You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In light of the current political crisis around climate change, what can architecture possibly contribute towards a new planetary imaginary of our contemporary environment beyond environmentalism and technological determinism? Instead of conceptualizing the idea of the environment as purely natural and in need of protection, as solely a problem that needs to be managed, or merely as the Earth, which limits the scope with a scalar bias, can we speculate on architecture as a measure both to assess and to act upon the world? 'Architecture as Measure' is an elaboration on this question, and on the disciplinary and cultural potentials of such a provocation. It positions climate change as a cultural and political idea that requires a renewed architectural environmental imagination.0The book takes on this task by presenting a set of unconventional collisions between architecture and climate change, which all extrapolate broader concerns of the city, environment, and geography through the lens of specific architectural questions such as form, representation and materiality.
For the first time in human history, more than half the world’s population is urban. A fundamental aspect of this transformation has been the emergence of giant cities, or megacities, that present major new challenges. This book examines how issues of megacity development, urban form, sustainability, and unsustainability are conceived, how governance processes are influenced by these ideas, and how these processes have in turn influenced outcomes on the ground, in some cases in transformative ways. Through 15 in-depth case studies by prominent researchers from around the world, this book examines the major challenges facing megacities today. The studies are organized around a shared set of...
An illuminating introduction to the influence of architecture on the world, the environment, and human lives Architecture matters. It matters to cities, the planet, and human lives. How architects design and what they build has an impact that usually lasts for generations. The more we understand architecture—the deeper we probe the decisions and designs that go into making a building—the better our world becomes. Aaron Betsky, architect, author, curator, former museum director, and currently the dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, guides readers into the rich and complex world of contemporary architecture. Combining his early experiences as an architect with his extens...
New Geographies journal aims to examine the emergence of the “geographic,” a new but for the most part latent paradigm in design today—to articulate it and to bring it to bear effectively on the social role of design. Although much of the analysis of this context in architecture, landscape, and urbanism derives from social anthropology, human geography, and economics, the journal aims to extend these arguments to the impact of global changes on the spatial dimension, whether in terms of the emergence of global spatial networks, global cities, or nomadic practices, and how these inform design practices today. Through essays and design projects, the journal aims to identify the relationship between the very small and the very large, and intends to open up discussions on the expanded role of the designer, with an emphasis on disciplinary reframings, repositionings, and attitudes.
From the economic to the political, from public health to the climate, models seem to run the world. In architecture, the model is no longer just a physical tool for conceptualizing or representing architects' visions but must also encompass digital and 3D-printed models, data and artificial intelligence models, business models, educational models, and even engage the discipline's own questionable history in establishing role models. A thematic issue, Log 50: Model Behavior interrogates models in this expanded sense: what are their values, their behaviors, and the behaviors they elicit. In a record-setting 256 pages, 39 authors, ranging from established architectural thinkers to up-and-coming practitioners, examine the role of the model in architecture today through critical essays, conversations, observations, projects, and provocations.
The 1960s and 1970s avant-garde has been likened to an ‘architectural Big Bang’, such was the intensity of energy and ambition in which it exploded into the postwar world. Marked out by architectural projects that redefined the discipline, it remains just as influential today. References to the likes of Archizoom, Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk and Superstudio abound. Highly diverse, the avant-garde cannot be defined as a single strand or tendency. It was divergent geographically – reaching from Europe to North America and Japan – and in its political, formal and cultural preoccupations. It was unified, though, as a critical and experimental force, critiquing contemporary society agains...
Landscapes of Development analyzes the impact of development policies on the physical environment of the Eastern Mediterranean since the end of World War II. Essays examine formal manifestations of development, focusing on urban and rural schemes, housing projects, and agro-landscapes and dams from Israel to Turkey, and from Greece to Syria.
Design disciplines are challenged by the condition of the zero point. “Zero-context,” “cities from scratch,” and “zero-carbon” developments all force designers to tackle fundamental questions regarding the strategic relevance and impact of a design intervention. As much as the zero point presents naïve innocence and embodies contradictory notions, it also creates a ground for doubt, self-critique, and rejuvenation for architecture and urbanism. As cities are built before they can even be imagined, what do these projects suggest for the design disciplines? Rather than reductive aestheticization or total rejection, what are possible critical ways to reflect on this condition? Beyo...
Investigates how data production and consumption territorialize the physical landscape filtered through Ireland’s role in global communications and, as told by the Irish Pavilion at the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale, features an installation that focuses on the materiality of data infrastructure in space. As our everyday lives become increasingly entangled with data technologies, the book addresses the utopian fantasy that surrounds the Cloud, as transcending physical presence or resourcing. By bringing the physical infrastructure around data, and its impact on the environment under the spotlight, it hopes to reframe how we understand data production and highlight the myth that informa...
OODA is a Portuguese architecture collective, now celebrating 10 years of practice. Based in Porto with experience gained internationally in notable offices, such as OMA-Rem Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid Architects, the collective aims to expand internationally, namely New York, São Paulo and Shanghai. With a wide range of work (whether idea or built, new or rehabilitation) and participation in international competitions in Africa, America, Asia, Middle East and Europe, their work includes partnerships with Kengo Kuma and the Pritzker prize winner Souto de Moura. More than presenting and dissecting the work of the practice, this book is an adventure in technical and artistic exchanges. It is divi...