Architecture

Embedded in politically and economically charged sites in the Pearl River Delta, Mongolia, and the European Union, 51N4E (Johan Anrys and Freek Persyn) and Rural Urban Framework (Joshua Bolchover and John Lin) operate in expanded ecologies of architectural practice, questioning the role of the architect today. By collaborating with policymakers, local contractors, and NGOs, and by engaging their respective labs at ETH Zürich and the University of Hong Kong as key research locations, both offices investigate new forms of cooperation and dialogue as crucial strategies for design. 51N4E and RUF work at the seams of urbanization, with projects situated in transitional settlements in Ulaanbaatar, the rural regions of China, the transforming neighborhoods of Brussels, and Albania’s shifting public spaces. This publication compares their research and design processes in order to question the extents and certainties of architecture against backdrops of indeterminate notions of citizenship, unstable stages of urbanization, and insecure economies and ecologies.

As focus shifts to “no net land take” city regeneration approaches one of the main traditional elements of architecture—the roof—is gaining renewed prominence. This book provides a survey of worldwide experiences of city rooftop re-use strategies such as building-on and integrating new volumes within the existing buildings. Twenty-four case studies illustrate a multiplicity of projects that innovate on traditional typologies by offering multiple ways of living, working and using public services in the city. They all share a symbiotic method that exploits the extraordinariness of the “top condition” offered by the roof to foster a subtle change in the whole building's urban identity. They test new technologies for light and quick construction methods in order to deal with structural constraints and the needs of inhabitants. City roofscape redesign belongs to an adaptive attitude based on knowledge of the dynamic process of transformation of the physical realm, far removed from regressive preservation-only behavior. It represents a remarkable way of coping with urban regeneration issues.

This book, conceived as a road trip, leads through the fascinating architectural heritage from the time of the tourism boom and of the Cold War in Croatia. Along the Adriatic high way, the picturesque coastal road from the 1960s, impressive hotel complexes and secret military posts emerged at the same time, which today share a similar fate: as ruins with a sea view. The authors from the Housing and Design research department at TU Vienna outline routes to these hidden architectures, describe their development, their role in the non-aligned state of Yugoslavia, their decline, and their transformation. Eight removable folding maps examine special phenomena of the coastal area and make the book a practical guide on the journey to the hidden gems of the Croatian Adriatic coast.

The history of housing can also be told as the (cultural) history of a city from its agricultural settlement by the Celts to the social housing of the present. Within this dual history, political and economic developments, as well as social norms, came to be reflected in forms of housing that, at the end of the twentieth century, increasingly drew critique. Under the influence of international developments, this has led to the diversity characterizing society and housing construction today. In this book, Wolfgang Förster—initiator of the International Building Exhibition “Vienna: New Social Housing”—explores how the sociocultural history of a city can be told through the development of its housing.