ArchDaily is happy to announce a new development in our partnership with The Architectural Review. Each month, AR’s editor, Catherine Slessor, will weigh in with a thematic introduction to the subjects addressed in their current issue. Up now: war and architecture. While our war-torn cities can be rebuilt, their fraught social linkages will never be the same.
At the height of the Cold War, the US developed the neutron bomb, an extreme and more ‘advanced’ type of nuclear weapon that could kill people but theoretically leave buildings intact. Described by both the Russians and Americans as the ‘capitalist bomb’, it was eventually sidelined but became emblematic of the crazed Dr Strangelove ingenuity that underscored the time.
From the publisher. March 2014 issue of a+u is focused on photographs of architectural models by Spain-based photographer Hisao Suzuki.
Based on the essence of architects' thinking expressed in the images, 70 photographs of models by 25 architects are categorized into "Inception", "Organization", "Blooming" and "Experiential". We also asked six architects – Arata Isozaki, Christian Kerez, Ryue Nishizawa, Kazuyo Sejima, Fabian Asunción (former architect at EMBT), Bijoy Jain – to talk about what models mean to their ways of creating architecture. Each photo is accompanied by photographer's story from the photo shoot.
ArchDaily is happy to announce a new development in our partnership with The Architectural Review. Each month, AR's editor, Catherine Slessor, will weigh in with a thematic introduction to the subjects addressed in their current issue. Up now: public space. Is it on the brink of extinction? And, if so, how can we reclaim it?
Just over 20 years ago, Mike Davis and Michael Sorkin predicted the end of public space as we knew it. ‘America’s cities are being rapidly transformed by a sinister and homogeneous design’, they wrote at the time. ‘A new kind of urbanism - manipulative, dispersed, and hostile to traditional public space - is emerging both at the heart and at the edge of town in megamalls, corporate enclaves, gentrified zones, and pseudo-historic marketplaces.It marked the beginning of the realisation that public space was being stealthily privatised and commodified; the historic freedoms of the agora and the piazza replaced by the patrolled and proscribed confine of the theme park and shopping mall.
The Unpublishables, an independent architectural fanzine based in the UK, seeks to offer a platform for young architects - as well as designers and makers - to publish their own writing. About to launch their second edition, the zine has provided an outlet for ideas of young people who have the commitment and vision to develop their own design philosophies, polemics and research outside of full-time education or employment.
From the publisher. The development of industry and culture in the modern period has created architecture suited for the particular system. As the industry declines, followed by the population shift, the original purpose of these buildings has been lost. Instead of demolishing them and rebuilding from scratch, many have been renovated to serve as the bases for revitalizing the regions.
February 2014 issue of a+u introduces 10 works that take advantage of the architectural system derived from their original function and are enabled to assume new roles in the society.
JA92 takes a retrospective glance at the architecture of 2013. 49 works were chosen from cities around the world including Japan with the focus on architecture's relationship with environment and cultural background.
Also included are essays by Hitoshi Abe, Anton Garcia-Abril and TYIN.
Jardim América, 1911–29, Brazil. Developed on 260 acres of land on São Paulo’s southern and western outskirts, the neighborhood remains highly desirable. Image Courtesy of Monacelli Press/Robert A.M. Stern Architects
In this interview, originally published in Metropolis Magazine as "The Charms of Suburbia", Martin Pedersen interviews Robert A.M. Stern about his new book, "Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City". Pedersen's interview delves into the history behind the Garden Suburb - a typology that is distinct from the stereotype of suburban sprawl.
Robert A.M. Stern is nothing if not counterintuitive. How else do you explain—in an increasingly digital and urban-centric world—his recently released book, a 1,072-page tome, containing more than 3,000 images, on the history of the garden suburb? Paradise Planned: The Garden Suburb and the Modern City (the Monacelli Press, 2013) was written with longtime, in-house collaborators David Fishman and Jacob Tilove, who also worked with Stern on the fifth volume of the architect’s epic New York series.
Paradise Planned is similarly expansive. “The book grew like Topsy,” Stern says. “We’d think we had all the examples down, and a new one would pop up. So it just got bigger and bigger. And I thought: if we’re going to do this book, we really ought to do it as the definitive text. Now, it’s not forever text. People will always be adding things. But this is a pretty comprehensive view.” I recently talked to Stern about his new book, the folly of “landscape urbanism,” and the lessons learned from the garden suburb.
In the films of Alfred Hitchcock, things happen, but the events that gave rise to them are easily forgotten. You quickly forget how A leads to B or, say, by what elaborate means Roger Thornhill ends up at Mt. Rushmore in North by Northwest. But as the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard observed, the Hitchcockian cinema compels not with story, but with images—the open-palmed hand reaching for the door, the simulated fall down the staircase, the whorling retreat of the camera from a dead woman’s face. These stark snippets imbue the films with their uncanny allure and imprint themselves in the mind of the spectator much more effectively than any of the master’s convoluted plots.
Read on for more on the role architecture plays in Hitchcock's films
From the publisher. In the past three year, the January issue of A+U has focused on 100 works of architecture built in a certain country since 2000 From those selected works , we have witnessed the country's as well as the era's distinctive traits. Following Switzerland the Netherlands and Germany, this year we are featuring Spain and Portugal.
In OASE's91st edition, Building Atmospheres, the elusive craft of creating, capturing and understanding 'atmosphere' in architecture is explored in a carefully chosen collection of themed essays by Peter Zumthor, Juhani Pallasmaa and philosopher Gernot Böhme. Zumthor, famous for his 1996 text Atmospheres, identifies and discusses "a series of themes that play a role in his work in achieving architectonic atmosphere". Alongside this, the OASE team have visited his studio and interviewed him about the current relevance of his writing and how he captures 'atmosphere' in his design process.
Launched in September 2013 by students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Open Letters is a print experiment that tests the epistolary form as a device for generating conversations about architecture and design. The project stems from an earnest curiosity about what people have to say to each other about architecture, landscapes, cities, ideas, history, practice, experience and learning.
New issues are released every other Friday, each presenting one open letter, i.e. a letter addressed to a particular party, but intended for publication, about any topic relating to the design disciplines. Past correspondents have written to mentors, chairs, trees, mystical creatures, those in need of advice and to NCARB. All issues can be read online.
From the Publisher. JA91 is a special issue devoted to the architectural model. Today, with the advance of simulation technology, architects possess wide -ranging tools for verifying and communicating their ideas, tools that are, moreover, easy to use. Still, many architects continue even now to construct models in various phases of the process from concept design to realization.
ARCHIPENDIUM 2014 by archimappublishers and ArchDaily provides an overview of the most fascinating modern developments in contemporary architecture. Each project exemplifies the efforts of architects and designers to make life better and more sustainable.
From the Publisher. From his early days as one of the "New York Five," Richard Meier has been a central figure in contemporary architecture; this updated 2013 trade edition of the XL version is published in the occasion of the firm’s 50th anniversary. With the Getty Center and more recent buildings such as the Jubilee Church in Rome, Meier has established a reputation for expanded the horizons of contemporary American architecture while maintaining his rigorously rational approach to design and detailing. Known for carefully conceived grid plans and frequent use of white, Meier is a master of light, space, and volume, able to adapt his style to very different circumstances and locations.
We recently received the latest issue of Mark Magazine. This issue’s main theme is “Into the Wild, Breaking new ground in Pioneertown”. In this edition you can find in depth previously featured projects by AD, like Torus by Norisada Maeda, The Umeå Art Museum or the work of Australian practice, Lyons. Full info after the break.
Written by James WP Campbell and featuring stunning photography by Will Pryce, "The Library: A World History" (published by Thames & Hudson 2013) explores the evolution of libraries in different cultures and throughout the ages. It investigates how technical innovations as well as changing cultural attitudes have shaped the designs of libraries from the tablet storehouses of ancient Mesopotamia to today's multi-functional media centres.
Read on for some insights from the book and more of its beautiful photography
Turn the bend and the foreignness of the thing reveals itself, with its gunmetal-colored facade, surfaces jutting at oblique angles, and curves and lines that suggest automotive racing streaks or cooling pipes at a power-generation facility. It would fit right in with a fleet of Star Destroyers blasting some unfortunate rebel ship with turbolasers. -- The Atlantic Cities’ John Metcalfe, describing Zaha Hadid’s Library and Learning Center in Vienna
When architecture and Sci-Fi are mentioned in the same breath, it’s usually only to achieve an amusing, surface-level comparison. Zaha’s library? A “Star Destroyer.” OMA’s Casa da Música? A Sandcrawler. And while these unlikely likenesses certainly speak to Sci-Fi’s hold on architecture’s imagination, they don’t really delve into the potential Sci-Fi holds as a source of architectural inspiration.
Enter CLOG: SCI-FI. As does each issue of CLOG, SCI:FI “slows things down,” taking a good-hard look at architecture and science fiction’s long, fascinating relationship. And while it certainly provides many entertaining meanders into comics, literature, and film (including a peek into 2001: A Space Odyssey by ArchDaily contributors INTERIORS), SCI:FI really shines when it’s digging below the surface, exploring how both architecture and sci-fi reveal the dilemmas, fears, and desires of our society today.
