British Conceptual artist John Stezaker (b. 1949) is known for his distinctive, often deceptively simple, collages. He has been making art since the 1970s, but achieved prominence relatively recently.
In 2011, he had a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and, in 2012, he won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, even though he does not take photographs.
Stezaker says collage is about ‘stuff that has lost its immediate relationship with the world’ and involves ‘a yearning for a lost world’. A collector, he works from an archive of out-of-date images — mostly old film stills, vintage actor head shots, and antique postcards. These images come in standard sizes and are highly conventionalised — all variations on themes.
Art critic David Campany says, Stezaker ‘is drawn to that very slim space between convention and idiosyncrasy.’
In addition to collages, Lost World includes poignant found-object-sculptures: a selection of antique mannequin hands, offering a repertoire of gestures. There’s also a film, Crowd, presenting hundreds of film stills of crowd scenes, each for one frame only, in a bewildering blur.
This book is a photographic journey on the origin and life of “Africa Hall” in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – a building declared in 2015 “Monument to African History” and recently renovated – which was donated in 1961 by Emperor Haile Selassie to the United Nations. Africa Hall was designed by Arturo Mezzèdimi, a young self-taught architect, to serve as the UN’s continental headquarters and was the birthplace, in 1963, of the Organization of African Unity, now African Union.
The building came to life with an inspiring story of reconciliation at a crucial moment in African history, when the continent was emerging out of the colonial period and making headway into a new era of independence and envisaged unity. Through its architectural composition and the embedded artworks, it embodied a Pan-Africanist vision and its rising ideals.
Edited by the grandson of the architect and representing Italy’s contribution to the renovation project, the book sits at the crossroads of photography, architecture, history, and art and comprises an amplitude of independent essays, contributions and recollections from authors of diverse profiles. Through impacting images and short articles, it addresses events of historical relevance on a global scale, for the entire continent of Africa, at a national level for Ethiopia, and locally for the city of Addis Ababa, concluding with an introduction to the life and work of its architect.
Mark Fisher was the creator and designer of a new art form: the travelling rock show. His exuberant stage sets framed artists from The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, U2, Madonna, Lady Gaga and Jean-Michel Jarre to Elton John and Tina Turner. There were thousands of concerts and hundreds of bravura settings, from the 2000 London Millennium show to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, as well as permanent structures, such as the 2,000-seater theatre and stage machinery for KÀ by Cirque du Soleil, in Las Vegas, and the Dai Show Theatre, in China. Each of these projects first found expression in Fisher’s sketchbooks and on his drawing board. This book spans his entire career, with details of every major project and more than 100 drawings – some of which are virtually performances in their own right.
“In 1977, I went on the road with the Floyd, and that was really the moment I ran away and joined the circus.” – Mark Fisher
With Road Work, Andrew Holmes continues his pilgrimage through the seductive litter of modern life. Cities are conventionally viewed as static objects, but a third of Los Angeles is on the move; it is a kaleidoscope trapped in a grid, where what you see is what you drive past. Road Work presents 500 of Andrew Holmes’ Los Angeles Polaroids, capturing the machines that deliver people and goods to different parts of the city each day. These vehicles are seen at the airport, at a truck stop, always in a parking bay, set classically against azure skies, frozen like statues in a Renaissance garden. Everything has equal status. Nothing transgresses the grid. The work is even, chrome and rust are its soul. Along with commentaries by David Greene and Holmes himself, Road Work includes lyrics by Chuck Berry and others, and extracts from a variety of road novelists and writers.
In 1967, a 17-year-old aspiring photographer named Ed Caraeff found himself front row at the Monterey Pop Festival, California. Caraeff had never seen Hendrix before, nor was he familiar with his music. But Caraeff had his ever-present camera and as Hendrix lit his guitar, he snapped a photo. That picture – Hendrix burning his guitar at Monterey – has become one of the most iconic images of rock and roll. A photo that defined Hendrix as an artist, appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine not once, but twice, and launched Caraeff’s photographic career. Timed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival, Burning Desire reveals never-before published images from the magnificent, Hendrix-dedicated archive that Caraeff has compiled. From onstage to backstage, Jimi Hendrix was as electric in front of the camera as he was when he strummed his guitar. In Burning Desire, Caraeff showcases more than 100 images, including rare shots and contract sheets, and discusses his experiences with this incredible musician. Contents: Monterey International Pop Music Festival: June 18, 1967 Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967 Anaheim Convention Center: February 9, 1968 Ackerman Union Ballroom: February 13, 1968 Hollywood Bowl: September 14, 1968 Whiskey-A-Go-Go: October 1968 Newport ’69: June 20-22, 1969
Incomparable: Women of Style is a book for fashion aficionados, photography and popular culture fans, and those fascinated with celebrity. This gorgeous volume spans more than 35 years and includes both iconic and rarely seen pictures of celebrated women known for their unparalleled taste and style: Nan Kempner, Jerry Hall, Marisa Berenson, Jackie O., Brooke Astor, Grace Jones, Anna Wintour, Paloma Picasso, Lauren Hutton, Diane von Furstenberg, Candace Bushnell, and Daphne Guinness among many others. Rose Hartman’s lens has given order to the chaos of openings, runways shows, and couture’s triumphs and tragedies, by letting the viewer see the substance behind the form. With her photographs appearing worldwide in books and magazines, she has distinguished herself as a photographer whose eye is so keen, even her candid work has the finish and insight of portraiture. What one fails to realise is that many of the photographs associated with a style, an event, and an era, have belonged to Hartman, whether it is Bianca Jagger on a white horse as she enters Studio 54, or Isabella Rossellini at a private dinner in the Hamptons.
Speed, colour, noise, excitement. Art Of The Race, V14 encapsulates the very essence of Formula 1 motor racing through the lens of Darren Heath, one of the sport’s most celebrated photographers. Art Of The Race captures the key moments and rarely seen footage of each race as the season unfolds, whether it’s the epic battle between McLaren teammates Hamilton and Rosberg, or the humbling drivers’ gathering in support of their colleague Jules Bianchi. Grand Prix races featured: Australia, Albert Park Circuit, Melbourne; Malaysia, Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur; Bahrain, Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir; China, Shanghai International Cicuit; Spain, Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona; Monaco, Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo; Canada, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal; Austria, Red Bull Ring; Great Britain, Silverstone; Germany, Hockenheim Circuit; Hungary, Hungaroring, Budapest; Belgium, Circuit de Spa – Francorchamps; Italy, Autodroma Nazionale di Monza; Singapore, Marina Bay Street Circuit; Japan, Suzuka Circuit; Russia, Sochi International Street Circuit; USA, Circuit of the Americas, Austen; Brazil, Aitodromo Jose Pace, Sao Paulo; Abu Dhabi, Yas Marina Circuit.
The Formula One book. Art of the Race – V18 is book 5 in a series that encapsulates the very essence of Formula 1 motor racing through the lens of Darren Heath, one of the sport’s most celebrated photographers. Art of The Race captures the key moments and rarely seen images of each race as the 2018 season unfolds, culminating in Lewis Hamilton winning his 5th World title. “Formula 1 is the aesthete’s ultimate sport: an intoxicating cocktail of speed, spectacle, competition and power, at the heart of which are the thoroughbred racing machines exquisite manifestations of form following function, driven at dizzying speeds by the quickest-of-the-quick, the best racing drivers on the planet. From a young age I dreamed of one day photographing the sport I adored. My one desire: to demonstrate through this creative art just how beautiful Formula 1 can be. This yearning has never dimmed. I hope you enjoy the pictures that follow as much as I enjoyed taking them.” Darren Heath – Multiple award-winning photographer with an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society in 2005.
Expressing one of many Luba sub-styles, the tall, standing male figures created by master carvers of the Hemba culture in southeastern Congo since at least the mid-1800s arguably rank among the noblest sculptural depictions of the human figure in sub-Saharan Africa. With their serene gaze and meditative expression, they exude a tranquility and dignity that befits these idealised likenesses memorialising esteemed leaders of the past. Infused with a life-force or vital energy, these spirit-invested objects were able to communicate between the living and the dead. Thanks to their inner power they had the capacity to impact the material sphere by allowing the ancestors to positively influence the well-being of their surviving relatives. In this publication, through the perceptive lens of art photographer Luigi Spina, we discover nine of the most accomplished Hemba creations whose classical style has triggered comparisons with some kouroi sculptures of ancient Greece. Spina’s photographic interpretations help us understand why these proportionally balanced and symmetrically conceived ancestral figures have earned the admiration of African art lovers around the world. These personal readings of the beloved Hemba commemorative portraits also confirm why these sensitive renderings of the human anatomy deserve inclusion in the universal history of artistic creativity and a place in André Malraux’s ‘Museum Without Walls’. Text in English and French.
This monograph, edited by noted Italian art critic Bruno Corà and published on the occasion of Art Basel 2018, presents the genesis, critical analysis, and exhibition history of the Combustioni Plastiche [Plastic Combustions] cycle by Alberto Burri. These works span a quarter of a century, from 1953 to 1979, and were created using industrial sheets of different kinds of plastic, with different melting points. They are visceral and technically innovative hybrids, part painting and part sculpture, ranging in size from a few centimetres to larger works installed in places of worship and stage designs for theatre performances. They illuminate Burri’s longstanding exploration of the beauty that can be found in mass produced materials, and function as a lens through which we can reassess Burri’s entire creative career. Historical photographs by Claudio Amendola and Ugo Mulas, newspaper articles, and in-depth essays offer a complete analysis of this extraordinary cycle of works. The catalogue will be presented during Art Basel 2018.
Luca Blast Forlani leads the reader through a range of urban spaces, places that, notwithstanding passing of time, have still retained their own identity. Although on the surface apparently empty and desolate, they each have a history and a story to tell; the details of identity caught in the lens, the clues of a life discarded but not entirely forgotten. These images are poignant, emotive and thought-provoking; the use of light and shadows, close-up details and wide-angle shots, footprints of the past, captured in the silence and the dust, like a long-forgotten conversation, a whisper of lives remembered. Text in English and Italian.
John Cage: The Zen Ox-Herding Pictures brings together fifty never-before-seen watercolour images from renowned artist and composer John Cage, revealing the powerful influence of Zen in his life and work. These pieces were originally created on paper towels at the 1988 Mountain Lake Workshop as Cage experimented with the flow and tone of colours from his brush as he prepared for larger works. Authors Stephen Addiss and Ray Kass unite them here in patterns both planned and dictated by chance, the same methods by which Cage himself composed his later works. Ray Kass and Stephen Addiss provide introductory essays, discussing their experience with the works and the artist himself. They also explore fragments of Cage’s poetry and his many statements about Zen practice, providing a fascinating lens through which the images seem to become mysterious echoes of the centuries-old “Ten Ox-Herding Paintings”-images about searching for, finding, and returning from the path to enlightenment.
Photographer Jasper Léonard previously resized Antwerp and New York and now points his special tilt-shift lenses towards Amsterdam. Amsterdam Resized shows you the city like you’ve never seen it before: the famous canals of Amsterdam have been reduced to mere trickles with mini-sized bridges; the joggers in the Vondelpark now resemble Playmobil puppets, and the Stedelijk Museum now looks more like a bath tub. A new book in the Resized series, which has been a huge success in the US with articles in, among others, USA Today and the New York Post. International press has heaped praise on the Resized series: “The book is an intimate and magical token of admiration.” – The Sydney Morning Herald Also available: Antwerp Resized ISBN: 9789401432702 Belgium Resized ISBN: 9789401434614 New York Resized ISBN: 9789401443395
Text in English and Dutch.
Urban highways are unique windows from which to grasp a city’s identity. They can however be responsible for the fragmentation of cities and the degradation of their adjacent living environments. As many urban highways are aging, concerns about their redevelopment, upgrading or dismantling are emerging in many cities of the World. By examining the meaning as well as the opportunities offered by urban gateway corridors, the book attempts to offer a unique perspective on issues related this emerging landscape and transportation issue. More specifically, the book aims to describe the innovative approach to landscape infrastructure planning that was used for the YUL-MTL: Moving Landscapes initiative held in Montreal. Over two years, this initiative combined a design competition and a workshop with collaborative efforts between 20 public agencies to rethink a 17 km stretch of Montreal’s Autoroute 20 gateway corridor. Linking the downtown area to Montreal-Trudeau international airport, the corridor is mainly composed of transport infrastructures and industrial wastelands in dire need of revitalisation along with residential areas. The book presents the collaborative process behind the development of a strategic vision for the area, exposes the winning entries of the competition and describes the subsequent steps that resulted in an ‘atlas of possibilities’ for the future of the area. It provides a broad overview of the main challenges facing any project leader who wishes to gather a wide range of stakeholders towards a common goal: building a shared consensus over the prospective development of large-scale infrastructure projects. It also provides the reader with a diversity of actions and solutions to improve the landscape of transportation corridors and their integration within their surrounding environment. Hence, as the book details the local context of Montreal’s infrastructural landscapes, it also offers insights and ideas to improve urban highway integration for cities worldwide. Throughout the book, the permanent bond between cities and infrastructures is not only explored through the lens of landscape preservation but also landscape enhancement and development. This three-pronged approach offers a strategy based on the exploration of gateway corridor landscapes for what they are but also for what they could and should be. As the collaborative process allowed for clarifying the local stakeholders standpoint, the design exercises (ideas competition and workshop) were used as tools to improve the outcomes on the latters. The contribution of the designers particularly helped materializing the strategic framework that resulted from the collaborative process through the addition of design guidelines. Overall, the book shows how the consideration of the landscape when it comes to development projects offers not only a rich contextual knowledge from a transversal and multidisciplinary perspective but also becomes a vector for the coherent planning of infrastructures and their integration within adjacent territories and within the city.
Joy Ride is a simple book on the surface. A collection of renowned architect-come-artist David C. Martin’s sketches, watercolours, photography, and observations, as recorded over an extensive cross-Mexico sojourn, it has all the aesthetic gaiety and lightheartedness of a typical travelogue. However, there is something deeper at work. Martin’s multi-media evocation of Mexican scenery and buildings speaks to his extensive experience in art and architecture, and this book will be of mutual interest to students of both – as well as those who want to explore Mexico through the eyes of a truly unique traveller. Innovative, fresh, and evocative, this book will take you on the ‘Joy Ride’ that its title promises.
From the stone blade and the fire stick to the latest algorithms of genetic code, we shape our world through the act of design. With its roots in the Renaissance notion disegno, design is the ability not only to make something, but also to conceive of its invention and reflect on its meaning. Whether we valorise it as the democratisation of design or critique it as the perversion of the commodity fetish, designed things are now ubiquitous. Not only things but entire systems must now be designed and objects reconceived and redesigned as mere moments in unfathomably complex ecological flows. The planet itself, and even space beyond, is now presented as a design problem. What does landscape architecture bring to the broader culture of design? What lessons can be learned from other disciplines at the cutting edge of design? What role does design play in a time of transformative technological change? In LA+ Design we move beyond the designed outcome to explore the myths, methods, meanings, and futures of design. Engineer and physicist Adrian Bejan outlines his constructal theory, which predicts natural design and its evolution in engineering, scientific, and social systems. Design researchers Craig Bremner + Paul Rodgers take us through an A Z of design ecology. Architects Lizzie Yarina + Claudia Bode open our eyes to new ways of seeing things through subject-object relations. Jenni Zell explores life as a woman landscape architect through a Kafkaesque lens. Daniel Pittman interviews MoMA’s curator of architecture and design, Paola Antonelli. Architect David Salomon explores methods of using data as both fact and fiction. Christopher Marcinkoski interviews Anthony Dunne + Fiona Raby (Dunne + Raby) to discuss how their practice continuously redefines the role of design in society. Thomas Oles challenges stereotypes of landscape architecture s professional identity. Richard Weller discusses the terrarium as the ultimate design experiment. Dane Carlson goes deep into the culture of Nepal s hinterlands to explore new modes and geographies for landscape architecture beyond the first world. Through LA’s signage, anthropologist Keith Murphy shows how different groups of people interact with and give meaning to the landscapes they inhabit. Interviewed by Colin Curley, architect Andrés Jaque (Office for Political Innovation) discusses the role of technology and agency of architecture in society today. Game designer Colleen Macklin shows how public space can be redefined and subverted through the agency of play. Javier Arpa interviews urban design guru Winy Maas (MVRDV, The Why Factory) to discuss his views on the future of design and design education. Experimental psychologist Thomas Jacobsen describes current neurological research into the subjectivity of beauty. Landscape architect James Corner talks about the evolution of the profession of landscape architecture in a wide-ranging interview.
MASTERcrit was inaugurated in 2015 as a hybrid series of events that encompassed lectures, critiques and a charrette. Modelled on the traditional notion of a ‘Master Class’ the workshop enlisted the best graduating students from the school as nominated by the faculty to work in an intensive pedagogic setting with a world-class practitioner. The so-called invited ‘MASTERcritics’ were MOS in 2015, Andrew Zago in 2016, and Jürgen Mayer H. in 2017. In all cases, these architects were tasked with presenting a project brief to the team, which reflected a current pre-occupation in their own discursive production. Students in turn were asked to produce artefacts that manifested their responses. In addition to documentation of the workshops and resultant work, the book includes the briefs and transcripts of conversations.
Not Interesting proposes another set of terms and structures to talk about architecture, without requiring that it be interesting. This book explores a set of alternatives to the interesting and imagines how architecture might be positioned more broadly in the world using these other terms. The alternatives presented here are labelled as boring, confusing, and comforting. Along with interesting, these three terms make up the four chapters of the book. Each chapter introduces its topic through an analysis of a different image, which serves to unpack the specific character of each term and its relationship to architecture. In addition to text, the book contains over 50 case studies using 100 drawings and images. These are presented in parallel to the text and show what architecture may look like through the lens of these other terms.
Thomas R. Schiff’s vivid panoramic photographs capture the iconic buildings and landscapes of San Francisco and the Bay Area in new and surprising ways. From the Golden Gate Bridge to Coit Tower, they offer a refreshing perspective on familiar places and reveal unexpected treasures in everyday ones. With essays on photography, perception, and architecture by Susan Ehrens, Wendy Lesser, and Tim Culvahouse, and an author interview by Dave Christensen, The Poetics of Distortion: Panoramic Photographs of the San Francisco Bay Area is a mind-bending, eye-opening, very San Franciscan journey.
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.
Colin Rowe is acknowledged to be the most influential figure in architectural theory in the last half of the 20th century. Although his contribution to the discipline and practice of urban design is equally important, there is no single text which specifically focuses on his work in this sphere. This book intends to address this omission by critically examining Rowe’s urban design theory and its evolution, which began at the Cornell University Urban Design program in 1963 and continued until his death in 1999. The text features a score of previously unpublished essays by prominent scholars, educators and practitioners, many of whom were his students or close collaborators. The Urban Design Legacy of Colin Rowe provides a window to explore past, present and future themes central to the discipline of urban design as seen through the critical lens of Colin Rowe and those who continue to define their creative work in relationship to that extraordinary intellect.
Aldo Rossi (1931-97) is a key figure in 20th-century architecture. Discarding utopian pretences, his work claimed the autonomy of architecture with formal restraint, and remains highly influential both in theory and practice until the present day. In this new book, Diogo Seixas Lopes looks at Rossi’s work through the lens of a term often used to describe the great architect’s work: melancholy. While the influence of melancholy on literature and visual arts has been debated extensively, its presence in architecture has been largely overlooked. By exploring Rossi’s entire career, Lopes traces out the oscillation between enthusiasm and disenchantment that marks Rossi’s oeuvre. Through a close exploration of one of his landmark works, the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena, Lopes shows how this brilliant, innovative architect reinterpreted a typology of the past to help us come to terms with representations of death and the melancholy that inevitably accompanies it. Beautifully illustrated and drawing on rich archival sources, Melancholy and Architecture both illuminates the work of the 20th century’s most interesting architects and offers a new perspective on the long cultural history of melancholy.
Flowers are a perennially popular motif throughout art history. And for good reason: lush with texture and colour, a living bouquet of blooms can be made to communicate much through the masterly brushstrokes of Vincent Van Gogh or Georgia O’Keeffe, in the hands of a skilled ikebana artist, or through the lens of contemporary photography. For more than two decades, Swiss photographer Anna Halm Schudel has focused her eye on flowers, zooming in on calyxes, pistils, and leaf veins to create exuberant feasts of colours. While celebrating the wide variety of shapes and sizes that nature and human cultivation have brought us, Schudel is no less fascinated by the process of decay. As the flowers fade, wilt, and wither, she transforms them under water into images of strange, compelling beauty, to combine their delicate beauty with a stirring memento mori. Eighty strikingly beautiful colour plates are complemented by two essays that examine Schudel’s symbolism and put her work in context with the history of the floral still life. As exquisite as the subject itself, this beautifully designed large book is sure to inspire appreciation for this rising Swiss artist.
Text in English and German.