Name: Bauakademie Berlin
Brand: Wilfried Kuehn
Price: 39.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Wilfried Kuehn

Bauakademie Berlin

$39.99

Zweisprachige Ausgabe(deutsch/englisch): Armin Linkes Nachtaufnahmen zeigen die Leerstelle der Bauakademie als
Teil einer Schinkel-Spur im Berliner Stadtraum: Die rudimentäre Replik der
Gebäudeecke provoziert Fragen nach der künftigen Nutzung und Gestalt
dieses zentralen Orts. Trotz der gegenwärtigen Bundestagsmehrheit für eine
Rekonstruktion der historischen Fassaden – analog zur gerade fertiggestellten
Schlosskopie des Humboldt Forums – gibt es unter Architekt*innen und in der
Berliner Stadtgesellschaft deutlich differenziertere Vorstellungen zum Umgang
mit der Bauakademie. Es regt sich Widerstand gegen eine Vereinnahmung
dieser wichtigen Institution und Bauaufgabe durch eine Repräsentationspolitik,
die unter dem Motto „So viel Schinkel wie möglich“ mehr historische Spuren zu
verwischen droht als sie vorgeblich sichtbar machen will. Zu einem kritischen
Zeitpunkt liefert Bauakademie Berlin konzeptuelle Perspektiven für eine zeitgenössische
Bauakademie in Form von Texten, Architekturzeichnungen und
Künstlerfotos.
Mit Texten von Sandra Bartoli, Stefanie Endlich, Tanja Scheffler,
Dubravka Sekulić, Axel Sowa, Stephan Trüby

English description: Armin Linke’s night photography reveals the vacancy of the Bauakademie as a trace of Schinkel in Berlin’s urban fabric. The rudimentary replica of the corner construction raises questions about the future use and form of this centrally located site. Despite current majority support in Parliament for a reconstruction of the historical envelope―analogous to the recently completed Humboldt Forum―there are clearly more differentiated ideas among architects and urban society in Berlin about the future of the Bauakademie building. There is strong resistance to the appropriation of this important institution and building task by representational politics, that actually threaten to obscure more historical traces than they are supposed to make visible with the motto “As much Schinkel as possible”. At this important moment, Bauakademie Berlin offers conceptual perspectives for a contemporary Bauakademie in the form of texts, architectural drawings, and artist’s photographs.

With texts by Sandra Bartoli, Stefanie Endlich, Philipp Oswalt, Tanja Scheffler, Dubravka Sekulić, Axel Sowa, Stephan Trüby, and Andreas Zeese. Photographs by Armin Linke and Gili Merin

Monika Markgraf

Archäologie der Moderne

$36.99

The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius in 1926, represents a "built manifesto of Bauhaus ideas" and is one of modernism’s most important buildings. Together with the associated Masters’ Houses (Meisterhäuser), the Houses with Balcony Access (Laubenganghäuser) in Dessau, and Bauhaus buildings in Weimar and Bernau, it is included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List. The book focuses on strategies for preserving the Bauhaus Building. It presents the building—and its eventful history—from its construction to its destruction, rebuilding, and restoration. Using texts, photographs, and numerous blueprints, the book provides a detailed exploration of specific aspects of the architecture—such as the building’s outer shell, materials, construction, color scheme, and surfaces—and the long-term preservation concept for the site. In doing so, it proposes structural measures aimed at adapting the building to today’s challenges and at conserving the building with its historic and artistic characteristics.

Archaeology of Modernism. Preservation Bauhaus Dessau is the revised and expanded edition of Archaeology of Modernism. Renovation Bauhaus Dessau, which was published by JOVIS as Volume 23 of the EDITION BAUHAUS series in 2006. This new edition is presented as Volume 58.

Stefanie Bürkle

MigraTouriSpace

$43.99

MigraTouriSpace is an artistic examination of travelling as an approach to the phenomena of migration and tourism, and of the many ways in which they overlap. Understanding that when people travel they also take with them spaces and images means that tourism no longer inevitably refers to the vacation as an exceptional state. Brought back home, the tourist’s gaze has long operated to shape everyday life. For three years, artist Stefanie Bürkle and her interdisciplinary team travelled between Berlin and South Korea, photographing and filming. The result of this research is an atlas of images, with places such as the Vietnamese wholesale market Dong Xuan Center in Berlin Lichtenberg and the German Village, Dogil Maeul, in South Korea, that demonstrates the tension between a migration of culturally coded spatial contexts and post-touristic practices. With a preface by Martina Löw

Olaf Bartels

Hamburg - Positions, Plans, Projects

$40.00

Hamburg is growing. Germany’s largest port city is preparing to have a population of around two million residents by 2030. For some time now, the city has been pursuing an ambitious construction programme, focusing on internal city development: the new buildings on the northern banks of the Elbe, HafenCity or the “Sprung über die Elbe” (Leap across the Elbe) initiative stand for development strategies on a grand scale. How should Hamburg continue to develop? What priorities will be set in the future? Hamburg’s urban development planning is placing a new emphasis on the city’s peripheries and the urban spaces along its Magistralen (arterial corridors): post-war modernist housing developments are to be upgraded in order to preserve affordable housing and provide modern workplaces. The goal is an effective mix of uses and a new urban quality of life. This book portrays Hamburg in the international discourse of city development and presents important projects and protagonists from the fields of architecture, urban planning and landscape design.

Joachim Thiel

Constructing Innovation: How Large-Scale Projects Drive Novelty in the Construction Industry

$34.99

Die Baubranche zeichnet sich nicht gerade durch Innovationskraft aus, auch eilt Großprojekten selten der Ruf voraus, Neues zu generieren. Vielmehr sind sie dafur bekannt, dass sie in der Regel bezogen auf die Leistungsindikatoren des Projektmanagements – Zeit und Kosten – scheitern. Und doch hat der Bausektor im Laufe seiner Geschichte immer wieder die Einfuhrung neuer Technologien und Techniken erlebt, oftmals befördert durch Großprojekte wie den Eiffelturm oder das Opernhaus in Sydney. Das vorliegende Buch beleuchtet diesen Aspekt von Großprojekten. Der Band ist das Ergebnis einer interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit von Wissenschaftler*innen aus den Bereichen Sozialwissenschaft und Bauwesen. Anhand von sechs vertiefenden Fallstudien zu jüngst realisierten Großprojekten in Deutschland nähern sich die Kapitel aus unterschiedlichen disziplinären und konzeptionellen Perspektiven der Frage an, welchen Beitrag diese Bauten zur Generierung und Verbreitung von Innovationen geleistet haben.

Constructing Innovation: How Large-Scale Projects Drive Novelty in the Construction Industry

Monika Markgraf

Archaeology of Modernism

$36.99

The Bauhaus Building in Dessau, designed by Walter Gropius in 1926, represents a "built manifesto of Bauhaus ideas" and is one of modernism’s most important buildings. Together with the associated Masters’ Houses (Meisterhäuser), the Houses with Balcony Access (Laubenganghäuser) in Dessau, and Bauhaus buildings in Weimar and Bernau, it is included in UNESCO’s World Heritage List. The book focuses on strategies for preserving the Bauhaus Building. It presents the building—and its eventful history—from its construction to its destruction, rebuilding, and restoration. Using texts, photographs, and numerous blueprints, the book provides a detailed exploration of specific aspects of the architecture—such as the building’s outer shell, materials, construction, color scheme, and surfaces—and the long-term preservation concept for the site. In doing so, it proposes structural measures aimed at adapting the building to today’s challenges and at conserving the building with its historic and artistic characteristics.

Archaeology of Modernism. Preservation Bauhaus Dessau is the revised and expanded edition of Archaeology of Modernism. Renovation Bauhaus Dessau, which was published by JOVIS as Volume 23 of the EDITION BAUHAUS series in 2006. This new edition is presented as Volume 58.

Falk Schneemann

Das Hochhaus als Gewebe von Gestaltung und Technik

$44.00

The construction of high-rise buildings is often accompanied by highly emotional debate. On the one hand, this building type is seen as a solution for the current challenges facing cities; on the other, it is viewed as aesthetically unacceptable or as an expression of undesirable gentrification. Modern designs demonstrate a typological fatigue that stands in stark contrast to the structural richness of the high-rises of past decades. Referring to a catalogue of 100 projects, Falk Schneemann provides a critical overview of the development of high-rises in West Germany between 1945 and 1980. By taking both a philosophical and developmental approach to the technology involved, he identifies breaks with tradition and moments of innovation that contribute to a foundational understanding of this type of building and enable a better assessment of current developments.

Das Hochhaus als Gewebe von Gestaltung und Technik

Heike Rahmann

The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture

$40.00

This book provides one of the first comprehensive discussions of contemporary landscape architecture practice across the Asian region. Bringing together established designers, writers, and thinkers with those of the new generation, Jillian Walliss and Heike Rahmann explore what it means to design, do business, and think about nature, space, and urbanism with an Asian sensibility. Through a tripartite structure of Continuum, Interruption, and Speed, The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture develops ways for conceiving design around these three characteristics that simultaneously influence an Asian practice. A dynamic structure allows readers to dip into content, rather than progress in a linear manner. Each section begins with a positioning essay, which offer theoretical, cultural, and political contextualisation for the more focused academic writing, shorter reflections, practice interviews, photo essays and design projects which are interwoven in a unique graphic design. Featuring over eighty design projects, The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture’s significance extends well beyond Asia, offering fresh perspectives for a field that has traditionally been dominated by North American and European influences.

The Big Asian Book of Landscape Architecture

Internationales Doktorandenkolleg - Forschungslabor Raum

Crossing Borders - Activating Space

$40.00

The challenges of spatial development in Europe can only be met through transdisciplinary cooperation. In a continent that is dynamically changing and undergoing complex processes of transformation, new and integrated methods for planning and design are needed to strengthen cohesion between Europe’s countries and regions. This book focuses on current issues of landscape and residential development, mobility, demography, energy, and climate, as well as on material flows—and on the spatial manifestation of all these phenomena. The contributions deal with topics such as the labor and housing markets and their increased integration, or concepts of infrastructure and landscape planning in border regions. Under the guiding theme of Crossing Borders—Activating Spaces, the book explores possibilities of cross-border concepts and strategies, while also testing tools and procedures apt for this task.

Xiaoxuan Lu

Interstitial Hong Kong

$38.00

Enmeshed in Hong Kong’s densely woven urban fabric, wedged between its towering mixed-use complexes and perched along its steep hillsides, sits a network of more than 500 miniature public parks comprising the smallest unit of the city’s public open space network. Though plentiful, these so-called Sitting-out Areas – referred to locally as 三角屎坑 (literally: a “three-cornered shit pit”) – have never been considered in terms of the collective resource they have the potential to be. This book presents a series of critical essays revealing the city’s Sitting-out Areas in relation to Hong Kong’s planning histories and shifting terrains, while also tracking how these spatial fragments have been shaped by concepts of publicness, accessibility and regulation. The second half of the book presents 44 richly illustrated case studies revealing the variety and idiosyncrasies of Hong Kong’s smallest open spaces. Ultimately, the book argues that we can understand the high-density city not only through its buildings, but through the character and potency of its interstitial landscapes.

Monika Markgraf

Archäologie der Moderne / Archaeology of Modernism

$34.99

Das Bauhausgebäude in Dessau, 1926 von Walter Gropius geplant, gilt heute als 'gebautes Manifest der Bauhaus-Ideen' und zählt zu den bedeutendsten Bauten der Moderne. Zusammen mit den Meisterhäusern in Dessau sowie den Bauten in Weimar wurde es 1996 in die Liste des Weltkulturerbes bei der UNESCO aufgenommen. Das Bauhaus wurde zwischen 1996 und 2006 vollständig saniert. Ziel dabei war es, den Ansprüchen der heutigen Nutzung gerecht zu werden, aber vor allem den historischen und künstlerischen Wert des Gebäudes zu bewahren und wieder sichtbar zu machen. Intentionen, Methoden und Ergebnisse werden in diesem Buch ausführlich dokumentiert. Auch die auffällige farbliche Gestaltung von Oberflächen, die entgegen der landläufigen Vorstellung von der 'weißen Moderne' gerade bei den Dessauer Bauten eine große Rolle spielte, war ein wichtiges Ergebnis der Sanierungsarbeiten.

Archäologie der Moderne / Archaeology of Modernism

Leonard Grosch

Designing Parks

$39.95

Landscape architecture can be more than aesthetically innovative: it can contribute to integration in society, social stability, and a vibrant public life. But how does a park become an intensively used stage, a well-visited everyday location? What constitutes the “boon of life” (Jane Jacobs)? And what makes a park urban?

The Park am Gleisdreieck in Berlin—developed between 2007 and 2014—was initiated by citizens and built in dialogue with them. This publication presents the principles underlying its design. They form a toolbox for big city parks that can be used in diverse ways, stimulate interaction, and appeal to the senses. Furthermore, the book situates the park within the contemporary work of landscape architecture and shows how visitors perceive the park and its atmospheres. Overall, this work lays out the design elements that model a successful citizens’ park in the twenty-first century: Many voices have contributed to its development; its design is dynamically complex, and the park invites change and appropriation.

Christoph Metzger

Neuroarchitecture

$35.00

Architectural spaces are anchors for our memory. We find our place in the room by means of our sensory perception; the brain makes use of surfaces and spatial systems in order to store and organize the world we live in. The understanding of this principle forms the basis for the transfer of the results of recent neuroscientific research to architectural practice, as discussed in this book.

Neuroarchitecture links neuroscience, perception theory, and Gestalt psychology, as well as music, art, and architecture, into a holistic approach that focuses on the laws of structure formation and the movement of the individual within the architectural space. Christoph Metzger, the author of Building for Dementia and Architecture and Resonance, analyses buildings designed by Alvar Aalto, Sou Fujimoto, Hugo Häring, Philip Johnson, Hermann Muthesius, Juhani Pallasmaa, James Stirling, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Peter Zumthor in the context of the Amsterdam School of Architecture and their criticism of functionalism in order to develop bases and criteria for a modern, people-related architecture that is indebted to neuroscientific knowledge.

Wolfgang Förster

The Vienna Model 2

$38.00

Vienna is known throughout the world as the capital of social housing. Since the 1920s, the Austrian metropolis has indeed developed a unique system of subsidized housing construction independently of the “free” market, accommodating more than 60 percent of its population today. The Vienna Model 2. Housing for the City of the 21st Century, which is the book accompanying the successful exhibition of the same name, analyzes the latest developments in housing and documents 50 projects in Vienna from recent years. It shows how technical, ecological, and social qualities are continuously developed further as part of a broad participatory process, thereby setting new standards. The spectrum ranges from the revitalization of neighborhoods to the planning of new city districts. Moreover, The Vienna Model 2 describes the international building exhibition IBA_Vienna 2022 with the theme “New Social Housing.” In parallel, Sorcha Edwards and Cédric Van Styvendael analyze the current challenges and possible solutions to the issue of housing in the European Union. Sasha Tsenkova, in turn, presents the Canadian approaches to creating affordable living space. The essay by Mladen Jadric provides an overview of social housing in China, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and South Korea. William Menking analyzes New York’s public housing and its relation to Vienna. With 250 illustrations and graphics, the status quo for building innovative Viennese housing forms is captured in this volume.

Linda Pense

I Am All Of Glass

$24.00

The topic of the 7th international Marianne Brandt Award—“I am all of glass”—quotes a poem by the Bauhaus member, designer, and artist. This bilingual volume does more than merely present the sixty competition entries: accompanying texts convey the utopian charge held by glass as a material in Modernism. Linda Pense, for example, writes about historical “glass states” that continue to be inspiring today. Freyja Hartzell reflects on the ways in which fantasies of glass shaped the foundational vision of Bauhaus. Using the artist Josef Albers as an example, Jeannette Redensek illustrates the metaphorical and functional importance of glass in Bauhaus design. The tension between poetry and functionality, which also characterizes the competition entries, demonstrates that glass remains a concept and material that fascinates us to this day.

Fabienne Louyot

What Is Co-Dividuality?

$38.00

How architects are designing for communal living in a country enduring the diminishment of private space: Japan

This book explores the concept of “co-dividuality,” an architecture that expresses a new response to joint living in the age of post-individualism, social media and the sharing economy. The focus lies on current and contemporary experimentation in Japanese architecture presenting thematic homes with shared spaces designed as a result of warm, simple, fun and contemporary design reflections. In addition to their private room, the co-tenants have large common areas where they can practice urban farming, create a start-up, cook together or experience new spatial ergonomics. The book offers an overview not only on domestic space but also on projects characterized by a multifarious mix between public and private spheres. What Is Co-Dividuality? reflects on how we might want to live tomorrow.

The book includes projects by Kengo Kuma, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Shigeru Ban, Sou Fujimoto, Satoko Shinohara, Ayano Uchimura, Taichi Kuma, Junya Ishigami, Suppose Design, Naruse Inokuma and others.

Regina Bittner

Transiträume / Transit Spaces

$40.99

Transitraum" ist eine Metapher für die überaus komplexen gesellschaftlichen und räumlichen Umbrüche in Mittel- und Osteuropa, die mit dem Zusammenbruch des „Eisernen Vorhangs“ verbunden sind. In Folge gesellschaftlicher Transformation in den ehemaligen sozialistischen Ländern und einem damit einhergehenden globalen Strukturwandel folgten radikale Veränderungen auch im urbanen Raum. Darüber hinaus hat die EU-Osterweiterung 2004 das komplexe Gefüge der Grenzgeografien in Osteuropa erneut radikal beeinflusst.
Die Publikation „Transiträume“ beschäftigt sich mit postsozialistischer Urbanisierung. Am Beispiel ausgewählter Stationen entlang eines Korridors Berlin – Moskau bietet der Band überraschende Einsichten in die Neuformierung der Räume entlang der deutsch-polnischen Grenze, verfolgt veränderte Handelswege oder fragt nach der Neujustierung von Nachbarschaft und dem sozialen Sinn russischer Plattenbausiedlungen.
Ergänzt werden die im Rahmen des internationalen Bauhaus Kollegs V entstandenen Studien durch Beiträge zum osteuropäischen Kapitalismus, zum Wandel der populären Kultur oder zu neuen Mustern von Re- bzw. Suburbanisierung. Damit können die Fallstudien und Reflexionen nicht nur aktuelle Einsichten in die unterschiedlichen Transformationspfade dieser Städte vermitteln, sondern sie werfen auch die Frage auf, inwieweit sich hier bereits Prozesse im Zeitraffer vollziehen, mit denen die westeuropäische Stadtentwicklung in Zukunft konfrontiert sein wird.

Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei GmbH & Co KG

Lederer + Ragnarsdóttir + Oie 1

$48.99

Architects Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei have been specialized in architecture for more than three decades, consistently adhering to the guiding principle: “First the city, then the house.” This involves the following key issues: How can a new building be integrated in such a way that the district also benefits from it? How can it be made to interact optimally with the city? In what ways can it improve the urban qualities of its particular location? As a result, they create trend-setting and forward-looking buildings, which distinguish themselves not only by their architectural standards, but also by their sensitive interaction with their architectural and cultural contexts.

Lederer Ragnarsdóttir Oei also examine the qualities of existing buildings and translate them into a modern form language. The use of robust and high-quality materials ensures that the current requirements for resource-efficient and sustainable architecture are met. This publication documents the successful creative work of one of the best-known German architecture offices, through 46 completed projects in the areas of residential, commercial and institutional architecture.

Europan Deutschland e. V.

Europan 15:The Productive City 2

$40.00

The disintegration of European cities and the loss of identity threatened by this decay is proceeding at a seemingly unstoppable rate. Europan 15 is dedicated to the Productive City and seeks to identify concepts for synergies between living and working in the future. The theme focuses on three key issues: resources, mobility, and equity. Communal approaches to solutions that rethink cities and take social and ecological questions into account are at the forefront of the project. Since 1988, the Europan Association has promoted the exchange of ideas in the field of innovative housing and city planning among European countries. It hosts one of the most important competitions for up-and-coming young architects globally. This catalogue compiles the competition entries for sites in Germany as well as the German winners for the 2019 sites in Europe.

Tom Kaden

GAM. 17

$22.99

As an organic building material, wood is held in particularly high esteem in this age of climate crisis. A component of environmentally friendly resource cycles, wood demonstrates its innovative potential when used in new technological developments and hybrid applications that are suited to complex, modern architectural tasks. We have only just started reimagining wood as a cutting-edge, versatile building material of the future.

GAM. 17 takes a new look at wood—at its multi-faceted nature and architectural possibilities— and proposes building and design concepts that fully utilize the material’s potential for a more climate-friendly construction industry. This is further complemented by a look back at the history of building with wood and the ideological entanglements that have long stood in the way of the further development of wood as a building material.

With contributions by Reyner Banham, Urs Hirschberg, Anne Isopp, Jens Ludloff, Laila Seewang, Stephan Trüby, Anselm Wagner, and others

Rafael A. Herrin-Ferri

All The Queens Houses

$25.99

The borough of Queens has long been celebrated as the melting pot of America. It was the birthplace of North American religious freedom in the seventeenth century, hosted two World’s Fairs in the twentieth, and is currently home to over a million foreign-born residents participating in the American experience. In 2013, Spanish-born artist and architect Rafael Herrin-Ferri began to paint a portrait of the “World’s Borough”—not with images of its diverse population, or its celebrated international food scene, but with photographs of its highly idiosyncratic housing stock. While All the Queens Houses is mainly a photography book celebrating the broad range of housing styles in New York City’s largest and most diverse county, it is also a not-so-subtle endorsement of a multicultural community that mixes global building traditions into the American vernacular, and by so doing breathes new life into its architecture and surrounding urban context.

With an introductory essay by Joseph Heathcott

Isabelle Doucet

Activism at Home

$49.00

Activism at Home offers a unique study of architects’ own dwellings; homes purposely designed to express social, political, economic, and cultural critiques. Through thirty case studies by architectural scholars, this book highlights different forms of activism at home from the early twentieth century to today. The architect- led experiments in activist living discussed in this book include the dwellings of Ralph Erskine, Paulo Mendes Da Rocha, Charles Moore, Flora Ruchat-Roncati, Kiyoshi Seike, and many others. Offering candid appraisals of alternative living solutions that formulate a response to rising real estate prices, economic inequality, social alienation, and mounting environmental and cultural challenges, Activism at Home is more than a historical study; it is an appeal to architects to use the discipline’s tools to their full potential, and a plea to scholars to continue bringing architecture's activist practices into focus—whether at home or elsewhere.

Cristina Bianchetti

Bodies

$26.00

The European tradition of urbanism has two main lines. The more influential of these clearly addresses the “place” as the limit of architectural and urban design. We cannot conceive of life without profound roots in places. The other traditional line in urbanism gravitates around the “body”. Although not as influential, it suggests a different approach to modern urbanism. The perspective developed here questions what happens in-between the “body” and “space”. To do this, the “body” is understood as a transit channel between space and the urban project. The book unfolds a critical reading of contemporary architectural design and urbanism and critiques the way design refers to “space” using the “body”. In doing so, it delves into the debates of architecture and urban planning of the eighties, as well as their ambiguous relationship with politics.

Francesco Garutti

The Things Around Us:51N4E and Rural Urban Framework

$30.00

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.

The Things Around Us:51N4E and Rural Urban Framework

Gustavo Ambrosini

Roofscape Design

$32.99

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.