Architecture

A comprehensive, first-of-its-kind book about Chicago’s residential architecture and the stories that shaped it. This is an entertaining and precisely illustrated story of Chicago homes from the city’s earliest days through the Second World War, revealing everything about what makes a home a Chicago home. 

A city famous for its architecture—and for arguing with New Yorkers about who built it first and best—now has a definitive guide to the unique housing types and styles that have inspired so much devotion. This book is for curious Chicagoans and visitors alike—anyone who’s ever wondered how to spot a Foursquare or where to find Italianate homes from before the Great Chicago Fire.

Why are Chicago’s lots so narrow? How many Chicagoans built homes from a kit? What exactly is a “greystone”? The authors combine their decades of experience in historic preservation and illustration to create an evergreen resource that Chicagoans and visitors will turn to for answers to these and other questions about the city’s neighborhoods and the homes its citizens live in, visit, and admire. 

Root Shock examines 3 different U.S. cities to unmask the crippling results of decades-old disinvestment in communities of color and the urban renewal practices that ultimately destroyed these neighborhoods for the advantage of developers and the elite.

Like a sequel to the prescient warnings of urbanist Jane Jacobs, Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove reveals the disturbing effects of decades of insensitive urban renewal projects on communities of color. For those whose homes and neighborhoods were bulldozed, the urban modernization projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of an assault. Vibrant city blocks - places rich in culture - were torn apart by freeways and other invasive development, devastating the lives of poor residents. Fullilove passionately describes the profound traumatic stress- the "root shock"that results when a neighborhood is demolished. She estimates that federal and state urban renewal programs, spearheaded by business and real estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American districts in cities across the United States. But urban renewal didn't just disrupt black communities: it ruined their economic health and social cohesion, stripping displaced residents of their sense of place as well. It also left big gashes in the centers of cities that are only now slowly being repaired. Focusing on the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the Central Ward in Newark, and the small Virginia city of Roanoke, Dr. Fullilove argues powerfully against policies of displacement. Understanding the damage caused by root shock is crucial to coping with its human toll and helping cities become whole. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, MD, is a research psychiatrist at New York State Psychiatric Institute and professor of clinical psychiatry and public health at Columbia University. She is the author of five books, including Urban Alchemy.

A Framework for Geodesign: Changing Geography by Design presents the key concepts, history, and methodology of geodesign. As an idea, geodesign has the potential to enable more effective and symbiotic collaboration among the several design professions, geographically-oriented sciences, information technologists, and people impacted by change (“the people of the place”) when all of these groups aim to influence major environmental and social change for the better. According to author Carl Steinitz, this collaboration is essential.

Steinitz’s framework, described here in detail, can contribute to that goal. It is clear that for serious societal and environmental issues, designing for change cannot be a solitary activity. It inevitably is a team endeavor with many participants from the design professions and geographic sciences, linked by technology from several locations for rapid communication and feedback, and reliant on transparent communication with the people affected by change. These demands create opportunities for geodesign and the need for organizing that collaboration.

Part I of the book is about the necessary but sometimes difficult collaboration between designers and scientists, and also focuses on key aspects of study areas, scale, and size which influence how geodesign is organized and carried out. Part II presents Steinitz’s framework and addresses six key questions, and their related types of models, which must be integrated in geodesign. Part III features nine case studies that illustrate different ways of designing for change, while Part IV explores the future of geodesign in research, education, and practice.

A Framework for Geodesign ooks mostly to the future, with a primary intention of helping the collaborating participants to achieve, in the words of the author, “practical benefits from geodesign.”

50 years Learning from Las Vegas

From the bustle of Johannesburg to the neon of Las Vegas, Denise Scott Brown’s advocacy for "messy vitality" has transformed the way we look at the urban landscape. Unconventional, eloquent, and with a profound sociopolitical message, Scott Brown is one of our era’s most influential thinkers on architecture and urbanism.

The anthology Denise Scott Brown. In Other Eyes – marking the 50th anniversary of the seminal treatise Learning from Las Vegas – paints a portrait of Scott Brown as seen through the eyes of leading architectural historians and practitioners. It features new scholarship on　her education on three continents, her multidisciplinary teaching, and her use of urban patterns and forces as tools for architectural design – a practice documented in a new comment by Scott Brown, noting that sometimes "1+1>2."

• With contributions by Mary McLeod, Joan Ockman, Sylvia Lavin, Stanislaus von Moos, Jacques Herzog, Robin Middleton, and Denise Scott Brown, among others
• A comprehensive portrait of one of contemporary architecture’s most significant personalities

Reconnecting Cities, People, and Nature is a call to action for urban designers to deeply engage with the living fabric of the city. By working together with humans, non-humans, and allied disciplines, designers can spark a transformation that reshapes cities into thriving, sustainable social and natural ecosystems. Twenty thought-provoking design exercises explore what the city as a complex biotope could be like, inspiring action and creating change.

• Foreword by Rahul Mehrotra
• Twenty exercises based on practice and teaching
• Hand-drawn illustrations

Dilip da Cunha integrates history, art, cultural studies, hydrology, and geography to tell the story of how rivers have been culturally constructed as lines granted a special role in defining human habitation and everyday practice. What we take to be natural features of the earth's surface, according to da Cunha, are products of human design and a particular way of seeing that has roots stretching as far back as ancient Greek cartography. Although Alexander the Great never saw the Ganges, he conceived of it as a flowing body of water, with sources, destinations, and banks that marked the separation of land from water. This Alexandrine view of the river, da Cunha argues, has been pursued and adopted across time and around the world. With ever more sophisticated mappings of its form and characteristics, the river's essential features are refined and standardized: its source identified by a point; its course depicted as a stroke; and its propensity to flood imagined as the erasure of the boundary between water and land.

While da Cunha's vision of rivers is a global one, he takes an especially close look at the Ganges, as he traces the ways in which it has been pictured, mapped, surveyed, explored, and measured across the millennia. He argues that the articulation of the river Ganges has placed it at odds with Ganga, a "rain terrain" that does not conform to the line of separation, containment, and calibration that are the formalities of a river landscape. By calling rivers into question, da Cunha depicts an ecosystem that is neither land nor water but one of ubiquitous wetness in which rain is held in soil, aquifers, glaciers, snowfields, building materials, agricultural fields, air, and even plants and animals.

Printed in full color and featuring more than 150 illustrations, The Invention of Rivers proposes rain, or "the rainscape," as an alternative starting point for imagining, understanding, and designing human habitation.

Frank Furness (1839-1912) has remained a curiosity to architectural historians and critics, somewhere between an icon and an enigma, whose importance and impact have yet to be properly evaluated or appreciated. To some, his work pushed pattern and proportion to extremes, undermining or forcing together the historic styles he referenced in such eclectic buildings as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania Library. To others, he was merely a regional mannerist creating an eccentric personal style that had little resonance and modest influence on the future of architecture. By placing Furness in the industrial culture that supported his work, George Thomas finds a cutting-edge revolutionary who launched the beginnings of modern design, played a key part in its evolution, and whose strategies continue to affect the built world.

In his sweeping reassessment of Furness as an architect of the machine age, Thomas grounds him in Philadelphia, a city led by engineers, industrialists, and businessmen who commissioned the buildings that extended modern design to Chicago, Glasgow, and Berlin. Thomas examines the multiple facets of Victorian Philadelphia's modernity, looking to its eager embrace of innovations in engineering, transportation, technology, and building, and argues that Furness, working for a particular cohort of clients, played a central role in shaping this context. His analyses of the innovative planning, formal, and structural qualities of Furness's major buildings identifies their designs as initiators of a narrative that leads to such more obviously modern figures as Louis Sullivan, William Price, Frank Lloyd Wright and eventually, the architects of the Bauhaus.

Misunderstood and reviled in the traditional architectural centers of New York and Boston, Furness's projects, commissioned by the progressive industrialists of the new machine age, intentionally broke with the historical styles of the past to work in a modern way—from utilizing principles based on logistical planning to incorporating the new materials of the industrial age. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes more than eighty black-and-white and thirty color photographs that highlight the richness of his work and the originality of his design spanning more than forty years.

Architectural historian Roger W. Moss and photographer Tom Crane set out to celebrate the surviving accessible historic architecture of Philadelphia, envisioning a series of books that would provide much more than the snapshots found in guidebooks. They began with Historic Houses of Philadelphia, bringing the region's most impressive museum homes to life. Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia followed, an exclusive tour of fifty hallowed sites. In Historic Landmarks of Philadelphia, Moss and Crane feature prominent, memorable structures that reflect stages in Philadelphia's growth.

There are sixty-five National Historic Landmarks in Philadelphia, structures that have been identified as being "nationally significant" and having "meaning to all Americans." This newest addition to Moss and Crane's trilogy includes a wide array of historic sites, ranging from concert halls to prisons, train stations to museums, banks to libraries. The buildings are arranged chronologically rather than geographically, to emphasize Philadelphia's evolution from modest mercantile outpost of a colonial power, to capital of a proud new nation, to a robust world-renowned cosmopolitan city.

Historic Landmarks of Philadelphia presents such notable attractions as Fort Mifflin, Independence Hall, the Fairmount Water Works, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, Boathouse Row, Laurel Hill Cemetery, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Academy of Music, the Union League of Philadelphia, Memorial Hall, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Masonic Temple, and the sights that line the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Rodin Museum, in more than two hundred color illustrations. It celebrates master builders and their influence on the course of American architecture while identifying the distinctive qualities that embody Philadelphia's history and spirit.

A Barra Foundation Book

Mindy Thompson Fullilove presents ways to strengthen neighborhood connectivity and empower marginalized communities through investigation of urban segregation from a social heath perspective. "Fullilove passionately demonstrates how, through an urbanity of inclusion, we can heal our fractured cities to make them whole again.

What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other?
Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, the acclaimed author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore and identify ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and the American urban design firm Rothschild Doyno Collaborative as guides as well as urban restoration projects from France and the US as exemplary cases, Fullilove identifies nine tools that can mend our broken cities and reconnect our communities to make them whole.

Cutting-edge analysis on how to improve life inside the Gaza Strip through architecture and design, illustrated in full-color

The Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and despair. Gaza, however, is more than an endless encyclopedia of depressing statistics. It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and imagination; a context in which inhabitants go to remarkable lengths to create the ordinary conditions of the everyday and to reject their exceptional status. Inspired by Gaza’s inhabitants, this book builds on the positive capabilities of Gazans. It brings together environmentalists, planners, activists, and scholars from Palestine and Israel, the US, the UK, India, and elsewhere to create hopeful interventions that imagine a better place for Gazans and Palestinians. Open Gaza engages the Gaza Strip within and beyond the logics of siege and warfare, it considers how life can be improved inside the limitations imposed by the Israeli blockade, and outside the idiocy of violence and warfare.

Western admirers have long seen the Islamic garden as an earthly reflection of the paradise said to await the faithful. However, such simplification, Ruggles contends, denies the sophistication and diversity of the art form. Islamic Gardens and Landscapes immerses the reader in the world of the architects of the great gardens of the Islamic world, from medieval Morocco to contemporary India.

Just as Islamic culture is historically dense, sophisticated, and complex, so too is the history of its built landscapes. Islamic gardens began from the practical need to organize the surrounding space of human civilization, tame nature, enhance the earth's yield, and create a legible map on which to distribute natural resources. Ruggles follows the evolution of these early farming efforts to their aristocratic apex in famous formal gardens of the Alhambra in Spain and the Taj Mahal in Agra.

Whether in a humble city home or a royal courtyard, the garden has several defining characteristics, which Ruggles discusses. Most notable is an enclosed space divided into four equal parts surrounding a central design element. The traditional Islamic garden is inwardly focused, usually surrounded by buildings or in the form of a courtyard. Water provides a counterpoint to the portioned green sections.

Ranging across poetry, court documents, agronomy manuals, and early garden representations, and richly illustrated with pictures and site plans, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes is a book of impressive scope sure to interest scholars and enthusiasts alike.

Chanticleer, a forty-eight-acre garden on Philadelphia's historic Main Line, is many things simultaneously: a lush display of verdant intensity and variety, an irreverent and informal setting for inventive plant combinations, a homage to the native trees and horticultural heritage of the mid-Atlantic, a testament to one man's devotion to his family's estate and legacy, and a good spot for a stroll and picnic amid the blooms. In Chanticleer: A Pleasure Garden, Adrian Higgins and photographer Rob Cardillo chronicle the garden's many charms over the course of two growing cycles.

Built on the grounds of the Rosengarten estate in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Chanticleer retains a domestic scale, resulting in an intimate, welcoming atmosphere. The structure of the estate has been thoughtfully incorporated into the garden's overall design, such that small gardens created in the footprint of the old tennis court and on the foundation of one of the family homes share space with more traditional landscapes woven around streams and an orchard.

Through conversations and rambles with Chanticleer's team of gardeners and artisans, Higgins follows the garden's development and reinvention as it changes from season to season, rejoicing in the hundred thousand daffodils blooming on the Orchard Lawn in spring and marveling at the Serpentine's late summer crop of cotton, planted as a reminder of Pennsylvania's agrarian past. Cardillo's photographs reveal further nuances in Chanticleer's landscape: a rare and venerable black walnut tree near the entrance, pairs of gaily painted chairs along the paths, a backlit arbor draped in mounds of fragrant wisteria. Chanticleer fuses a strenuous devotion to the beauty and health of its plantings with a constant dedication to the mutability and natural energy of a living space. And within the garden, Higgins notes, there is a thread of perfection entwined with whimsy and continuous renewal.

Sustainable, circular, up-to-date

Most modern buildings are built from diverse materials, but few confront their manifold composition as a question of both design and performance. This book takes a close look at a series of global building traditions and contemporary practices to uncover the possibilities and challenges of working with mixed materials. Visually stunning, color-coded drawings reveal the materials and construction for every project. Through case studies, design experiments and writings, the authors examine the opportunities of heterogeneous construction for contemporary, sustainable, circular, and culturally situated architecture. With contributions by Jeannette Kuo, Ajay Manthripragada, and Jesús Vassallo, and photography by Naho Kubota. Graphic design by Andrew LeClair.

• Richly illustrated case studies of lesserknown hybrid construction techniques
• Beautiful graphic design and unique spot color printing reveal the interrelationships of materials in construction
• In-depth essays that discuss the technical, cultural, and environmental implications of heterogeneous construction

Courts and societies across the early modern Eurasian world were fundamentally transformed by the physical, technological, and conceptual developments of their era. Evolving forms of communication, greatly expanded mobility, the spread of scientific knowledge, and the emergence of an increasingly integrated global economy all affected how states articulated and projected visions of authority into societies that, in turn, perceived and responded to these visions in often contrasting terms. Landscape both reflected and served as a vehicle for these transformations, as the relationship between the land and its imagination and consumption became a fruitful site for the negotiation of imperial identities within and beyond the precincts of the court.

In Landscape and Authority in the Early Modern World, contributors explore the role of landscape in the articulation and expression of imperial identity and the mediation of relationships between the court and its many audiences in the early modern world. Nine studies focused on the geographical areas of East and South Asia, the Islamic world, and Europe illuminate how early modern courts and societies shaped, and were shaped by, the landscape, including both physical sites, such as gardens, palaces, cities, and hunting parks, and conceptual ones, such as those of frontiers, idealized polities, and the cosmos.

The collected essays expand the meaning and potential of landscape as a communicative medium in this period by putting an array of forms and subjects in dialogue with one another, including not only unique expressions, such as gardens, paintings, and manuscripts, but also the products of rapidly developing commercial technologies of reproduction, especially print. The volume invites a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the complexity with which early modern states constructed and deployed different modes of landscape for different audiences and environments.

Contributors: Robert Batchelor, Seyed Mohammad Ali Emrani, John Finlay, Caroline Fowler, Katrina Grant, Finola O’Kane, Anton Schweizer, Larry Silver, Stephen H. Whiteman.

Just as there is love at first sight between people, Václav Cílek writes, there can be love at first sight between a person and a place. A landscape is more than a location, it is one party in a relationship—even when the spirit of a certain setting is not perceptible to those who visit. But whether we travel to experience rapture or excitement, to discover truth and beauty, or to be dazzled, we search for the essence of faraway landscapes to gain perspective on our own place within the world. To Breathe with Birds delves into the imaginative and emotional bonds we form with landscapes and how human existence—a recent development, geologically speaking—shapes and is shaped by a sense of place.

In subtle and lyrical prose, renowned geologist and author Václav Cílek explores topics from the history of asphalt to the spirits we imagine in trees, from geodiversity to the mathematics of snowflakes. Weaving earth science and environmentalism together with memoir and myth, his chapters visit resonant locations from India to Massachusetts, though most are deeply rooted in the river-laced, war-scarred landscape of Cílek's Czech homeland. These reflections are accompanied by Morna Livingston's evocative photographs, which capture the beauty and strangeness of natural and human-made forms. The first book-length appearance of Cílek's work in English translation, To Breathe with Birds offers insightful perspectives on the symbolism of landscapes as we struggle to conserve and protect the depleted earth.

What knowledge is indispensable for the landscape architect? The answers to this question are as diverse as landscape architecture itself.
In this book 50 landscape architects from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia each give five responses. These include practitioners and teachers, young start-ups as well as internationally established firms.

The publication illustrates the complex and dynamic nature of the discipline, and presents a diverse cross-section of the core expertise of this field. At the same time, it allows the reader to trace the individual attitudes into which geographical conditions, social contexts and political circumstances flow.
Each of the 250 statements is presented on a double page and illustrated by a picture.

• The most important facts in brief: 250 statements from 50 landscape architects
• With contributions by James Corner, Adriaan Geuze, Catherine Mosbach and Peter Walker among others

Timber is not only a sustainable material, it also creates warm, welcoming, sheltering spaces that offer an emotional quality to their users. Light on Wood is a very personal story about how to design and build with mass timber. Author Susan H. Jones, a native of the Pacific Northwest with its seemingly endless forests, founded atelierjones in Seattle some 20 years ago. This pioneering practice has since made a name for itself by working to decarbonize our built environment. It carefully investigated the behavior of wood in case of fire, in an effort to rewrite the code, and undertook life cycle analyses to further the body of research on timber. Changes in building codes have since helped to reestablish this traditional building material in many countries. But the office also designed many beautiful buildings, often developed in cooperation with local communities.

• Projects shown include the Marian Chapel in Seattle, the First Congregational Church in Bellevue, Washington, and the Roundhouse in Greenville, California, for the people of the Maidu
• Practical, hands-on survey with many details and construction photos
• Lavishly illustrated and attractive cloth-bound volume

Why does live performance continue to engage us? In a world saturated with recorded entertainment, we seek out the intimacy and immediacy of live music and theater. What is the relationship between design and the experiences, perceptions, and memories it engenders? At its best, architecture, a collection of elements - some apparent, some hidden - shapes and intensifies the process and experience of performance. Set Pieces pairs the words of leading artists and critics with details showcasing the design and inner workings from projects by Diamond Schmitt Architects for some of the world’s most remarkable performing-arts buildings. The book provides an immersive study of sixteen design elements that enhance and transform the perception of performance - and evoke experiences that surpass visual understanding.

A detailed study of early historical preservation efforts between the 1780s and the 1850s

In Historic Real Estate, Whitney Martinko shows how Americans in the fledgling United States pointed to evidence of the past in the world around them and debated whether, and how, to preserve historic structures as permanent features of the new nation's landscape. From Indigenous mounds in the Ohio Valley to Independence Hall in Philadelphia; from Benjamin Franklin's childhood home in Boston to St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; from Dutch colonial manors of the Hudson Valley to Henry Clay's Kentucky estate, early advocates of preservation strove not only to place boundaries on competitive real estate markets but also to determine what should not be for sale, how consumers should behave, and how certain types of labor should be valued.

Before historic preservation existed as we know it today, many Americans articulated eclectic and sometimes contradictory definitions of architectural preservation to work out practical strategies for defining the relationship between public good and private profit. In arguing for the preservation of houses of worship and Indigenous earthworks, for example, some invoked the "public interest" of their stewards to strengthen corporate control of these collective spaces. Meanwhile, businessmen and political partisans adopted preservation of commercial sites to create opportunities for, and limits on, individual profit in a growing marketplace of goods. And owners of old houses and ancestral estates developed methods of preservation to reconcile competing demands for the seclusion of, and access to, American homes to shape the ways that capitalism affected family economies. In these ways, individuals harnessed preservation to garner political, economic, and social profit from the performance of public service.

Ultimately, Martinko argues, by portraying the problems of the real estate market as social rather than economic, advocates of preservation affirmed a capitalist system of land development by promising to make it moral.

Modern land administration applies geospatial thinking to better understand and plan the proper use, conservation, and equitable use of land and property.

Location intelligence is changing the way land administration works to protect and maintain appropriate land use and achieve better economic, environmental, and social benefits. The real-life stories in Valuing Place and Purpose: GIS for Land Administration show how communities, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations implement geographic information systems (GIS) in four key areas:

     · Visualizing parcels and property

     · Managing land use

     · Strengthening climate and conservation efforts

     · Addressing land rights, equity, and social justice

The book also includes a special section to help readers get started using web apps, online maps, dashboards, and other GIS solutions to represent and understand the value of land and property and efficiently manage, edit, and share land parcel data more accurately.

To conserve our natural assets—our green infrastructure—we need to map them, and plan for their protection.

Every day, decisions about land development are made—often without consideration to the natural features and functions already there. The placement of housing on rich soil, paving over aquifer recharge zones, or disconnecting wildlife corridors are mistakes easily avoided if we start to consider our natural elements as part of our infrastructure. 

Green Infrastructure: Map and Plan the Natural World with GIS describes the why and how of green infrastructure (GI) mapping and implementation through text, maps, and online illustrations. It explains how to utilize the national model that Esri has built using Green Infrastructure Center's methodology. This six-step process provides a framework for thinking strategically about GI planning and details how to set goals to inform GI maps in order to meet real needs on the ground. Using actual data to create two case studies, this book shows how the Esri model and data from the Esri Living Atlas can be adapted using local data to create a custom GI plan. 

With a green infrastructure strategy, communities can work to preserve and connect open spaces, watersheds, wildlife habitats, parks, and other critical landscapes. Green Infrastructure: Map and Plan the Natural World with GIS explains how to protect and foster a connected, resilient, and biologically diverse landscape for sustainable growth. 

A pioneer of architectural history

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897–2000) entered the modernist canon with her “Frankfurt Kitchen.” She is also considered a pioneer of social architecture, a women’s rights activist, and, last but not least, a heroine of the resistance to the Nazi dictatorship.

In this book, available in English for the first time, recent research in the fields of art history, contemporary history, pedagogy, and gender studies provides a nuanced picture of Schütte-Lihotzky, whose estate is archived at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The volume explores her rich architectural oeuvre, her transnational experiences and professional networks, her political development as a Communist, and her current reception. It breaks through the mythology to present a rounded picture of Schütte-Lihotzky, an icon of architectural history.

Die Europäische Union (EU) stellt ein einzigartiges Experiment gemeinsamen Handelns dar. Diese Publikation befasst sich mit diesem Prozess aus dem Blickwinkel der Architektur, einer Disziplin, die im Laufe der Geschichte stets enge Verbindungen zur Macht hatte. Durch die Untersuchung einiger bedeutender, seit den 1950er-Jahren durch die EU entwickelter Architekturprojekte, geht das Buch einer bislang unerforschten Frage nach: Weshalb fällt es der EU so schwer, sich mit Architektur auseinanderzusetzen? In dieser Publikation wird eine Theorie zu einer Form von Zurückhaltung gegenüber Architektur in der EU aufgestellt und die dafür maßgeblichen Gründe identifiziert, wobei die Spannungen zwischen national und supranational, die historische Verbindung zwischen Architektur und Staat, der Mangel an akzeptablen Vorstellungen von Europa, die funktionalistische Kultur der europäischen Institutionen aber auch die rechtlichen Beschränkungen, die ihr Handeln in der bebauten Umwelt einschränken, thematisiert werden.

• Erste Publikation zur Architektur der EU-Institutionen.
• Interdisziplinäre Publikation

Rome, the "Eternal City", is a unique palimpsest dating back to Antiquity. However, beyond the historic center built over millennia on the famous seven hills – another Rome exists, one of large and often stunning modern neighborhoods, housing estates, schools, and public buildings. When Rome became Italy’s capital in 1871, the population increased extensively and the city exceeded its boundaries since Roman times, the Aurelian Walls. This extraordinary transformation laid the foundation for many new quarters built to accommodate civil servants and rural migrants, drawing on vernacular and ancient Roman traditions and blending past and present. This book looks at Rome’s evolution and architecture from the 19th century onwards, embodying a kind of "Splendid Ordinary" – a journey that is full of discoveries.

• With contributions by Lucio Barbera, Anna Irene Del Monaco, Jean-François Lejeune, Salvatore Santuccio, Daniel Solomon
• Attractive in-depth portraits of 16 neighborhoods with photographs and drawings
• An excursion on post-WWII Italian cinema highlights the locations of famous movies

A detailed study of early historical preservation efforts between the 1780s and the 1850s

In Historic Real Estate, Whitney Martinko shows how Americans in the fledgling United States pointed to evidence of the past in the world around them and debated whether, and how, to preserve historic structures as permanent features of the new nation's landscape. From Indigenous mounds in the Ohio Valley to Independence Hall in Philadelphia; from Benjamin Franklin's childhood home in Boston to St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; from Dutch colonial manors of the Hudson Valley to Henry Clay's Kentucky estate, early advocates of preservation strove not only to place boundaries on competitive real estate markets but also to determine what should not be for sale, how consumers should behave, and how certain types of labor should be valued.

Before historic preservation existed as we know it today, many Americans articulated eclectic and sometimes contradictory definitions of architectural preservation to work out practical strategies for defining the relationship between public good and private profit. In arguing for the preservation of houses of worship and Indigenous earthworks, for example, some invoked the "public interest" of their stewards to strengthen corporate control of these collective spaces. Meanwhile, businessmen and political partisans adopted preservation of commercial sites to create opportunities for, and limits on, individual profit in a growing marketplace of goods. And owners of old houses and ancestral estates developed methods of preservation to reconcile competing demands for the seclusion of, and access to, American homes to shape the ways that capitalism affected family economies. In these ways, individuals harnessed preservation to garner political, economic, and social profit from the performance of public service.

Ultimately, Martinko argues, by portraying the problems of the real estate market as social rather than economic, advocates of preservation affirmed a capitalist system of land development by promising to make it moral.

What are Marxist architectural history and criticism? What methods do they employ, and what are their objects of critical analysis? These questions have been asked before, but now more than ever, they require reassessment in light of the continuous expansion and revision of Marxism in response to new global crises.　Struggles in the Concrete: Architecture and the Marxist Tradition embarks on this endeavour. The eleven chapters not only reconsider classical Marxist categories and historical conjunctures, but also devise new critical frameworks for analysing architecture and capitalism today. The book reconsiders neglected figures like Marta Lonzi, Sérgio Ferro, and Anthony D. King, as well as re-engaging with major figures like Siegfried Kracauer, Manfredo Tafuri, and Stuart Hall.

• Tool for critical thinking in the current architectural discourse on global crises
• Contributions by renowned architectural historians and theorists: Claire Zimmerman, Katie Lloyd Thomas, Silke Kapp, Nicholas Thoburn, Onyeka Igwe

Inverse Utopia looks at urbanism from the perspective of modernism and postmodernism, as well as at how commercialization has transformed the modern city. In his earlier book Ladders (1997), the author described the emergence of the cul-de-sac as a typical manifestation of this trend.

In this new book, Inverse Utopia, he argues for the development of architectural and urban forms that respond to contemporary ecological and social challenges. The title refers to a statement by the philosopher Günther Anders: whereas utopians are unable to make the things they imagine, others are unable to imagine the things they make.

This book is a stand-alone volume but may be read as a sequel to Ladders.

Constructing Gardens, Cultivating the City is the first cultural history of major new parks developed in Paris in the late twentieth century, as part of the city’s program of adaptive reuse of industrial spaces. Thanks to laws that gave the city more political autonomy, Paris’s local government launched a campaign of park creation in the late 1970s that continued to the turn of the millennium. The parks in this book represent this campaign and illustrate different facets of their cultural and historical context.

Archival research, interviews, and analyses of the parks reveal how postmodern debates about urban planning, the historic city, public space, and nature’s presence in an urban setting influenced their designs. In sum, the city adopted the garden as a model for public parks, investing in complex, richly symbolic and representational spaces. These parks were intended to represent contemporary twists on traditional designs and serve local residents as much as they would contribute to Paris’s role as a world city.

The parks’ development process often included points of conflict, pointing to differing views on what Parisian space should represent and fundamental contradictions between the characteristics of public space and the garden as it is traditionally defined. These parks demonstrate the ongoing cultivation of the city over time, in which transformed sites not only fulfil new functions but also engage with history and their surroundings to create new meaning. They stand for landscape as a form of signifying cultural production that directly engages with other art forms and ways of knowing. Just as the Luxembourg Gardens, the Tuileries, and the Buttes-Chaumont parks exemplify their eras’ cultural dynamics, such parks as the Jardin Atlantique, Parc André-Citroën, and the Jardin des Halles express contemporary French culture within the archetypal space of their era, the city. Finally, they point the way to current trends in landscape architecture, such as citizen gardening and ecological initiatives.

One may visit famous gardens in Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka—or one may visit Japanese-styled gardens in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Berlin, London, Paris, São Paulo, or Singapore. We often view these gardens as representative of the essence of Japanese culture. Christian Tagsold argues, however, that the idea of the Japanese garden has less do to with Japan's history and traditions, and more to do with its interactions with the West.

The first Japanese gardens in the West appeared at the world's fairs in Vienna in 1873 and Philadelphia in 1876 and others soon appeared in museums, garden expositions, the estates of the wealthy, and public parks. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Japanese garden, described as mystical and attuned to nature, had usurped the popularity of the Chinese garden, so prevalent in the eighteenth century. While Japan sponsored the creation of some gardens in a series of acts of cultural diplomacy, the Japanese style was interpreted and promulgated by Europeans and Americans as well. But the fashion for Japanese gardens would decline in inverse relation to the rise of Japanese militarism in the 1930s, their rehabilitation coming in the years following World War II, with the rise of the Zen meditation garden style that has come to dominate the Japanese garden in the West.

Tagsold has visited over eighty gardens in ten countries with an eye to questioning how these places signify Japan in non-Japanese geographical and cultural contexts. He ponders their history, the reasons for their popularity, and their connections to geopolitical events, explores their shifting aesthetic, and analyzes those elements which convince visitors that these gardens are "authentic." He concludes that a constant process of cultural translation between Japanese and Western experts and commentators marked these spaces as expressions of otherness, creating an idea of the Orient and its distinction from the West.

Celebrated landscape architect Gilles Clément may be best known for his public parks in Paris, including the Parc André Citroën and the garden of the Musée du Quai Branly, but he describes himself as a gardener. To care for and cultivate a plot of land, a capable gardener must observe in order to act and work with, rather than against, the natural ecosystem of the garden. In this sense, he suggests, we should think of the entire planet as a garden, and ourselves as its keepers, responsible for the care of its complexity and diversity of life.

"The Planetary Garden" is an environmental manifesto that outlines Clément's interpretation of the laws that govern the natural world and the principles that should guide our stewardship of the global garden of Earth. These are among the tenets of a humanist ecology, which posits that the natural world and humankind cannot be understood as separate from one another. This philosophy forms a thread that is woven through the accompanying essays of this volume: "Life, Constantly Inventive: Reflections of a Humanist Ecologist" and "The Wisdom of the Gardener." Brought together and translated into English for the first time, these three texts make a powerful statement about the nature of the world and humanity's place within it.

The remaining corner of an old farm, unclaimed by developers. The brook squeezed between housing plans. Abandoned railroad lines. The stand of woods along an expanded highway. These are the outposts of what was once a larger pattern of forests and farms, the "last landscape." According to William H. Whyte, the place to work out the problems of our metropolitan areas is within those areas, not outside them. The age of unchecked expansion without consequence is over, but where there is waste and neglect there is opportunity. Our cities and suburbs are not jammed; they just look that way. There are in fact plenty of ways to use this existing space to the benefit of the community, and The Last Landscape provides a practical and timeless framework for making informed decisions about its use.

Called "the best study available on the problems of open space" by the New York Times when it first appeared in 1968, The Last Landscape introduced many cornerstone ideas for land conservation, urging all of us to make better use of the land that has survived amid suburban sprawl. Whyte's pioneering work on easements led to the passage of major open space statutes in many states, and his argument for using and linking green spaces, however small the areas may be, is a recommendation that has more currency today than ever before.

Paula Deitz has delighted readers for more than thirty years with her vivid descriptions of both famous and hidden landscapes. Her writings allow readers to share in the experience of her extensive travels, from the waterways of Britain's Castle Howard to the Japanese gardens of Kyoto, and home again to New York City's Central Park. Collected for the first time, the essays in Of Gardens record her great adventure of continual discovery, not only of the artful beauty of individual gardens but also of the intellectual and historical threads that weave them into patterns of civilization, from the modest garden for family subsistence to major urban developments. Deitz's essays describe how people, over many centuries and in many lands, have expressed their originality by devoting themselves to cultivation and conservation.

During a visit to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine, Deitz first came to appreciate the notion that landscape architecture can be as intricately conceived as any major structure and is, indeed, the means by which we redeem the natural environment through design. Years later, as she wandered through the gardens of Versailles, she realized that because gardens give structure without confinement, they encourage a liberation of movement and thought. In Of Gardens, we follow Deitz down paths of revelation, viewing "A Bouquet of British Parks: Liverpool, Edinburgh, and London"; the parks and promenades of Jerusalem; the Moonlight Garden of the Taj Mahal; a Tuscan-style villa in southern California; and the rooftop garden at Tokyo's Mori Center, among many other sites.

Deitz covers individual landscape architects and designers, including André Le Nôtre, Frederick Law Olmsted, Beatrix Farrand, Russell Page, and Michael Van Valkenburgh. She then features an array of parks, public places, and gardens before turning her attention to the burgeoning business of flower shows. The volume concludes with a memorable poetic epilogue entitled "A Winter Garden of Yellow."

The gardens of Versailles—along with the name of their chief creator, André Le Nôtre (1613-1700)—have become synonymous with the French style of "formal" garden. This style in its turn would succumb to another "national" mode, the English school of naturalistic and picturesque landscapes. But as Thierry Mariage makes clear, the garden style that Le Nôtre brought to perfection need not be seen in opposition to the later "English" one. Rather, he claims, they represent two points along a continuum that exists between the natural and cultural worlds.

Published originally in Belgium as L'univers de Le Nostre, Mariage's examination of Le Nôtre moves beyond traditional art historical documentation and appreciation into a realm of interpretation. He situates Le Nôtre's garden art in a complex social and cultural world, where the practices of land management, surveying techniques and hydrology, military practice, and both scientific and literary perspectives on land use and experience brought into being a unique form of landscape architecture. His analysis opens up the fashion in which design techniques and garden philosophy are shaped by material culture.

In the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, leading planers and social scientists examine public space today and freedom of assembly.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has challenged the physical manifestation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly. Where and how can people congregate today? Forty social scientists, planners, architects, and civil liberties experts explore the definition, use, role, and importance of public space for the exercise of our democratic rights to free expression. The book also discusses whose voice is heard and what factors limit the participation of minorities in Occupy activities. This foundational work puts issues of democracy and civic engagement back into the center of dialogue about the built environment.

Beyond Zuccotti Park is a collaborative effort of Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, City College of New York School of Architecture, New Village Press and its parent organization, Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. The book is part of an open civic inquiry on the part of these organizations. The project was seeded by a series of free public forums, Freedom of Assembly: Public Space Today, held at the Center for Architecture in response to the forced clearance of Occupy activities from Zuccotti Park and public plazas throughout the country. The first two recorded programs took place on December 17, 2011 and February 4, 2012.

Building with trees has a tradition that stretches from the living bridges of India to dancing lime trees. Following on from this, the new discipline of Baubotanik is dedicated to designing with trees. Built projects and visionary concepts point the way to a new green architecture. This introduction explains the basics of constructing with trees and goes into the botanical growth laws that guide the design.

Technical Drawing deals with the representation of plans throughout all phases of a project. For students, the primary focus is on the development and methodical construction of a technical drawing.

Themes:

• Types of plan (from site plan and preliminary drawings to design and detail plans)
• Components of the plan (floor plan, section, elevation, detail)
• Line width, dimensioning, hatching, use of text, symbols
• Plan presentation and compilation

Einige der größten Architekturbüros sind de facto zu Kriegskonzernen geworden. Parallel zur Gestaltung von Olympiaanlagen und weltberühmten Gebäuden haben sie Militärbasen errichtet, Waffen instandgehalten und Personal für Kriege ausgebildet, in denen Hunderttausende von Menschen getötet wurden. In einigen Konflikten waren dieselben Büros von der Invasion bis zum Wiederaufbau durchgehend beauftragt: Sie unterstützten militärische Angriffe, bauten kriegsbeschädigte Infrastrukturen wieder auf und wirkten an der Einsetzung neuer Regierungen mit. Architecture for Warfare erzählt die Geschichte von multidisziplinären Unternehmen, die Architekt*innen mit Erfahrung im Entwurf ebenso beschäftigen wie ehemalige Militärangehörige, die im Umgang mit scharfer Munition geschult sind. Das Buch beleuchtet die Spannungen und Widersprüche dieser Firmen, die von sich behaupten, die Welt lebenswerter zu machen. Es verbindet persönliche Erzählungen mit fundierter Forschung und legt die beunruhigenden Verflechtungen von Gestaltung, Planung und bewaffnetem Konflikt offen.

• Beschreibt die Entstehung architektonischer Kriegskonzerne
• Verbindet Augenzeugenberichte mit von der Graham Foundation geförderten Forschungen
• Enthüllt ethische Konflikte in der Architektur

A lavishly illustrated photographic journey through the history and traditions of the ancient churches of Ethiopia.

The ancient Aksumite Kingdom, now a part of Ethiopia, was among the first in the world to adopt Christianity as the official state religion. In AD 340 King Ezana commissioned the construction of the imposing basilica of St. Mary of Tsion. It was here, the Ethiopians say, that Menelik, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant containing the Ten Commandments. By the fifth century, nine saints from Byzantium were spreading the faith deep into the mountainous countryside, and over the next ten centuries a series of spectacular churches were either built or excavated out of solid rock, all of them in regular use to this day. Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has the best known cluster, but the northern region of Tigray, less well known and more remote, has many churches that are architectural masterpieces of the basilical type.

Ethiopia: The Living Churches of an Ancient Kingdom traces the broad sweep of ecclesiastic history, legend, art, and faith in this sub-Saharan African kingdom as seen through the prism of sixty-six breathtaking churches, unveiling the secrets of their medieval murals, their colorful history, and the rich panoply of their religious festivals, all illustrated with more than eight hundred superb color photographs by some of the most celebrated international photographers of traditional cultures. This magnificent, large-format, full-color volume is the most comprehensive celebration yet published of Ethiopia’s extraordinary Christian heritage.

Ethiopia is the third book on iconic places of worship published by Ludwig Publishing and the American University in Cairo Press, following the bestselling success of The Churches of Egypt and The History and Religious Heritage of Old Cairo.

Als wachsende Metropole muss Hamburg zukunftsfähige Lösungen für die drängenden Fragen der Stadtentwicklung finden. Klimaschutz, Mobilitätswende, Bevölkerungswachstum und bezahlbarer Wohnraum sind jedoch Herausforderungen, die über Landesgrenzen hinaus wirken. Mit dem Stadt-Umland-Atlas Hamburg legt die Hamburger Behörde für Stadtentwicklung und Wohnen einen Grundstein für einen neuen Blick auf Hamburg und die Region: Umfangreiche Datenerhebungen erfassen Muster und Potenziale, die sich aus den Verflechtungen zwischen Stadt und Umland ergeben. Visuell aufbereitet in über 250 Karten schaffen diese einen umfassenden Überblick für die Planung und Gestaltung zukünftiger räumlicher Strukturen in der Hansestadt und darüber hinaus.

• Betrachtung räumlicher Strukturen der Stadt Hamburg und ihres direkten Umlands
• Darstellung und Analyse von Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Metropole und Umland
• Umfangreiches Datenmaterial, aufbereitet in über 250 Karten

Mindy Thompson Fullilove presents ways to strengthen neighborhood connectivity and empower marginalized communities through investigation of urban segregation from a social heath perspective. "Fullilove passionately demonstrates how, through an urbanity of inclusion, we can heal our fractured cities to make them whole again.

What if divided neighborhoods were causing public health problems? What if a new approach to planning and design could tackle both the built environment and collective well-being at the same time? What if cities could help each other?
Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, the acclaimed author of Root Shock, uses her unique perspective as a public health psychiatrist to explore and identify ways of healing social and spatial fractures simultaneously. Using the work of French urbanist Michel Cantal-Dupart and the American urban design firm Rothschild Doyno Collaborative as guides as well as urban restoration projects from France and the US as exemplary cases, Fullilove identifies nine tools that can mend our broken cities and reconnect our communities to make them whole.

Digital data is becoming increasingly important in relation to building materials and materials in architecture and urban planning. In six chapters, the four experts Michael Hensel, Bob Geldermans, Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel and Milica Vujovic cover the spectrum from data and materials to the question of availability and industrial production, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things with scientifically sound contributions. They show how it is possible to find tailor-made solutions to urgent questions such as building material interactions, ageing processes, circularity, urban mining and global needs with advancing digitalization.

• Digital tools for the optimization of installed material
• Ageing, combination, circularity and urban mining
• A scientifically sound overview

Bilingual edition (English/German) / Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch)

No one can really know what will prove sustainable in thirty years—and that is precisely why we need a plurality of building practices and ongoing conversations about them. The large-scale exhibition WEtransFORM in Bonn provides plenty of inspiration for both. As part of its thematic year on ecological transformation, the Bundeskunsthalle is showcasing outstanding projects in sustainable architecture and urban development from across Europe. This companion book to the exhibition conveys key insights, tells personal stories, and encourages readers to get involved in building a more sustainable world. Our shared goal: to reduce resource consumption.

• A richly illustrated companion to the exhibition WEtransFORM in the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, June 6, 2025–January 25, 2026
• Featuring works by Anna Heringer, Céline Baumann, Daisy Ginsberg, ecoLogicStudio, Florian Nagler, heri & salli, ITKE, Julia Lohmann, Marjan van Aubel, Martin Rauch, Mischer’Traxler, MVRDV, Office for Political Innovation, OMC°C, Powerhouse, raumlaborberlin, Superflux, 51n4E, and more

Zweisprachige Ausgabe (deutsch/englisch) / Bilingual edition (English/German)

Niemand kann mit Gewissheit sagen, was sich in dreißig Jahren tatsächlich als nachhaltig erwiesen haben wird. Gerade deshalb braucht es eine Pluralität von baulichen Praktiken und die fortwährende Diskussion darüber. Für beides bietet die große Ausstellung WEtransFORM in Bonn reichlich Inspiration. Im Rahmen ihres Themenjahrs zur ökologischen Transformation versammelt die Bundeskunsthalle vorbildliche Projekte nachhaltiger Architektur und Stadtentwicklung in Europa. Das Begleitbuch vermittelt die Kernbotschaften der Ausstellung, erzählt individuelle Geschichten und ermutigt zu eigenem Engagement. Das gemeinsame Ziel: den Ressourcenverbrauch reduzieren.

• Reich bebilderter Begleitband zur Ausstellung WEtransFORM, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, 6. Juni 2025 bis 25. Januar 2026
• Mit Arbeiten von Anna Heringer, Céline Baumann, Daisy Ginsberg, ecoLogicStudio, Florian Nagler, heri & salli, ITKE, Julia Lohmann, Marjan van Aubel, Martin Rauch, Mischer’Traxler, MVRDV, Office for Political Innovation, OMC°C, Powerhouse, raumlaborberlin, Superflux, 51n4E und anderen

Colors lend rooms a distinctive atmosphere, and a successful color concept makes all the difference. Finding individually pleasing as well as functional color combinations for a wide range of interior and exterior tasks is often a challenge. This library of color combinations is a decision-making aid for interior design work, but also for other design tasks calling for coherent color concepts. It offers designers numerous balanced color combinations covering a wide range of contrast values. A clean white is always the first color. Matching light grays to anthracite, wood and concrete colors represent the second color in each concept. Building on these, designers will find warm and cool, light and shady, barely colorful to more colorful combinations that match every modern style of design.

• 400 color combinations compiled by color expert Katrin Trautwein.
• An essential tool in a handy format for architects, students of architecture and design, and interior designers.
• Move beyond familiar patterns to uncover fresh color combinations.

What does it mean for architecture to be a truly collaborative venture where plants and other species also exercise their agency? This would mean to make architecture receptive—physically, premised on creating spaces for accommodating multispecies; and intellectually, premised on becoming aware of the needs of more-than-humans. Design-based approaches whether technocratic or demonstrating a theoretical standpoint are fragmented today and demand a holistic approach.

Living Together positions itself in that fragmentation. The book is an inquiry into an architecture which allows multispecies alliances to take place. It brings materialist and ecological inquiries to architectural design, practice, and thinking; acknowledging a necessity to go beyond established architectural ideals of progress, monumentality, longevity, and permanence.

• A guide to ecological planning in architecture
• Cohabitation: architecture must take into account the non-human living space
• Inspiring illustrations

One may visit famous gardens in Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka—or one may visit Japanese-styled gardens in New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Berlin, London, Paris, São Paulo, or Singapore. We often view these gardens as representative of the essence of Japanese culture. Christian Tagsold argues, however, that the idea of the Japanese garden has less do to with Japan's history and traditions, and more to do with its interactions with the West.

The first Japanese gardens in the West appeared at the world's fairs in Vienna in 1873 and Philadelphia in 1876 and others soon appeared in museums, garden expositions, the estates of the wealthy, and public parks. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Japanese garden, described as mystical and attuned to nature, had usurped the popularity of the Chinese garden, so prevalent in the eighteenth century. While Japan sponsored the creation of some gardens in a series of acts of cultural diplomacy, the Japanese style was interpreted and promulgated by Europeans and Americans as well. But the fashion for Japanese gardens would decline in inverse relation to the rise of Japanese militarism in the 1930s, their rehabilitation coming in the years following World War II, with the rise of the Zen meditation garden style that has come to dominate the Japanese garden in the West.

Tagsold has visited over eighty gardens in ten countries with an eye to questioning how these places signify Japan in non-Japanese geographical and cultural contexts. He ponders their history, the reasons for their popularity, and their connections to geopolitical events, explores their shifting aesthetic, and analyzes those elements which convince visitors that these gardens are "authentic." He concludes that a constant process of cultural translation between Japanese and Western experts and commentators marked these spaces as expressions of otherness, creating an idea of the Orient and its distinction from the West.

(English, German)

Compelled by the global environmental crisis, the building industry is moving toward a paradigm shift that significantly impacts the way we build, design, and interact with the natural environments around us. The built spaces of the future need to disrupt the conventional design practices that have "elevated" the building sector to the largest contributor of manmade CO₂ emissions globally. Achieving net-zero embodied and operational emissions in future construction will require the active participation of design, construction, and building professionals, as well as the prompt implementation of decarbonization solutions. These solutions, which restructure the way humans interact with their ecosystems, entail a reevaluation and reinterpretation of architecture and its role as a transformative agent. GAM 21 collects perspectives and proposals on how to make a radical shift towards environmental transformation successful.

With contributions by Greg Foliente, Guillaume Habert, Monica Lavagna, Alice Moncaster, Chrisna du Plessis, Philippe Rahm, and others

• Explores contemporary approaches to decarbonizing the construction industry, one of the world’s largest emitters of CO₂
• Includes contributions from international authors and experts

Die globale Umweltkrise zwingt die Baubranche zu einem Paradigmenwechsel, der die Art und Weise, wie wir in Zukunft bauen, gestalten und mit unseren natürlichen Umgebungen interagieren wollen, stark beeinflusst. Gebaute Räume der Zukunft müssen konventionelle Planungspraktiken überwinden, die den Bausektor zum größten Verursacher von CO₂-Emissionen weltweit gemacht haben. Das Erreichen von Netto-Null-Emissionen beim Bau und Betrieb künftiger Gebäude erfordert eine aktive Beteiligung von Entwurfs-, Konstruktions-, und Baufachleuten und die rasche Umsetzung der Dekarbonisierung. Diese Ansätze, die die Interaktion zwischen Menschen und ihren Ökosystemen neu strukturieren, haben auch eine Neubewertung und Neuinterpretation der Architektur und ihrer Rolle als Triebkraft der Transformation zur Folge. GAM 21 sammelt Perspektiven und Vorschläge, wie ein radikaler Wandel hin zu einer ökologischen Transformation gelingen kann.

Mit Beiträgen von Greg Foliente, Guillaume Habert, Monica Lavagna, Alice Moncaster, Chrisna du Plessis, Philippe Rahm und anderen

• Aktuelle Ansätze zur Dekarbonisierung der Baubranche als einer der größten Verursacherinnen von CO₂-Emissionen
• Beiträge internationaler Autor*innen und Expert*innen

Die Kritik der gegenwärtigen Abrisspraxis wird angesichts der Klima-, Biodiversitäts- und Energiekrisen lauter. In Deutschland werden wohl über 50.000 Gebäude pro Jahr abgerissen, die Bau- und Abbruchabfälle verursachen gut 55 Prozent des gesamten Abfallaufkommens. Die Abrissfrage macht das Phänomen Abriss im Gebäudesektor aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven greifbar. Mit Ansätzen aus Architekturgeschichte und -theorie, Denkmalpflege, Feminismus, Aktivismus und Kunst werden die ökologischen, politischen, sozioökonomischen sowie kulturellen Folgen der auf den fossilen Logiken der Moderne beruhenden Praxis von Abriss und Neubau analysiert. Die Beiträge thematisieren die historische Entwicklung, gegenwärtige Akteursnetzwerke, Gentrifizierung und ideologische Einflussnahmen von Abriss, aber auch die sich seit den 1960er Jahren formierenden Anti-Abriss-Bewegungen.

Die Publikation bildet den Auftakt einer neuen Schriftenreihe, die aktuelle Fragestellungen des umwelt- und sozialgerechten Bauens thematisiert. Zudem werden wichtige Pionier*innen des ökologischen Bauens im 20. Jahrhunderts in den Blick genommen. Herausgeber der Reihe sind Philipp Oswalt und Alexander Stumm.

Mit Beiträgen von ANA, Elisabeth Broermann, Laura Calbet, Dina Dorothea Falbe, Maximilian Hartinger, Maria Hudl, Katrine Majlund Jensen, Adrian Nägel, Yulia Ostheimer, Luise Rellensmann, Tim Rieniets, Charlotte Schaeben, Martha Seeger, Lukas Strasser und Alexander Stumm sowie den Architekturkollektiven AbbrechenAbbrechen (München), Abrisskollektiv (Hannover), Europaviertel retten (Freiburg) und ufoufo (Berlin)

• Aktueller Stand, Argumente und Zahlen zur Abrissdebatte
• Umfangreiche Recherche und Dokumentation zu vom Abriss bedrohten oder jüngst abgerissenen Gebäuden
• Geschichte und Netzwerke der deutschen Anti-Abriss-Bewegung seit den 1960er Jahren

Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us.

Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity’s negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable.

Lo—TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.

With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, Julia Watson explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 18 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.

The tactile reading experience of Lo—TEK reflects the ingenuity of carefully selected projects with sophisticated design details: copper highlights the value of ancient knowledge, a cardboard hardcover echoes rawness, and the Swiss binding showcases an open spine and reveals the construction of the book, just as the book discloses hidden technological knowledge.

"Why do architects always wear black?" Cordula Rau was asked this question by an automotive industry manager during an architectural competition. Although an architect herself who also wears black, she didn't have an answer off the top of her head. She decided to ask other architects as well as artists and designers. Since 2001, she has been collecting their handwritten replies in a notebook.

In 2008, these were published in a small work – black-bound, of course. For its new edition, this legendary collection has been expanded to include new amusing, pragmatic and subtle explanations: "Read it – but please don’t ask me why again architects wear black!" (Cordula Rau)

• New and expanded edition of the cult book
• A Collection of handwritten statements in an A6-format notebook
• Addition of 16 new statements

A sustained critique of postwar reconstruction in Syria as a politically neutral process

In 2011, emboldened by the Arab Spring, the Syrians rose up against their government. The Syrian regime used violence to suppress the protests, so that what began as pro-democracy protests eventually morphed into a civil war with heavy outside intervention. Today, the Assad regime has fallen, but large parts of the country lie in ruins, millions of Syrians are displaced, and the economy is in freefall. Reconstruction as Violence delves into the complex interplay of post-conflict reconstruction in Syria, challenging the traditionally held dichotomy between the end of violence and the commencement of rebuilding.

The contributors to this volume—architects, urbanists, geographers, and historians—employ critical concepts such as urbicide, domicide, and “civilian crisis architecture” to argue against the conventional theoretical frameworks that support a neat separation of phases. They illustrate how reconstruction often extends the dynamics of conflict into the urban and social realms, suggesting that the built environment becomes a battleground for further violence. They emphasize the importance of acknowledging the historical, economic, societal, legal, and bureaucratic contexts that shape reconstruction efforts, arguing for initiatives that prioritize equity, inclusivity, and community participation.

Reconstruction as Violence starkly underscores the authors’ stance that to overlook any of these dimensions, or to disengage from the reconstruction process altogether, represents a political choice with potentially detrimental effects on Syria and beyond in the Arab world, where countries like Palestine, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan are undergoing similar cycles of destruction and rebuilding. It calls for a reimagined approach to reconstruction, one that fosters peace, resilience, and social justice in post-conflict societies.

Contributors:
Sawsan Abou Zainedin, Madaniya, London, UK
Ammar Azzouz, University of Oxford, UK
Valérie Clerc, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France
Emma Katherine DiNapoli, human rights lawyer, London, UK
Omar Ferwati, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Rim Lababidi, architect and independent scholar, Ohio, USA
Wendy Pullan, University of Cambridge, UK
Nasser Rabbat, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Hashim Sarkis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Deen Sharp, London School of Economics, UK
Heghnar Watenpaugh, University of California Davis, CA, USA

Bilingual edition (English/German)

While most high-rise buildings continue to be built in China and the USA, Australia and especially Singapore have recently emerged as hotspots for high-rise architecture. Furthermore, the trend toward mixed-use skyscrapers, which have repeatedly been among the finalists of The International High-Rise Award since 2014, continues unabated. Former specific features such as extensive greening or the construction of high-rise clusters have long since become standard. Due to the shortage of suitable building sites and growing environmental awareness, existing buildings are increasingly coming into focus in high-rise construction.

Best High-Rises 2024/25 presents 32 of the most exciting recently completed high-rise projects that combine sustainability, external form and internal spatial qualities, and social aspects into exemplary designs that point the way to the future. Each of these projects is comprehensively presented with photos and plans.

The International High-Rise Award is presented every two years. Previous winners include 3XN (2022), OMA (2020), Benjamín Romano (2018), BIG (2016), Stefano Boeri (2014), Ingenhoven Architects (2012), WOHA (2010), and Foster + Partners (2008).

• 20 years of The International High-Rise Award
• 32 of the most interesting recent high-rise projects worldwide in texts, plans, and photos
• new focus: conversion of existing high-rises

Während die meisten Hochhäuser nach wie vor in China und den USA gebaut werden, lassen sich aktuell Australien und insbesondere Singapur als Hotspots für Hochhausarchitektur ausmachen. Weiterhin bestätigt sich die Tendenz zu mischgenutzten Hochhäusern, die sich bereits seit 2014 immer wieder unter den Finalisten des Internationalen Hochhaus Preises befinden. Einstige Besonderheiten wie flächendeckende Begrünungen oder der Bau von Hochhausclustern gehören mittlerweile längst zum Standard. Bedingt durch den Mangel an geeigneten Bauflächen sowie wachsendem Umweltbewusstsein rückt der Gebäudebestand beim Hochhausbau vermehrt in den Fokus.

Best High-Rises 2024/25 präsentiert 32 der spannendsten kürzlich fertiggestellten Hochhausprojekte, die Nachhaltigkeit, äußere Form und innere Raumqualitäten sowie soziale Aspekte zu einem vorbildlichen Entwurf verbinden und so beispielhaft in die Zukunft weisen. Jedes dieser Projekte wird anhand von Fotos und Plänen umfassend vorgestellt.

Der Internationale Hochhaus Preis wird alle zwei Jahre vergeben. Zu den bisherigen Gewinner*innen zählen u. a. 3XN (2022), OMA (2020), Benjamín Romano (2018), BIG (2016), Stefano Boeri (2014), Ingenhoven Architects (2012), WOHA (2010) und Foster + Partners (2008).

• 20 Jahre Internationaler Hochhaus Preis
• 32 der interessantesten jüngsten Hochhausprojekte weltweit in Texten, Plänen und Fotos
• Neuer Schwerpunkt: Umbau bestehender Hochhäuser

Modern urban terraced houses or row houses emerged in Europe from the 17th century onwards. Usually two to three storeys high and with a garden at the back, they formed the traditional urban block. In Brussels, this bourgeois type of housing took on a particularly varied and inspiring form—including the well-known Art Nouveau residences—which composes the DNA of the city to this day. This publication analyses 121 selected examples illustrating the emergence of the terraced house and its further development in other forms of housing. The result is a broad panorama and a history of the architecture and development of the city of Brussels with its particularly heterogenous cityscape.

This expanded edition comprises a new chapter by Kristiaan Borret, the city's former “bouwmeester”. 13 new case studies were added and the content was updated. A project index facilitates quick navigation.

•     With a photo essay by the well-known Belgian photographer Maxime Delvaux
•     All plans have been drawn in standard scales especially for the publication
•     An atlas of exemplary historical and contemporary housing typologies

Designing architecture with solar cells - principles and qualities of a new architecture

The rapid development of solar technology is not only increasing the efficiency of energy production, it is also reducing costs, so that solar architecture may soon be considered the new normal. Solar components are increasingly being used in building design. The wide range of technical solutions now offers fascinating possibilities for design.

Made of Solar shows the principles and qualities of a new architecture. Integrated both on the roof and on the façade, the well-designed solutions presented here follow the rules of solar energy production, but also open up new architectural freedom. The book presents a selection of 25 pioneering, realised buildings with 3D details, plans, graphics and large-format colour photographs.

• Construction methods of exemplary solar architectures in detail
• Specially created isometric detailed drawings and colour illustrations
• Diverse sources of inspiration for the use of solar cells
• Available in German and English language editions

A profound social change can be observed in the areas of mobility, work and trade, as well as in the practice of faith, especially in cities. As a result, certain building typologies such as petrol stations, offices, shopping centers, cinemas and churches are being used less, thus becoming increasingly obsolete and contributing to the obsolescence of the city.

Three strategies must be considered for the efficient transformation of these structures: the conversion of existing architecture and the preservation of the gray energy they embody; the maximization of land use; and the strengthening of ecological functions to improve the urban microclimate and the quality of living space.

The authors analyze potential solutions, present conversion scenarios, and illustrate these in schematic diagrams.

• Analysis of obsolete architectural typologies in urban centers
• Realistic proposals for the recyclability of existing buildings
• Attractive graphics and presentations of potential solutions

New exciting and surprising design approaches how great living quality can be wonderfully made possible in small spaces. 

A tiny house is much more than just a very small residence. It is a living concept that reflects the challenges of the future – from the fundamental question of how to finance the dream of home ownership to more complex considerations, such as whether doing without material luxury means more freedom, to social issues such as how we deal with our planet's resources. 

This volume presents remarkable examples of masterfully implemented solutions for tiny houses. The designs of these micro-wonders show that even – or especially – well thought-out room concepts can be realized in the smallest of spaces, without sacrificing excellent design. Intelligent floor plans, multifunctional rooms and ingenious nesting of furnishing components create not only compact living spaces, but also unique habitats.

«La beauté n'a rien à voir avec l'argent ou la finance. Elle demande de la créativité et de l'amour», affirme Anna Heringer. Sa vision fait mouche, comme en témoignent des amphithéâtres pleins, des prix internationaux (dont l’Aga Kahn Award en 2007 et l’OBEL Award en 2020), une invitation au TED Talk 2017 ainsi que de nombreuses expositions: MoMA à New York, MAM à São Paulo, Biennale de Venise, etc.

Dans Form Follows Love, Anna Heringer raconte à l'auteure Dominique Gauzin-Müller son parcours d'architecte　: ses études, la rencontre avec le spécialiste du pisé Martin Rauch, sa pratique dans le Sud global et ses projets actuels en Europe. Elle partage avec nous le constat que la terre crue est non seulement un matériau respectueux de l'environnement, mais aussi que sa mise en œuvre dans les bâtiments initie des processus réparateurs au sein de la société.

• Dans ce texte essentiel, l'architecte allemande Anna Heringer, spécialiste de la construction en terre crue, raconte à la fois
• comment l'architecture peut avoir une influence positive sur la société et sur l'environnement
• comment construire avec des ressources locales préserve l'équilibre écologique.
• Disponible en français, allemand et anglais

According to Anna Heringer, "Beauty has nothing to do with money or finance, but everything to do with creativity and love". With statements like this she clearly has her finger on the pulse of our time, judging by the packed lecture halls, international awards such as the 2007 Aga Kahn Award or the 2020 OBEL Award, and exhibitions at MoMA, MAM Sao Paulo, and the Venice Biennale.

In Form Follows Love, Anna Heringer talks to author Dominique Gauzin-Müller about her career as an architect, her studies, her experiences during a workshop by Martin Rauch, her practice in the Global South, and current projects in the Global North.

She shares with us the insight that clay is not only an environmentally friendly material, but in the best cases it can even trigger socially beneficial processes.

This book considers architectural models not as stable objects but as a question: What is a model, really? And where in the design process does it assume its powers or perform its tasks? Thirty essays respond to nine pointed questions, discovering surprising affinities and interweaving observations from diverse disciplinary, geographical, and scholarly perspectives, all framed by an introductory essay and a dialog between historian Annabel Wharton and artist Thomas Demand. Are You a Model? approaches models as phenomena and architectural tools without seeking to determine conclusive answers. Compiled by a group of architectural and art historians, historians of science, software engineers, architects, and curators, it views models as an epistemologically diverse practice rather than objects sorted by periods, genres, or materials.

With contributions by Giulia Amoresano, Yana Boeva, Giulia Boller, Stefanie Brünenberg, Alberto Calderoni, Daniel Cardoso Llach, Wonseok Chae, Diana Cristobal Olave, Carlotta Darò, Cansu Degirmencioglu, Kai Drewes, Ruth Ezra, Jia Yi Gu, Erik Herrmann, Carolin Höfler, Deniz Avci Hosanli, Christian Janecke, Sebastian Loosen, John McMorrough, Christina Moushoul, Ana Carolina Pellegrini, Eliza Pertigkiozoglou, Andreas Pilot, Stéphanie Quantin-Biancalani, Salome Schepers, Ecaterina Stefanescu, Simona Valeriani, Mara Trübenbach, Annabel Wharton, Matthew Wells, Baris Wenzel, Holger Zaunstöck, Maxime Zaugg, and Tamar Zinguer.

Volume five of the Landscript series examines material culture in the context of landscape architecture theory and design, positing the constructed landscape as a site for the investigation of human-nature relations and the factors that mediate their production, from labor to physical materials.

This volume outlines the urban development of eight cities in the Middle East and North Africa: Aleppo, Alexandria, Ankara, Cairo, Casablanca, Dubai, Nouakchott, and Shiraz. Ottoman rule and colonial powers, French or British, operated differently and over various time spans in most of these cities to influence architecture and the urban scene. Global movements such as modernism and socialism reshaped the cityscapes of intersecting histories and cultures.

Maps, sketches, and other visuals trace the urban outcomes of Ottoman rule, colonial powers, and post-independence governments to show how they altered these cities. Class distinctions, informal settlements, and devalued built heritage are common urban issues that the cities of the MENA region still face today.

• Focuses on political and social developments as they influence each city’s built environment

• Discusses all types of built heritage and forms of architecture in the eight exemplary cities

• Visualizes the urban development through many coloured maps, sketches, and charts

Denkmalpflegeprojekte in komplexen städtischen Umgebungen sind vielfach von erheblichen Diskrepanzen zwischen formaler Politik und pragmatischen Realitäten geprägt. Fallbeispiele aus dem Iran, der Türkei, Ägypten und Indien zeigen die unzähligen Faktoren auf, die auf die praktische Denkmalpflege einwirken und deren Ideale untergraben. Die vorgestellten Projekte veranschaulichen, wie politische, wirtschaftliche und ideologische Dynamiken die Ergebnisse vor Ort beeinflussen und sie von akademischen Grundsätzen und nationalen oder internationalen Strategien ablenken. Die Autorinnen und Autoren verfügen über ein tiefes Verständnis der lokalen Dynamiken und zeigen die disziplinären, bürokratischen und soziopolitischen Strukturen auf, die die Planung des städtischen Kulturerbes in unterschiedlichen Kontexten prägen.

• Untersucht Denkmalschutzrichtlinien in lokalen Kontexten
• Lenkt den Blick auf lokale Komplexitäten
• Ergebnisse des DFG-Projekts "Assembling Iran's Urban Heritage Conservation Policy and Practice: Problematised in Tehran"

Exclusive living retreats set against the backdrop of majestic peaks, steep slopes and picturesque valleys

The chalet is a building style that enjoys lasting popularity all over the world. Dating back to the herdsman’s hut in the Alpine region, it became a longed-for destination and the most preferred holiday domicile in the 19th century with the emerging fascination with the Alps. Today, architects and designers are primarily inspired by the constantly redefined interplay of sublime nature, traditional architecture, regional building typologies, individual design, and modern formal language that pushes them to reach magnificent creative peaks.

The projects selected for this volume are diverse and remarkably multifaceted: From a traditional construction with a flat gable roof, wide roof overhang, and robust timber façade, to contemporary, thoroughly idiosyncratic interpretations with clear lines, creative choice of materials, and fine details. However, the artful staging of the imposing mountain world in the interior design plays a decisive role among all presented chalets.

• Essential text describing the work of Anna Heringer, an architect specialized in clay
• How architecture can have a positive impact on the environment and society
• Building with local resources to maintain ecological balance
• Available in German, French and English

It has been shown that spatial perception can be improved through practice. Opportunities to offer such practice are offered in this workbook, which was tested by nearly one thousand architecture students before publication, and emerged from an academic study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, conducted jointly by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and the ETH Zurich.

People involved in architecture need to be familiar with construction methods in order to be in control of their designs. New technical requirements impact on our buildings and call for up-to-date specialist knowledge, which leads to new forms of architecture.

This handbook uses clearly comprehensible 3D isometric diagrams to introduce the world of contemporary construction, from concept through to the detail; photographs are used to illustrate the content.

The three main chapters deal with the structure, the building envelope, and the fit-out, starting with a clear introduction to the construction principles of modern building methods. Using drawings of selected built examples at scales of 1:10 and 1:20, a deeper examination of details is possible.

• Compact design of construction know-how developed at ETH Zurich for the purpose of teaching
• Uses typical examples to convey the basic technical context
• Economical handbook

Timber high-rises: a new urban element

Tall wood buildings have been at the foreground of innovative building practice in urban contexts for a number of years. From London to Stockholm, from Vancouver to Melbourne timber buildings of up to 20 storeys have been built, are under construction or being considered. This dynamic trend was enabled by developments in the material itself, prefabrication and more flexibility in fire regulations. The low CO2 footprint of wood - often regionally sourced - is another strong argument in its favour. This publication explains the typical construction types such as panel systems, frame and hybrid systems. An international selection of 17 case studies is documented in detail with many specially prepared construction drawings, demonstrating the range of the technology. For this expanded edition, a new outlook chapter has been added as well as eight cutting-edge projects, among them Haut Amsterdam, EDGE Südkreuz Berlin and Sara Cultural Centre in Sweden.

• Spectacular international case studies
• Specifically prepared construction drawings explain structural details
•  Authors are experienced specialists for timber construction

The book takes the reader on an intellectual adventure through a carefully curated selection of 120 places that can be understood as metaphors of contemporary global culture. Spread across all seven continents, from the depths of the ocean to outer space, these places are divided into six chapters: Paradises, Utopias, Machines, Monsters, Ruins, and Instruments.

The spectrum ranges from Steve Jobs' Apple Park in California to a national park in Costa Rica, a small field station for the protection of wild orangutans in Borneo, the Great Green Wall in Central Africa, the Trump resort Mar-a-Lago, to the border wall between Israel and Palestine. This book is a grand tour of the most pertinent places in the world today.

The architectural work of Hans and Wassili Luckhardt (1890–1954/1889–1972) is not yet adequately appreciated. As members of the Glass Chain initiative and the Ring collective, they shaped, especially through their work with Alfons Anker, the development of Modernist architecture in the 1920s, as evidenced by their winning design for the layout of Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. While their early work was anchored in utopian expressionism, a more objective attitude emerged later, based on the application of new architectural constructs.
The book documents all 40 of Hans und Wassili Luckhardt’s realized buildings. Two essays deal with the unbuilt and utopian projects. Newly taken photographs and newly drawn plans by Carsten Krohn complement the historical illustrations.

• Comprehensive documentation of the work of Hans and Wassili Luckhardt.
• With approx. 80 new photographs and 80 newly drawn plans by Carsten Krohn

Versatile wooden windows

In her book, the trained carpenter and architect Judith Resch looks at what scope still exists in modern window design and construction. The process of simplification is more difficult to achieve for windows than for most building components, since windows, due to their function, must meet high technical specifications. She presents a variety of window design projects that have one thing in common: they pursue a singular design concept using the simplest possible means. All projects are presented in detail with technical drawings and photographs.

• 10 simple wooden window designs
• From retrofitting historical windows to the possibilities of DIY design
• Precisely designed, handcrafted, highly repairable windows

30 Trees presents the favorite trees of 30 internationally renowned landscape architects. In each case, the designers describe the characteristics that represent the essence of the selected tree, the designed landscapes they associate with it, and how it was used in completed projects.

These personal insights are complemented by five scholarly essays on criteria such as typology, ecology, maintenance, and seasons that are critical in matching trees to landscapes. Additionally, the book includes a botanical description of each species mentioned.

The result is a compendium of insights into tree species and the use of trees in landscape architecture. This book will be of interest to professionals and amateurs alike.

• Compendium of the most popular trees used in landscape architecture
• Over 30 projects from around the world
• Selected by 30 international landscape architects

Frank Furness (1839-1912) has remained a curiosity to architectural historians and critics, somewhere between an icon and an enigma, whose importance and impact have yet to be properly evaluated or appreciated. To some, his work pushed pattern and proportion to extremes, undermining or forcing together the historic styles he referenced in such eclectic buildings as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania Library. To others, he was merely a regional mannerist creating an eccentric personal style that had little resonance and modest influence on the future of architecture. By placing Furness in the industrial culture that supported his work, George Thomas finds a cutting-edge revolutionary who launched the beginnings of modern design, played a key part in its evolution, and whose strategies continue to affect the built world.

In his sweeping reassessment of Furness as an architect of the machine age, Thomas grounds him in Philadelphia, a city led by engineers, industrialists, and businessmen who commissioned the buildings that extended modern design to Chicago, Glasgow, and Berlin. Thomas examines the multiple facets of Victorian Philadelphia's modernity, looking to its eager embrace of innovations in engineering, transportation, technology, and building, and argues that Furness, working for a particular cohort of clients, played a central role in shaping this context. His analyses of the innovative planning, formal, and structural qualities of Furness's major buildings identifies their designs as initiators of a narrative that leads to such more obviously modern figures as Louis Sullivan, William Price, Frank Lloyd Wright and eventually, the architects of the Bauhaus.

Misunderstood and reviled in the traditional architectural centers of New York and Boston, Furness's projects, commissioned by the progressive industrialists of the new machine age, intentionally broke with the historical styles of the past to work in a modern way—from utilizing principles based on logistical planning to incorporating the new materials of the industrial age. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes more than eighty black-and-white and thirty color photographs that highlight the richness of his work and the originality of his design spanning more than forty years.

Site, Sight, Insight presents twelve essays by John Dixon Hunt, the leading theorist and historian of landscape architecture. The collection's common theme is a focus on sites, how we see them and what we derive from that looking. Acknowledging that even the most modest landscape encounter has validity, Hunt contends that the more one knows about a site and one's own sight of it (an awareness of how one is seeing), the greater the insight. Employing the concepts, tropes, and rhetorical methods of literary analysis, he addresses the problem of how to discuss, understand, and appreciate places that are experienced through all the senses, over time and through space.

Hunt questions our intellectual and aesthetic understanding of gardens and designed landscapes and asks how these sites affect us emotionally. Do gardens have meaning? When we visit a fine garden or designed landscape, we experience a unique work of great complexity in purpose, which has been executed over a number of years—a work that, occasionally, achieves beauty. While direct experience is fundamental, Hunt demonstrates how the ways in which gardens and landscapes are communicated in word and image can be equally important. He returns frequently to a cluster of key sites and writings on which he has based much of his thinking about garden-making and its role in landscape architecture: the gardens of Rousham in Oxfordshire; Thomas Whately's Observations on Modern Gardening (1770); William Gilpin's dialogues on Stowe (1747); Alexander Pope's meditation on genius loci; the Désert de Retz; Paolo Burgi's Cardada; and the designs by Bernard Lassus and Ian Hamilton Finlay.

Jane Jacobs is universally recognized as one of the key figures in American urbanism. The author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she uncovered the complex and intertwined physical and social fabric of the city and excoriated the urban renewal policies of the 1950s. As the legend goes, Jacobs, a housewife, single-handedly stood up to Robert Moses, New York City's powerful master builder, and other city planners who sought first to level her Greenwich Village neighborhood and then to drive a highway through it. Jacobs's most effective weapons in these David-versus-Goliath battles, and in writing her book, were her powers of observation and common sense.

What is missing from such discussions and other myths about Jacobs, according to Peter L. Laurence, is a critical examination of how she arrived at her ideas about city life. Laurence shows that although Jacobs had only a high school diploma, she was nevertheless immersed in an elite intellectual community of architects and urbanists. Becoming Jane Jacobs is an intellectual biography that chronicles Jacobs's development, influences, and writing career, and provides a new foundation for understanding Death and Life and her subsequent books. Laurence explains how Jacobs's ideas developed over many decades and how she was influenced by members of the traditions she was critiquing, including Architectural Forum editor Douglas Haskell, shopping mall designer Victor Gruen, housing advocate Catherine Bauer, architect Louis Kahn, Philadelphia city planner Edmund Bacon, urban historian Lewis Mumford, and the British writers at The Architectural Review. Rather than discount the power of Jacobs's critique or contributions, Laurence asserts that Death and Life was not the spontaneous epiphany of an amateur activist but the product of a professional writer and experienced architectural critic with deep knowledge about the renewal and dynamics of American cities.

Monsters, grotesque creatures, and giants were frequently depicted in Italian Renaissance landscape design, yet they have rarely been studied. Their ubiquity indicates that gardens of the period conveyed darker, more disturbing themes than has been acknowledged.

In The Monster in the Garden, Luke Morgan argues that the monster is a key figure in Renaissance culture. Monsters were ciphers for contemporary anxieties about normative social life and identity. Drawing on sixteenth-century medical, legal, and scientific texts, as well as recent scholarship on monstrosity, abnormality, and difference in early modern Europe, he considers the garden within a broader framework of inquiry. Developing a new conceptual model of Renaissance landscape design, Morgan argues that the presence of monsters was not incidental but an essential feature of the experience of gardens.

The contributors of Policy, Planning, and People argue for the promotion of social equity and quality of life by designing and evaluating urban policies and plans. Edited by Naomi Carmon and Susan S. Fainstein, the volume features original essays by leading authorities in the field of urban planning and policy, mainly from the United States, but also from Canada, Hungary, Italy, and Israel. The contributors discuss goal setting and ethics in planning, illuminate paradigm shifts, make policy recommendations, and arrive at best practices for future planning.

Policy, Planning, and People includes theoretical as well as practice-based essays on a wide range of planning issues: housing and neighborhood, transportation, surveillance and safety, the network society, regional development and community development. Several essays are devoted to disadvantaged and excluded groups such as senior citizens, the poor, and migrant workers. The unifying themes of this volume are the values of equity, diversity, and democratic participation. The contributors discuss and draw conclusions related to the planning process and its outcomes. They demonstrate the need to look beyond efficiency to determine who benefits from urban policies and plans.

Contributors: Alberta Andreotti, Tridib Banerjee, Rachel G. Bratt, Naomi Carmon, Karen Chapple, Norman Fainstein, Susan Fainstein, Eran Feitelson, Amnon Frenkel, George Galster, Penny Gurstein, Deborah Howe, Norman Krumholz, Jonathan Levine, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Enzo Mingione, Kenneth Reardon, Izhak Schnell, Daniel Shefer, Michael Teitz, Iván Tosics, Lawrence Vale, Martin Wachs.

Like their penchant for clubs, cricket, and hunting, the planting of English gardens by the British in India reflected an understandable need on the part of expatriates to replicate home as much as possible in an alien environment. In Flora's Empire, Eugenia W. Herbert argues that more than simple nostalgia or homesickness lay at the root of this "garden imperialism," however. Drawing on a wealth of period illustrations and personal accounts, many of them little known, she traces the significance of gardens in the long history of British relations with the subcontinent. To British eyes, she demonstrates, India was an untamed land that needed the visible stamp of civilization that gardens in their many guises could convey.

Colonial gardens changed over time, from the "garden houses" of eighteenth-century nabobs modeled on English country estates to the herbaceous borders, gravel walks, and well-trimmed lawns of Victorian civil servants. As the British extended their rule, they found that hill stations like Simla offered an ideal retreat from the unbearable heat of the plains and a place to coax English flowers into bloom. Furthermore, India was part of the global network of botanical exploration and collecting that gathered up the world's plants for transport to great imperial centers such as Kew. And it is through colonial gardens that one may track the evolution of imperial ideas of governance. Every Government House and Residency was carefully landscaped to reflect current ideals of an ordered society. At Independence in 1947 the British left behind a lasting legacy in their gardens, one still reflected in the design of parks and information technology campuses and in the horticultural practices of home gardeners who continue to send away to England for seeds.

When Philadelphia's iconoclastic city planner Edmund N. Bacon looked into his crystal ball in 1959, he saw a remarkable vision: "Philadelphia as an unmatched expression of the vitality of American technology and culture." In that year Bacon penned an essay for Greater Philadelphia Magazine, originally entitled "Philadelphia in the Year 2009," in which he imagined a city remade, modernized in time to host the 1976 Philadelphia World's Fair and Bicentennial celebration, an event that would be a catalyst for a golden age of urban renewal.

What Bacon did not predict was the long, bitter period of economic decline, population dispersal, and racial confrontation that Philadelphia was about to enter. As such, his essay comes to us as a time capsule, a message from one of the city's most influential and controversial shapers that prompts discussions of what was, what might have been, and what could yet be in the city's future.

Imagining Philadelphia brings together Bacon's original essay, reprinted here for the first time in fifty years, and a set of original essays on the past, present, and future of urban planning in Philadelphia. In addition to examining Bacon and his motivations for writing the piece, the essays assess the wider context of Philadelphia's planning, architecture, and real estate communities at the time, how city officials were reacting to economic decline, what national precedents shaped Bacon's faith in grand forms of urban renewal, and whether or not it is desirable or even possible to adopt similarly ambitious visions for contemporary urban planning and economic development. The volume closes with a vision of what Philadelphia might look like fifty years from now.

The phrase "Pennsylvania German architecture" likely conjures images of either the "continental" three-room house with its huge hearth and five-plate stoves, or the huge Pennsylvania bank barn with its projecting overshoot. These and other trademarks of Pennsylvania German architecture have prompted great interest among a wide audience, from tourists and genealogists to architectural historians, antiquarians, and folklorists. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have engaged in field measurement and drawing, photographic documentation, and careful observation, resulting in a scholarly conversation about Pennsylvania German building traditions. What cultural patterns were being expressed in these buildings? How did shifting social, technological, and economic forces shape architectural changes? Since those early forays, our understanding has moved well beyond the three-room house and the forebay barn.

In Architecture and Landscape of the Pennsylvania Germans, 1720-1920, eight essays by leading scholars and preservation professionals not only describe important architectural sites but also offer original interpretive insights that will help advance understanding of Pennsylvania German culture and history. Pennsylvania Germans' lives are traced through their houses, barns, outbuildings, commercial buildings, churches, and landscapes. The essays bring to bear years of field observation as well as engagement with current scholarly perspectives on issues such as the nature of "ethnicity," the social construction of landscape, and recent historiography about the Pennsylvania Germans. Dozens of original measured drawings, appearing here for the first time in print, document important works of Pennsylvania German architecture, including the iconic Bertolet barns in Berks County, the Martin Brandt farm complex in Cumberland County, a nineteenth-century Pennsylvania German housemill, and urban houses in Lancaster.

In this work, Carl Anthony shares his perspectives as an African-American child in post-World War II Philadelphia; a student and civil rights activist in 1960s Harlem; a traveling student of West African architecture; and an architect, planner, and environmental justice advocate in Berkeley. He contextualizes this within American urbanism and human origins, making profoundly personal both African American and American urban histories as well as planetary origins and environmental issues, to not only bring a new worldview to people of color, but to set forth a truly inclusive vision of our shared planetary future.
The Earth, the City, and the Hidden Narrative of Race connects the logics behind slavery, community disinvestment, and environmental exploitation to address the most pressing issues of our time in a cohesive and foundational manner. Most books dealing with these topics and periods silo issues apart from one another, but this book contextualizes the connections between social movements and issues, providing tremendous insight into successful movement building. Anthony's rich narrative describes both being at the mercy of racism, urban disinvestment, and environmental injustice as well as fighting against these forces with a variety of strategies.
Because this work is both a personal memoir and an exposition of ideas, it will appeal to those who appreciate thoughtful and unique writing on issues of race, including individuals exploring their own African American identity, as well as progressive audiences of organizations and community leaders and professionals interested in democratizing power and advancing equitable policies for low-income communities and historically disenfranchised communities.

In the wake of the Occupy Wall Street movement, leading planers and social scientists examine public space today and freedom of assembly.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has challenged the physical manifestation of the First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly. Where and how can people congregate today? Forty social scientists, planners, architects, and civil liberties experts explore the definition, use, role, and importance of public space for the exercise of our democratic rights to free expression. The book also discusses whose voice is heard and what factors limit the participation of minorities in Occupy activities. This foundational work puts issues of democracy and civic engagement back into the center of dialogue about the built environment.

Beyond Zuccotti Park is a collaborative effort of Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, City College of New York School of Architecture, New Village Press and its parent organization, Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility. The book is part of an open civic inquiry on the part of these organizations. The project was seeded by a series of free public forums, Freedom of Assembly: Public Space Today, held at the Center for Architecture in response to the forced clearance of Occupy activities from Zuccotti Park and public plazas throughout the country. The first two recorded programs took place on December 17, 2011 and February 4, 2012.

Drawing upon a lifetime's knowledge, Patterns of Stylistic Change in Islamic Architecture presents Michael Meinecke's unique view of the evolution and development of Islamic architecture.
Departing from conventional method which groups buildings and monuments according to dynasties and defines national characteristics based on the ethnic origins of Arabic, Persian, or Turkish patrons, Meinecke emphasizes the similarities which resulted from interrelations among neighboring or far-away areas. He argues that transformations in the development of Islamic architecture can be explained by the movements of skilled craftsmen who traveled extensively in their search for challenging work, allowing for their influence to be felt across a broad region.
Meinecke's unique approach to Islamic architecture will no doubt inspire others to emulate his approach in studying other regions or areas. Few, however, will be able to attain the consummate mastery of the subject which enlivens these essays.

Liliane Wong's latest volume on adaptive reuse in architecture presents 50 spectacular conversion and reuse projects worldwide, including buildings such as the TWA Hotel at NewYork's John F. Kennedy Airport, the CaixaForum in Madrid, and the New Museum in Berlin. The projects are presented using a new classification system that addresses practitioners as well as academics. The author's introductory essay provides a comprehensive overview and historical context for the enormous evolution and expansion of adaptive reuse over the past 50 years.

• Presentation of 50 seminal and spectacular adaptive reuse projects in architecture
• New classification of a wide variety of remodeling and conversion projects
• Written by a leading expert in the field