or completed with Prada, a large number of which are installation scale environments that manifest in the form of runway shows and exhibitions. The challenge of such projects is to retain a commitment to the political and cultural agenda that OMA embeds in the larger and permanent buildings. Given the ephemerality and role of these environments as literal backgrounds to highlighted events, the projects are ideal scenarios in which to develop an architecture that lacks the permanence of buildings while still carrying potency and contributing to larger cultural discussions involving, for example, event, place, concept, product, staging, the crowd, lighting, and materiality.
Source Books in Architecture No.14 contains project documentation from the OMA and Prada archives, transcripts from Koolhaas’ conversations with students at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University, and commentary and critique from architects, critics, and theorists.
As the number and distinctiveness of design directions in contemporary architecture expands, an outcome has emerged of a contradictory nature. While many of these directions hold great intrigue, a troubling aspect arises in that in their realisation an ‘incompleteness’ is often exhibited, one expressing a less developed architectural richness expressed an under utilised nature of the architectural language itself.
Internal addresses this issue with a focus on topics underlying the creation of architectural languages. Concentrating on strategies and concepts that inform the creation of cohering architectural languages versus ‘external’ issues affecting design, such as those necessary to accommodate site or program, Internal focuses on design considerations with the authority grounded in ‘internal’ language-based architectural issues. Identifying underlying themes and strategies necessary to create coherent and informed architectural languages constitutes the effort underlying this book.
The Department launched the one year MSDRAS program this year, directed by Assistant Professor Robert Stuart Smith. The Master of Science in Design: Robotics and Autonomous Systems aims to critically develop novel approaches to the design, manufacturing, construction, use, and lifecycle of architecture through creative engagement with robotics, material systems, and design computation. Students will develop skills in advanced forms of robotic fabrication, simulation, and artificial intelligence, in order to develop methods for design that harness production or live adaptation as a creative opportunity. This is an excellent addition to the existing MSD programs: the MSDEBD directed by Professor Bill Braham and the MSDAAD directed by Professor Ali Rahim, all presented in Pressing Matters 9.