Chapter 1: Urban Play: A Project from Start to Finish: What does a landscape architect do exactly? Here, we peel back the finished project, which has won several design awards, to show the major steps in the making of the garden. We start with the clients wishes for an outside play area for their young twin girls that will be visually pleasing when viewed from the living rooms several stories above. And the condition of the site: an odd-shaped and impossibly steep and tilted small plot covered in brambles. We present a ‘before’ picture, early drawings, problem solving, the gradual articulation of the design, how the Blasens work together, choice of fabrication materials, planting design, the construction period, and the final finished garden and how it is used. Illustrations throughout.

Chapter 2: Gardens: From the Mountains to the Shore: This photographic presentation of a dozen gardens is the bulk of the book. Some projects are covered in 2 spreads; others in 3 spreads, one in 5 spreads. The gardens range from a city courtyard to a beach garden, to an 22-acre estate with a California wildflower meadow, and an extensive green roof on a Herzog & de Meuron designed house that s set into a natural hillside. Some have been published in top design magazines; a few particularly exciting new large projects are now being published for the first time. Each project is introduced with a) descriptions of the garden and how the clients use it and b) a paragraph about the planting design and key plants.

Chapter 3: Lexicon: The Blasens Aesthetic: This chapter-an alphabetical list of terms/phrases that appear often in the Blasens conversations about their work investigates the Blasens aesthetic. We hear what they most deeply care about, often in their own words: for example, seamlessness of design, color, geography, lightness, plants that thrive where they are, rhythmic sequencing of experiences in a garden, retaining what already is. And also their influences in the art, design, and architecture worlds, and what’s catching their attention right now. This collage of fragments builds a fascinating picture of their sensibilities, and how they earned the title of the new tastemakers in House and Garden magazine. Small photographs, for many entries, give examples.

Moody Nolan has come a long way since 1982, when it was formed in a small office with just two employees. Since then, the Columbus-based architectural firm has grown from a local Midwestern business to a national practice with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Covington, Ky., Dallas, Houston, Nashville, New York City, and Washington, D.C. Moody Nolan is diverse by design, thriving on the unique experiences and viewpoints that each of its 200 employees brings to the table. This has allowed it to become not only one of America’s most respected firms, but the largest, most award-winning, African-American-owned architecture firm in the nation. Moody Nolan Design, Vol. 2 spans 2013 to 2019 and reflects the completed projects and conceptual ideas of a firm committed to excellence with a purpose. With a focus on ‘responsive architecture,’ Moody Nolan bridges the divides between architecture and engineering, art and science, what is possible and what is purposeful.

Pratt Sessions presents a series of conversations between notable practitioners and thinkers. It is a distributed symposium that is curated and yet open-ended. Based on an ongoing lecture series at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design programme, each session brings together two participants as a means of instigating discourse and dissolving and/or reinforcing the artifice of geographically-based discourse networks. Participants are carefully paired together based on the content of their work and the region in which they reside and/or practice. Participants frame their work around a disciplinary provocation in short, non-standard lecture presentations, and engage in an in-depth dialogue. Pratt Sessions is intended as a book series, each volume featuring six conversations, which originally took place over the course of two academic semesters. The six sessions are divided in two areas of focus, exploring and examining how new mediums and new contexts can be defined, redefined, and understood within the realm of architectural design.

Pratt Sessions presents a series of conversations between notable practitioners and thinkers. It is a distributed symposium that is curated and yet open-ended. Based on an ongoing lecture series at Pratt Institute’s Graduate Architecture and Urban Design program, each Session brings together two participants as a means of instigating discourse and dissolving and/or reinforcing the artifice of geographically-based discourse networks. Participants are carefully paired together based on the content of their work and the region in which they reside and/or practice. Participants frame their work around a disciplinary provocation in short, non-standard lecture presentations, and engage in an in-depth dialogue. Pratt Sessions is intended as a book series, each volume featuring six conversations, which originally took place over the course of two academic semesters. The six sessions are divided in two areas of focus, exploring and examining how new mediums and new contexts can be defined, redefined, and understood within the realm of architectural design.

Pressing Matters VI is an exciting compilation of design and research performed at PennDesign’s Department of Architecture. It features recent work by students, news, important symposia and lectures, and is printed on recycled paper with non-toxic inks. To summarise, the goal is to be at the forefront of advanced research and design by creating an advanced research institute that focuses on new design methodologies and future manufacturing through the interlinked intelligence of digital design, scripting and robotics. The focus is also on social awareness and responsibility, and being a think-tank for critical exchanges and advanced debates within and across disciplinary boundaries. The aim is to be a connective device, inviting experts for ongoing lectures and publications in order to engage a growing international audience and create an increasing network of experts.

Return on Experience will be comfortable on the shelves of designers and artists and equally comfortable for business leaders and educators. It reflects the fundamental belief that design is integral to everything we do. That all human existence has been a result of a progression of successful design outcomes. It is not in the sense that what we have created is exclusively logical and rational but true success has been the result of sort of emotional intelligence and meaning being infused into a new form that has caused us to progress as a species. Inspiration and innovation are difficult to process from a pure logic as it requires a broader view into the way we think and feel things. It is deeply personal and at the same time shared at a social level. In this sense we naturally view design as possessing enormous value and is an essential part of culture with a broad value and application.

Design is a dialogue. This book is not a treatise on do’s and don’ts of design or business. It is a reflection on the nature of how to see design. Design is and always has been part of a conversation. As such, this book captures a dialogue that author, Tim Kobe has been engaged in for over 25 years at Eight Inc. This conversation is more than a single path but reflects the dialogue and practice of business leaders, designers, colleagues, and collaborators. This book would not exist without those on the other side of the conversation and is more than a lens of a single or individual point of view. Eight Inc. has been incredibly fortunate to design with some of the most successful people and companies that exist today and much of Eight Inc.’s success has been attributed to our time with Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs.

Timeless Resorts is the first major monograph of the multidisciplinary design practice Stapati, established by Ar.Tony Joseph. This book examines the evolution of 11 captivating hospitality projects, where Stapati’s philosophy of creating Timeless Architecture by reinterpreting the vernacular for contemporary living is expounded. The projects spread across India and the Seychelles demonstrate a sensitive understanding of the context and culture, with the site forming the major generator, to develop narratives and experiences which transcend time and place.

Like all mega-cities around the globe, São Paulo faces huge challenges. Yet despite these manifold and daunting tasks, the Brazilian metropolis has since the 1960s maintained a prudent policy of investing in communal infrastructure, thus providing inclusive places and spaces for all of its 20m-population. While many cities aim for a ‘Bilbao-effect’ by funding iconic, tourist-orientated projects such as museums or theatres, São Paulo persistently supports programs and usages that serve its permanent residents. This book, published in conjunction with an exhibition at A.M. Architekturmuseum der TU München, features a selection of these buildings and programs from five decades. Ranging from a simple canopy over a public park to vast multifunctional buildings, they provide spaces for sports and culture, education, healthcare, or gastronomy. Rather than merely serving a specific purpose, their key role is to be places for people spending time together. With contributions by Renato Anelli, José Tavares Correia de Lira, Fraya Frehse, Vanessa Grossman, Andres Lepik, Ana Luiza Nobre, Daniel Talesnik, and Guilherme Wisnik; and a conversation with Paulo Mendes da Rocha and Marta Moreira by Enrique Walker. Photographs by Ciro Miguel Also available: Wherever You Find People ISBN 9783038600268

At the moment of going to press, a publication irreversibly reaches its final form. Simultaneously, it also reaches an audience. Naturally, this audience very often is oblivious to the many, and sometimes complex, steps towards the construction and montage of (visual) meaning that precedes the actual publication of a book. The contributors to Before Publication consider such construction of meaning as montage and look at materials and processes involved before publication. Their focus is on concrete artistic and visual artifacts such as scrapbooks, book mock-ups, and press layouts by artists, authors, and graphic designers. In particular, they shed light on the relationship between the spheres of privacy and publicity. The new book features a programmatic introduction by the editors Nanni Baltzer and Martino Stierli and eight concisely illustrated topical essays.

Swedish-American architect Lars Lerup’s writings suggest a mindful collector as their author, rather than a scholar or a theoretician. Lerup sharply observes and analyses his urban environment and its properties, before adding his findings to his own theory of the modern city. Lerup wrote the fourteen essays in this new book as self-contained pieces, yet together they still form a coherent entity. The fourteen essays in The Continuous City offer a survey of Lerup’s thinking on identity and monumentality are the relationship between nature and culture. His interest and reflections focus, among other things, on Roberto Burle Marx, a founder of modern landscape design; the ‘dancing floors’ of Rem Koolhaas’s Seattle Central Library; Herzog & de Meuron’s 1111 Lincoln Road project in Miami Beach; and the character of urban icons like Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Dalian International Conference Center. Lars Lerup invites his readers to join him on his journey and to be enriched, rather than instructed, en route.

Experimental Zone documents a remarkable experiment in spatial research at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory Image Knowledge Gestaltung at Berlin’s Humboldt University. Every two months, for four years, researchers reconfigured a 350-square metre workspace for forty scientists. The design-based, collaborative experiment’s focus was on the interrelation of space and knowledge production: what spatial qualities are required by interdisciplinary teams for their research work? With some 300 striking and straightforward graphics, Experimental Zone presents the findings of the experiment. It highlights the spatial conditions under which individual and collaborative research unfold, overlap, or merge, and reveals the characteristics of an architecture that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration. The experiment’s innovative interdisciplinary approach is also reflected in the book’s design, with each of the five chapters and the comprehensive visual material reflecting publishing traditions in publishing design, architecture, and the humanities.

Architectural Papers is a series of books published by the Chair of Josep Lluís Mateo, department of architecture (D-ARCH) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). Established in 2005, the series covers a wide range of topics related to teaching architecture and architectural culture in general. It aims at expanding the theoretical boundaries of the discipline. Contributors include distinguished architects and thinkers of our time, while a strong focus remains set on the content produced as part of the educational curriculum at ETH Zurich. Expression is based on a three-term program at ETH Zurich investigating the topic “architecture and art”. Essays, interviews and students’ projects document and condense the findings of this topical research in three fields of art: film, literature and visual arts (both painting and sculpture). Three concrete examples in Switzerland have been studied: a Giacometti museum in Stampa, a Cinémathèque in Locarno, and an Elias Canetti library in Zürich. The book shows the differing influence film, literature, and visual arts can have on architectural thought and design. It also reveals the knowledge to be gained from combining arts and architecture. The essays and the interviews with Gottfried Böhm (German architect and sculptor), José Luis Guerin (Spanish film director), and Pier Vittorio Aureli (Italian architect and theoretician) explore the importance of artistic impulse on architecture. Also available in the Architectural Papers series: The Middle East ISBN: 9783906027166