Garden City Mega City: Rethinking Cities for the Age of Global Warming
Pesaro Publishing, 2016
A book by the Singapore-based WOHA bureau, known for its multi-storey buildings with vertical landscaping and natural ventilation, co-authored with architectural photographer and publicist Patrick Bingham Hall, is devoted to the problems of megacities and ways to solve them. Mega-cities - primarily the Asian cities where WOHA operates - can be saved from collapse (caused by overcrowding, poverty, pollution) with a series of solutions that architects combine with the seemingly outdated term "garden city". Since most of the world's megalopolises are located in the “global South”, most of them are suitable for this program of action, developed on the material of South-East Asia, which includes not only an efficient use of resources, but also practical measures to achieve “social sustainability”.
MAD Works: MAD Architects
Phaidon Press, 2016
The first full-fledged monograph about a leading Chinese bureau headed by Ma Yangsun, actively working not only at home, but also in Europe and America. The studio's avant-garde ideas are shown on the example of its buildings (suffice it to recall the amazing theater in Harbin), as well as experiments in the field of visual art, research, and exhibition projects.
Francesco dal co
Center Pompidou: Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and the Making of a Modern Monument
Yale University Press, 2016
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Pompidou Center in Paris, this "intellectual biography" of one of the most famous buildings of the 20th century was published. The book by the Italian architectural historian, curator of the Venice Biennale Francesco Dal Co is dedicated to the history of this building by Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and the engineers of the Ove Arup bureau. Conceived by politicians as a response to the student uprisings of 1968, this radical architecture in the historic center of Paris quickly gained wide and sustained popularity, becoming the quintessence of a modern building and a model for a state-of-the-art museum.
Julius Shulman: Modernism Rediscovered
Taschen, 2016
Three volumes dedicated to architectural photographer Julius Schulman are an updated (and more affordable) reissue of the famous Taschen edition. Shulman (1910–2009) captures the extraordinary modernist architecture of the mid-20th century southwestern United States, his images of elegant, innovative buildings and their inhabitants not only entered the history of culture, but also became one of the foundations of the “California Dream” phenomenon. The 400 photographs included in the book were selected by the publisher Benedict Tashen himself, who closely communicated with Schulman at the end of his life. In addition to California, the book includes photographs of buildings in other states of the United States, Mexico, Israel and Hong Kong. Among the accompanying texts are Shulman's biography and memoirs, information about buildings and their authors, and much more.
Wendy lesser
You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017
Luis Kahn's new biography combines attention to his unusual life and complex character, described with great insight, with evenly distributed essays on his key works (most of which, however, were implemented by him in his later years), evenly distributed throughout the book. In the process of working on the book, Lesser talked in detail with Kahn's children, his colleagues and students, and also visited all of his outstanding buildings, including those located far from the paths popular with architectural tourists.
Pierluigi serraino
The Creative Architect. Inside the Great Midcentury Personality Study
Monacelli Press, 2016
A book about a forgotten psychological research: at the University of California (Berkeley) in the late 1950s, they studied the nature of human creativity, while among the "experimental" were 40 major architects, including Ero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Louis Kahn, J. M. Pei, Richard Neutrue. They were forced to fill out questionnaires, make mosaics from colored tiles, and perform other tasks. The root cause was the Cold War, the research was initiated by intelligence officers: it was necessary to understand how to identify the mostted creative people in order to overtake the USSR in all areas. It is unlikely that the study was of practical use, but thanks to it, detailed and unexpected data on the greatest masters of American architecture have come down to us. Read an interview with Pierluigi Serraino about his book here.
Akos Moravanszky, Torsten A. Lange, Judith Hopfengartner, Karl Kegler
East West Central: Re-building Europe, 1950-1990
Birkhauser, 2016
In this three-volume study, an international team of authors shows post-war European architecture in a new light: for the first time, East and West are given in the context of each other - mutual perception, knowledge exchange, cooperation. Each of the volumes (which can be purchased separately) is devoted to a key topic, and the periods described overlap.
Re-humanizing Architecture: New Forms of Community, 1950-1970
During the period of post-war reconstruction, both in the West and in the socialist camp against the background of the growing industrialization of construction, debates about the "humanization" of the environment were actively conducted. On the basis of existentialism, new monumentality and socialist realism, very similar ideas and strategies were developed to create structures adequate to new forms of community and identity.
Re-Scaling the Environment: New Landscapes of Design, 1960-1980
The construction boom (1960-1980) swept both political camps: cybernetics, scientific planning, sociology, new opportunities provided by modern technology and industry, paved the way for large-scale processes in architecture and urban planning associated with technocratic and utopian ideas, and architects and planners saw ourselves as creators of all-encompassing infrastructure and megastructures.
Re-Framing Identites: Architecture's Turn to History, 1970-1990
Since the early 1970s, architecture has undergone a revision within the framework of postmodernism: a critical approach to modernist functionalism and the influence of semiotics, phenomenology, etc. on architectural theory led to an increased interest in history, expression, perception, context. In addition, the architectural heritage and the protection of monuments have become important. Against this background, the usual ideological differences between the socialist camp and the capitalist countries were blurred: here and there a search for a common cultural foundation was going on.
Mary Pepchinski, Mariann Simon
Ideological Equals: Women Architects in Socialist Europe 1945-1989
Routledge, 2016
Unlike many books about women in a particular profession, this study is not about the difference between their situation and that of male colleagues, but about the equality and equality that female architects had in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe in 1945-1989. This was due to the great demand for architects and engineers, but the reality was still not rosy. The book examines the political, economic and social mechanisms that have helped or hindered the career of a woman architect, as well as the contradictions between ideology and practice in socialist gender politics. The heroines of the book are shown in different contexts: the types of buildings they designed, books and theoretical works that they created, their contacts with international organizations, their image within the socialist camp and beyond.
Adam Caruso, Helen Thomas
Rudolf Schwarz and the Monumental Order of Things
gta Verlag, 2016
One of the greatest masters of cult architecture of the 20th century, Rudolf Schwarz (1897-1961), also known as an architectural theorist and urban planner, is a figure who allows one to explore the continuous development of architecture and intellectual practice in Europe in the middle of the century, one of the brightest representatives of the "other" modernism. After the war, he worked hard to rebuild Cologne; nine of his sacred and secular buildings, selected for the book, are located in the Rhineland. Their detailed publication is accompanied by the author's descriptions and the text of Schwartz's lecture "The Architecture of Our Time" (1958).
Michael J. Lewis
City of Refuge: Separatists and Utopian Town Planning
Princeton University Press, 2016
The book is devoted to the influence of utopian ideas on urban planning in the 19th century: they gave rise to the characteristic rectangular layout of settlements with collective ownership of property and dormitory houses - it turned out to be a “city of refuge” for those who wanted to live separately from the rest of society. Some of these settlements were built by supporters of persecuted religions (Huguenots, shakers, rappits), some - as a refuge from the Industrial Revolution - by utopian socialists and their followers. Usually these examples were considered separately, but Michael Lewis, based on blueprints and often never published documents, demonstrates the network of connections between these "utopias", including the well-known plans for New Haven and Philadelphia. These examples brought together a variety of sources, from biblical cities and mills to Thomas More's Utopia and the latest educational, scientific, and technical ideas of the day; they are part of an ongoing tradition from the Reformation to the 20th century.
Nick lowndes
An Architect's Dot-To-Dot
Batsford Ltd, 2016
A book of architectural puzzle "connect the dots": the result should be 45 key buildings of the 20th century, from the Manhattan skyscraper Chrysler Building to the buildings of Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid. Each task contains more than 300 points, that is, the book will last for a long time.
Steve bowkett
Archidoodle City: An Architect's Activity Book
Laurence King Publishing, 2017
The book is a continuation of the Archidoodle edition of the same author and is designed for both professional architects and children. This time we are invited to complete 75 tasks - from the project of an imaginary city, an underground settlement or a new park in New York to a sculpture for the always empty "fourth plinth" in Trafalgar Square in London. The sources of inspiration are the works of Louis Kahn and Adolphe Loos, and in addition to exercises in fantasy, readers will have to think about the transport system, lighting and landscaping, remember (or learn) the history of urban planning.
