For centuries, dealing with cold has been the dominant climatic factor for architectural design in Central Europe. The climate change apparent now assigns this role to heat. Architecture and urban design strives for efficient, resource-saving technical solutions to meet the changing climatic conditions and the energy standards they demand without really questioning customary notions of comfort, forms of living, and urban coexistence. Yet architects must increasingly search for experimental approaches and new ways in which we can live together well in a rapidly warming climate, in particular in cities and metropolitan regions.
Despite a supposed powerlessness in the face of the impending climate catastrophe, the contributions collected in this volume offer a diverse range of narratives that tell of experiences, observations, and the needs of people that inhabit hotter worlds, both real and imagined. What role as climate producers can architecture and the city play in shaping our habitat if these important issues are understood not only in purely technological but also in cultural and social terms?
Text in English and German.
Marguerite Saegesser (1922–2011) achieved fame in the US, her adopted country for many years, where her prints and paintings were repeatedly shown in group and solo exhibitions in California and New York over a period of two decades. In her native Switzerland, however, the artist and her multifaceted oeuvre are yet to be discovered.
This book fills this gap, featuring Saegesser’s art with a special focus on the monotype, a printing technique developed in the 17th century and producing only a single original at a time. It also demonstrates how Saegesser, who initially studied sculpture in Lausanne, found her artistic destiny in America. Key to her evolution was San Francisco’s lively art scene of the late 1970s, and in particular the painter Sam Francis, an outstanding representative of action painting and abstract expressionism, who became her friend and precursor. His fascination with the monotype quickly transferred to Saegesser, who soon achieved mastery in it and made a significant contribution to the revival of the historic technique.
Text in English and German.
The long-term Photographic Observation Schlieren is a much-recognised unique research project that documents urban development in Switzerland. Over a period of 15 years, a photographic record of building activity and urbanisation processes was conducted to demonstrate how these are altering the character of a typical Swiss suburban community. The chosen example was the town of Schlieren, bordering the city of Zurich to the west, whose population grew from 13,000 to 20,000 residents during the observation period of 2005–20. At 63 locations throughout Schlieren, pictures were taken under identical conditions every two years that show the changes in the spatial interplay of buildings, streets, and green spaces. Simultaneously, series of topical detailed photographs were produced that focus on individual objects and tell of the appropriation, design, and aesthetics of habitats, such as store fronts, building entrances, playgrounds, parking entrances, etc.
This two-volume set brings together the results of this spectacular research. The Archive volume features the entire body of the eight images taken at each of the 63 sites to visualise the deep changes Schlieren has undergone during these 15 years. The Essays volume combines the topical image series with essays that offer in-depth examination of the study’s subject, detailed analyses and interpretations, and interviews by expert authors from various disciplines.
“The changing climate is no longer debatable here, it is this land’s unfeigned, monstrous reality,” says Dhaka-based architect Kashef Chowdhury. His firm URBANA, established in 1995, has produced an astonishingly diverse collection of works of divergent scales, typologies, and contexts and located in one of the meteorologically most complex and challenging regions in the world. A hospital introduced into an economy decimated by rising oceans, a shelter against cyclones in Bangladesh’s southern coastal region, projects for locations in the country’s north near the Himalaya mountains facing devouring waves of floods, and architectural interventions in one of the world’s densest metropolitan areas: URBANA’s designs are incisive critical responses to dissimilar issues and urgencies. They are all rooted in the belief that architecture can no longer be optical or sensational, but be built of philosophy and empathy for our increasingly fragile and shared ecological and human condition.
Meditations in Entropy is the first-ever comprehensive monograph on the work of Kashef Chowdhury / URBANA. It features 16 of the firm’s designs in detail through photographs by acclaimed architectural photographer Hélène Binet and numerous plans, drawings, sketches, and further images. Perceptive essays are contributed by eminent critics and historians Kenneth Frampton, Robert McCarter, and William J R Curtis. The book is rounded-off with conversations between Chowdhury, Swiss architect Niklaus Graber, and the distinguished architectural historian Philip Ursprung that further explicate URBANA’s unique approach.
“Anyone reading this who aspires to chronicle a segment of 20th-century Western design must have Artmonsky‘s modest but essential library of books. And while you are ordering, thank her for this invaluable detour from the fields of psychology and statistics.” — Printmag
Commercial Art, with different titles over the years, claimed to be the only British monthly magazine covering design until the Council of Industrial Design began to publish Design in 1949. For most of its existence it was published by The Studio Ltd. whose founding family, the Holmes, were to be actively involved, from grandfather to grandsons. The Studio Ltd were already publishing art and design related magazines (The Studio from 1893 and The Studio Decorative Yearbook from 1906), when it decided to plunge into the vulgarity of ‘commercial’ art, buying up an existing magazine with that title in 1926. Most of the rest of the 1920s and into the ‘30s it concentrated on the graphic arts, but increasing in the late ‘30s its focus shifted to industrial design. The shift was acknowledged by title changes, first to Commercial Art & Industry and to Art & Industry.
In 1957, with death duty problems, the family were forced to sell to The Hulton Press. Although the Press made a brave effort to update the look and content of the magazine, with the arrival of Design and the turmoil of Fleet Street at the time, the magazine became unviable and was closed in 1959.
Commercial Art recounts its history of nearly 40 years and its mirroring of British design over that period.
The photography collected in A View from the Top may have arisen out of a desire to document a singular body of work—the Viewpoint Collection. Through Kelley’s eye, lens, and postproduction choices, however, it advances the very way that buildings can be photographed and understood, allowing us to visit residences that most of us will never see in person.
The photographs also demonstrate that these projects are quintessentially Californian. Their emphasis on open plans, airy modernism, the indoor-outdoor relationship, natural textures and colour-palette, and an intensive attention to landscaping are also quintessentially Los Angeles. The buildings—which are the creations of some of the world’s most renowned architects—are inspired and inspiring. They are luxurious, aspirational, and visually exciting. The book is both a valuable contribution to architectural history and a pleasure to read.
The impact of artificial intelligence in the discipline of architecture is unavoidable and undeniable. The recent mass adoption of highly accessible machine learning tools including DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney has allowed designers to test their limits and assess their role as an author in the design of the built environment. This book includes speculations on the introduction of artificial intelligence bots/apps into architecture and features a collection of works from 18 architects and designers who are interrogating current AI applications. Within each chapter, authors put forth a position through a framework consisting of theory and application lenses. Additionally, interviews from leading practitioners will offer insights into the current curiosities fuelling investigation.
This book will incite dialogue about the potential of AI as an ideation device and extension of the architect’s authorship. As a part of this work, curation plays an important role as the technology generates content at an incredible pace. Architectural design thinking will have to reconcile the injection of this new tool and this book will speculate on the current state in its infancy.
Hotel Design presents the beautiful, inviting, and defining hotels and resorts designed by FILLAT+ Architecture. With four studios and over 27 years of experience in hospitality design, the firm was founded in 1992 by Peter Fillat to explore a personal view of how people interact with the environment and to create an Architecture of Permanence, which delights and inspires the human spirit. FILLAT+ specialises in creating places and spaces for people to enjoy life. In the careful planning and sequencing of the interior and exterior spatial experience, the work creates comfortable, inviting spaces that are accommodating, respectful, and memorable. Each project responds to the unique needs and vision of its client as well as the needs of every guest that walks through its doors.
The book features 12 built works and 15 projects on the boards. Richly illustrated, the projects elaborate on FILLAT+’s unique approach to designing new destination hotels and resorts, whether building upon historic foundations or designing icons as key anchors in urban redevelopment master plans. Hotel Design features a foreword by Stacy Shoemaker, editor in chief of Hospitality Design magazine, and contributions by David Ashen and Michael Dennis.
Eleven visionary photographers — who happen to be women — focus upon moments of profound beauty and peril on our planet. As award recipients and jurors of the prestigious BigPicture international competition, these women are featured with more than 125 dramatic images that illustrate the extraordinary complexity of the natural world and challenge our very relations and perceptions of it.
Seeing It All goes beyond the glamorising images of nature and wildlife that are typically shown. Here, images connect the seen to the hidden, abundance with disappearance, icebergs to indigenous portraits, animal sanctuaries and climate scientists, and heart to head.
These intrepid individuals use photography to expose how we — humans, animals, nature — are living together in these precipitous times. Each photographer provides a concise manifesto arising from their commitment to life on the planet, which is accompanied by a short profile and behind-the scenes insights into their activities.
Join Ami Vitale, Cristina Mittermeier, Suzi Eszterhas and others as they venture from Africa to the Arctic, through deep oceans to distant islands. Be witness to the last animal of its species. Delight in the birth of the next generation.
The significance and urgency of Seeing It All is expressed in the introduction by Rhonda Rubinstein, plus essays by renowned writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit, and neuroscientist, writer and stage director Indre Viskontas.
A board of directors can contain people from various backgrounds, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and still make the same mistakes as a team of only white men. Why? From a “nice to have” to a “must-have”, Diversity & Inclusion is nowadays a fashionable topic. Although most leaders are convinced of its benefits, some may not yet comprehend its potential. If the focus is on including “minorities”, then what should we do about personality profiles? This profile is not revealed at first glance. You need to be open to other viewpoints, resolve difficulties with patience, feel empathy for your stakeholders, allow them just to be… natural.
“It’s mostly beautiful artist images of mushrooms—I mean beautiful. And there is nice text to accompany; information about the mushrooms, habitat, their relationships to the plants and the environment.” — Fungi Journal
“While the photography takes centre stage, Vermeer demonstrates his deep knowledge of the fungal world with insightful texts that explore themes such as symbiosis, ecology and the threats posed by the many poisonous varieties.” — Outdoor Photography
Wonderland is a unique coffee table book that takes the reader into the fascinating world of mushrooms. Dutch photographer Jan Vermeer took on this incomparable project after being fascinated by the beauty of two fly agaric in his own garden.
Equipped with his camera, he enthusiastically set off on a mushroom hunt and was rewarded with pictures in intoxicating colours and shapes of the most extraordinary and sometimes very rare specimens. He has now compiled the most beautiful shots in his photo book Wonderland.
Vermeer took all the pictures for Wonderland in his home country, the Netherlands, so the book is not only an artistic work of microphotography, but also an important document and archive of nature and the forest in its present state.
In short but informative texts, the author describes the wealth of forms of his plant photographic models, their usefulness in medicine, but also the dangers posed by fungi. He explains the symbiosis between fungi and trees and devotes special attention to slime moulds. In entertaining words, Vermeer explains to his readers the challenges he faced as a nature photographer in this ambitious project.
Wonderland is the perfect gift for anyone who likes to go mushroom picking, enjoys this little wonder of nature or is fascinated by the unique symbiosis with which mushrooms connect with their environment.
Text in English and German.
Megacities is a visually stunning tribute to the largest cities of our civilisation. In this high-quality coffee table book, the three authors Christoph Mohr, Oliver Fülling and Bastian Barenbock show everyday life in ten megacities in Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. They photographed city life in Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, New York City, London, Istanbul, Cairo, Seoul, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Bangkok.
More than 280 photos and numerous interviews not only show a deep insight into daily life there, they also deal with the central questions of urban planning. How does one live and reside in such an environment, how do residents organise their leisure time. Why do informal settlements emerge and where are the public places that people go to. How does each individual city deal with the issues of overpopulation, sustainability, environmental protection, and globalisation.
What is special about this impressive coffee-table book is the contrast in presentation. The photographers manage to depict wealth and poverty, culture and crime, tradition, festivals, customs, religion, and innovation in one go.
Text in English and German.
Joey Kelly is one of the most outstanding amateur extreme athletes of our time. He has completed 8 Ironmans in just 12 months, 31 ultra-marathons, more than 10 desert ultra-runs, 4 Race Across America races and the 8 x 24-hour mountain bike race. He competed in the Tanzania Desert Challenge, the Gobi March, the Himalayan Ultra, the Badwater Run in Death Valles and the Race to the South Pole, the Idita Race in Alaska, the Atacama Crossing and the Marathon de Sables. And against this list, his 50 marathons and over 100 half-marathons and short-distance races look like a training run.
In the process, the former pop star continues to demonstrate show talent, as his sporting achievements have made him the focus of individual TV productions time and again. In his coffee-table book No Limits, readers can also enjoy Joey as an entertainer at first hand. In exclusive additional content, to which only owners of the coffee-table book have access via the teNeues app, fans can listen to him personally sharing his adventures.
Text in English and German.
The essays and interviews in this book – published in conjunction with the exhibition Echo – explore the personal, universal and tactile memories of baby, child and motherhood, aging and nostalgia, handmaking and repair, and both the physical and emotional memories of clothing. The book features precious childhood drawings by designers Martin Margiela, Christian Lacroix, Mikio Sakabe, Bernhard Willhelm, Simone Rocha, Jean Paul Gaultier, amongst others. Alongside contemporary art and fashion, Echo sheds a unique light on the idea of the private, domestic, and quotidian by including ‘imperfect’ garments from the MoMu Collection: garments that reveal the presence of their previous wearers, that tell stories of a life lived, of scars, sweat, tears, and joy.
At the age of 48, when she moved to the Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was given a camera by her daughter: “It might amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.” The gift was to begin Cameron’s short but prolific career as one of photography’s first great artists.
“From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour.”
The modern interest in Cameron’s photography began with the pioneering 1926 book by her great-niece Virginia Woolf and art critic Roger Fry. Their essays and the original plates are reprinted here, together with Cameron’s own account of her life in photography, Annals of My Glass House, her only surviving poem, On a Portrait, and an introduction by Tristram Powell.
Thirty-nine plates and other illustrations have been added, including many of Cameron’s most famous images.
“Cloud-to-ground” is the scientific term for lightning that strikes directly into the ground. The title of this book, published in conjunction with the Israeli pavilion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, is derived from this. It investigates the shifts in political power structure that result from the wide-spread use of cloud technology: the storage, processing and analysis of inconceivable amounts of data in computer “clouds”. The focus is on major infrastructure projects currently underway in Israel and the Middle East region. These include Nimbus, a major cloud project pursued by the Israeli government for which Google and Amazon are building new powerful data centres, or the Blue Raman fibre-optic cable across the Negev Desert, also laid by Google, which will bypass Egypt on its way from India to Europe and at the same time revive the ancient trade routes that passed through this country.
Cloud-to-ground also documents the decommissioning and demolition of countless telephone exchanges in Israel’s cities that have become obsolete. It thus brings to attention the physical nature of these largely ignored “black box” structures and connects them to the history of the Middle East and recent developments in global communication technology. Essays by prominent Israeli scholars are complemented by numerous photographs, sketches, and archival documents, as well as a newly compiled index of 140 telephone exchanges in Israel.
“It’s surely the ultimate coffee-table book…. “ — Daily Mail
“This exciting collection lends itself to significant discussion and interest, given coffee is such a large part of our daily culture around the globe.” — Travel by Entree
“… another brilliant document of an exciting epoch in coffee culture.” — We Heart
“Do you love coffee, traveling and design? Then this is a must-have for you! The addresses of 39 cafes, café clubs and coffee roasteries in 26 cities in different parts of the world can be found in a unique book and album in one “Café Cool: feel-good inspiring designs”. The author, Robert Schneider, presents an amazing collection of modern, designer places, designed to turn the coffee experience into an art.” — AD Poland
“This book is a homage to his belief that, particularly given the recent global pandemic, it is vital that we continue to support and appreciate quality coffee in cafes and coffee shops that exhibit great feel-good inspiring designs.” — Coffee T&I
Café Cool: feel-good inspiring designs is the much-anticipated third book in the series by Robert Schneider, and features 39 cafés and coffee shops and roasteries in 26 cities around the world, richly illustrated with full-colour images. The curated selection shares a focus on modern contemporary designs, showcasing independent, local coffee hubs that sit at the heart of communities and are designed to foster a fantastic coffee experience. Insightful commentary by the owners and designers capture the feel and personality of each project. Schneider has once again served up an engaging and inspiring collection of modern cafés and coffee shops for lovers of coffee and good design. This book is a homage to his belief that, particularly given the recent global pandemic, it is vital that we continue to support and appreciate quality coffee in cafes and coffee shops that exhibit great feel-good inspiring designs.
Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends is the first book to document the extraordinary activity at the LYC Museum & Art Gallery in Banks, Cumbria between 1972 and 1983. The LYC was the singleminded effort of the artist Li Yuan-chia, who moved to the rural North of England by way of London, Bologna, Taipei and Guangxi, China. At the LYC, Li organised exhibitions, published books, exhibited archealogical artefacts, arranged workshops and welcomed an array of visitors from local and international artists and art workers to nearby residents and travellers, many of whom became friends. In this book, which accompanies an exhibition of the same name at Kettle’s Yard, the curators Hammad Nasar, Amy Tobin and Sarah Victoria Turner, establish Li’s work at the LYC as a form of worldmaking, connecting his cosmic conceptual art practice, to his interest in participation and friendship as well as his engagement with nature and the landscape. Nasar, Tobin and Turner’s account is accompanied by nine short texts – by Elizabeth Fisher, Ysanne Holt, Annie Jael Kwan, Lesley Ma, Gustavo Grandal Montero, Luke Roberts, Nick Sawyer & Harriet Aspin, Nicola Simpson and Diana Yeh – that trace the diverse threads and ramifications of Li’s practice historically and in the present. Richly illustrated, Making New Worlds offers a provocative new way of thinking the history of British art in the 20th century.
From 1963 onwards, Mel Ramos (1935-2018), one of the first Pop Art artists, developed his focus on provocative and seductive imagery. Echoing the aesthetic of magazines and advertisements, he positioned female bodies atop consumer goods in various erotic – at times almost vulgar – poses. By referencing and showcasing them in this way, Ramos exposed the marketing strategies employed in the advertising industry. This new catalogue presents around 70 works on paper dating from every phase and series of his oeuvre and conveys the artist’s graphic conquest of the picture surface, as well as his meticulous composition. The preliminary sketches are shown alongside the final large-scale oil paintings with their typical Pop Art colour palette.
Text in English and German.
Co-Designing Publics brings together a mix of academics, activists, and practitioners to discuss and debate discourses from scholarly research, grassroots activism, and design ideas for future action. The “Co-Designing Publics” global research network, funded by a grant awarded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, has a sustained focus on the public realm and its production through informal strategies in cities of the global south. As cities are increasingly confronted by multiple crises [e.g. Covid-19 pandemic, climate crisis] and conditions of precarity [e.g. urban inequality, inadequate public infrastructure], such circumstances call for more interactive, collaborative, and creative approaches for [re]designing their public realm. Based on these premises, the book integrates discussions of three critical and interrelated phenomena: creative ways of mobilising communities around common concerns and desires [i.e. co-designing publics], deployment of grassroots tactics and social innovations [i.e. informal strategies], and production of spatial networks of public spaces intertwined with their ongoing governance [i.e. public realm]. Contextually grounding these discussions in cities of the global south enables us to learn how innovative co-design practices operate around issues such as homelessness and affordable housing, sustainable and equitable energy systems, waste management, cooperative models of property ownership, the promotion and protection of human rights, and the production of peace in contexts of violence. The book thereby draws from and presents public conversations between academic research and case studies of activism [from Bogota, Bengaluru, Cape Town, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, and Sao Paulo].
LPA Design Studios rose to national prominence by demonstrating that designers can make a real impact on carbon reduction on a large scale. The firm’s integrated design approach breaks down the traditional model, eliminating barriers between disciplines to develop innovative designs that reduce energy and water and create a better human experience. The firm’s diverse body of work has earned the industry’s top awards and set new benchmarks for building performance, proving that there is a better process for designing buildings.
No Excuses presents a beautifully curated collection of LPA projects that illustrate what can be achieved through a collaborative design process with architects, engineers, interior designers and landscape architects working together from a development’s earliest stages. The projects cross a wide range of sizes and types, including transformational education, commercial, civic, cultural and healthcare facilities. Each was created through a repeatable process focused on cost-effective research-driven design strategies. As a collection, LPA’s work is an inspirational model for an integrated, inclusive approach that connects design excellence and building performance.
“…delivers an absorbing portrait of actor’s final preparation during their last 30 minutes before going on stage.” – The Lady
British photographer Simon Annand has been shooting candid photographs backstage at West End theatres in London for 35 years. In these meditative portraits, often shot in the intimate space of the dressing room, he captures the focus and tension of world-class actors right before they go on the stage. Actors such as Cate Blanchett, Orlando Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal and Judi Dench are seen in these moments of vulnerability, which every actor experiences no matter how long they have been working. Backstage, with an introduction by Cate Blanchett, contains a hand-picked selection of Simon Annand’s remarkable and unique portraits.
For over 20 years, Gisela Krohn (*1966) has made landscapes the focus of her paintings. In Krohn’s large-scale works, humans appear only in the form of the mark they have left on nature. She depicts asphalt roads and man-made pathways cutting through forests, attesting to human intervention into nature. For Gisela Krohn, this exploration of the landscape also always involves looking into herself and her relationship with the environment. With her subtle play of colour and fascinating compositions, the artist succeeds in capturing the beauty of nature while simultaneously highlighting the threat it is under.
Text in English and German.
This beautiful publication takes you into the heart of the Maison, featuring over 150 looks, ranging from the first collection by Valentino Garavani to the unforgettable show by Pierpaolo Piccioli staged on the Spanish Steps in 2022.
Published to accompany the landmark exhibition in Doha launched in the same year, the book opens with a reimagining of the Maison’s courtyard at the Palazzo Mignanelli, showcasing 34 haute couture creations in Valentino’s signature red. This is followed by a visual journey through nine galleries, with highlights including Capriccio Romana, a homage to cinema and the city’s urban landscape; a focus on gowns designed for Valentino’s divas – Zendaya, Lady Gaga, Anne Hathaway and many more; an immersive runway experience from the Valentino Pink PP collection; and finally a dramatic recreation of the Beginnings show featuring over 60 ensembles by Valentino Garavani and Pierpaolo Piccioli. The exhibition views are complemented by sketches and catwalk shots printed on different paper stocks and transparent sheets, creating a multilayered tactile experience, inspired by Piccioli’s cahiers de défilé (collection notebooks), which were displayed for the first time in the exhibition.
With text by curators Alexander Fury and Massimiliano Gioni, and contributions by renowned fashion writers and editors, this book is a must for followers of the much loved couture house.