"This is a tale of murdered prostitutes and exhumed nuns, of still-born babies and live chickens cast in plaster, of patches of skin removed without anaesthetic from young men, of cholera, alcoholism, riot arson and death-by-tram, at the centre of which there is a celibate, vegetarian, devout man who liked lettuce dipped in milk for lunch…
'Evening Standard'

For many Gaudi's unique architecture 'is' Barcelona. But little is known about the shadowy figure behind the swirling, vivid buildings that inspired the surrealists. Contemporary accounts describe an effete dandy who dressed like a tramp, a revolutionary patriot arrested in a pro-Catalan riot dressed like a tramp age 73, and a hermit who chose lifelong celibacy, rejected by the woman he loved. This masterly biography is the first to untangle his paradoxes, bringing the obsessions of both man and architect powerfully to life, against the changing backdrop of Catalonia.

"A terrifically stirring biography…van Hensbergen animates ideas with narrative drive. Buildings are his characters."
'New York Times'

"'Gaudi' brings vividly alive for the first time the Catalan cultural and political background that is the key to understanding Gaudi"
'Sunday Telegraph'

"The most definitive work on the architect"
'Art Review'

"A soaring biography, meticulously researched, elegantly organised, fluidly and lucidly written"
'Chicago Tribune'

"At the end [of reading 'Gaudi' I felt like jumping on a jet to Barcelona, imagination at full stretch, rosary in hand"
'Guardian'

Queer Sites in Global Contexts showcases a variety of cross-cultural perspectives that foreground the physical and online experiences of LGBTQ+ people living in the Caribbean, South and North America, the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. The individual chapters-a collection of research-based texts by scholars around the world-provide twelve compelling case studies: queer sites that include buildings, digital networks, natural landscapes, urban spaces, and non-normative bodies. By prioritizing divergent histories and practices of queer life in geographies that are often othered by dominant queer studies in the West-female sex workers, people of color, indigenous populations, Latinx communities, trans identities, migrants-the book constructs thoroughly situated, nuanced discussions on queerness through a variety of research methods. The book presents tangible examples of empirical research and practice-based work in the fields of queer and gender studies; geography, architectural, and urban theory; and media and digital culture. Responding to the critical absence surrounding experiences of non-White queer folk in Western academia, Queer Sites in Global Contexts acts as a timely resource for scholars, activists, and thinkers interested in queer placemaking practices-both spatial and digital-of diverse cultures.

The new Hospital Project in Venice was one of the most important works of Le Corbusier that has never been built. The death of the Swiss architect marked the end of one of the most exciting and dangerous experiments in the most spectacular city in the world. The new hospital's design in Venice was an acrobatic and audacious exercise that could have changed how Venice, the ever-still lagoon city, was perceived. This is the story of an unfinished masterpiece, the last shaped by Le Corbusier, and the intuition that allowed the most modern architect to shape the most modern project. Text but also the sharp description of the project by architectural design. Seventy-five original drawings describe and render the unfinished masterpiece of the French master. The project is interpreted, redesigned and described by consulting the massive archive and through the well known graphic techniques used by Ilios for all of its books. Original text and notes take the reader through a fantastic tour into one of the most crucial modern architecture projects. Examining one of the most important, unbuilt project of Le Corbusier Includes 44 photos and 75 drawings Written in English and Italian Print run of 300 copies

This book explores Louis I. Kahn's approach to tradition as revealed in two of his important, unbuilt, projects. Focusing on Kahn's designs for the Dominican Motherhouse of St. Catherine de Ricci, Media, Pennsylvania (1965-1969), and the Hurva Synagogue, Jerusalem, Israel (1967-1974), the book challenges prevailing aesthetic and methodological assessments of Kahn's use of tradition. It reveals how an authentic and critical theoretical-historical and humanistic study of tradition nourished Kahn's designs, enabling him to mediate historical rituals, ideas and beliefs - and to develop innovative designs rooted deep in human culture while addressing real modern concerns. The book evaluates Kahn's works as a creative recreation and re-interpretation of the past, shedding light on the potential value of the meaningful consideration of tradition in modern times.

A major overview of Skylab’s built works, from show-stopping residences to high-profile cultural projects, presented via a covetable book design that takes its inspiration from an album or LP. Skylab: The Nature of Buildings is the first monograph of the Portland, Oregon-based architecture and design studio. Founded by Jeff Kovel in 1999, Skylab has emerged as a leading creative force in the Pacific Northwest and North America. At the vanguard of innovative and sustainable design, the practice is known for a range of spectacular residences designed for leading creatives, as well as distinctive music venues, resorts, and other high-profile projects, including the N M Bodecker Foundation, Nike’s Serena Williams Building, and the Columbia Building. Presenting more than two decades of work, the story of Skylab is told by several influential contributors through reflective essays, interviews, conversations and anecdotes, as well as extensive project photography and illustrations that detail the firm’s design process. A uniquely crafted object, the book’s design is based on the concept of a double vinyl album, with four 'sides' (A, B, C, D), ten projects 'tracks', inside front- and back-cover gatefolds, and nine project 'interlude' foldout posters in the book. 'Our work balances on three themes: narrative, strategy, and regeneration', Kovel writes in the book’s Preface. 'Narrative is the "what" — a design process based on telling compelling stories. Strategy is the "how" — innovating best practices through construction and market intelligence. Regeneration is the "why" — our north star and the legacy of our work, defined by designing with nature as a partner, seeking to rebalance the relationship with land, time and people. This was the bedrock meaning behind our practice when we started in 1999, and it continues to this day.'

This book explores the notion of affective space in relation to architecture. It helps to clarify the first-person, direct experience of the environment and how it impacts a person's emotional states, influencing their perception of the world around them. Affective space has become a central notion in several discussions across philosophy, geography, anthropology, architecture and so on. However, only a limited selection of its key features finds resonance in architectural and urban theory, especially the idea of atmospheres, through the work of German phenomenologist Gernot Boehme. This book brings to light a wider range of issues bound to lived corporeal experience. These further issues have only received minor attention in architecture, where the discourse on affective space mostly remains superficial. The theory of atmospheres, in particular, is often criticized as being a surface-level, shallow theory as it is introduced in an unsystematic and fragmented fashion, and is a mere "easy to use" segment of what is a wider and all but impressionistic analytical method. This book provides a broader outlook on the topic and creates an entry point into a hitherto underexplored field. The book's theoretical foundation rests on a wide range of non-architectural sources, primarily from philosophy, anthropology and the cognitive sciences, and is strengthened through cases drawn from actual architectural and urban space. These cases make the book more comprehensible for readers not versed in contemporary philosophical trends.

This book traces the development of John Hejduk's architectural career, using the idea of "exorcism" to uncover his thought process when examining architectural designs. His work encouraged profound questioning on what, why and how we build, which allowed for more open discourse and enhance the phenomenology found in architectural experiences. Three distinct eras in his architectural career are applied to analogies of outlines, apparitions and angels throughout the book across seven chapters. Using these thematic examples, the author investigates the progression of thought and depth inside the architect's imagination by studying key projects such as the Texas houses, Wall House, Architectural Masques and his final works. Featuring comments by Gloria Fiorentino Hejduk, Stanley Tigerman, Steven Holl, Zaha Hadid, Charles Jencks, Phyllis Lambert, Juhani Pallasmaa, Toshiko Mori and others, this book brings to life the intricacies in the mind of John Hejduk, and would be beneficial for those interested in architecture and design in the 20th century.

This book examines the idea of organism in the work of Louis I. Kahn, from the turning point of Rome to the project for Venice. It presents an original interpretation of the work of Kahn during one of the most fruitful periods of his career, when he was working on a particular design method based on an entirely novel way of interacting with the past. Beginning with a meticulous documentation and analysis of Kahn's experiences in the twenty years from 1930 to 1950, the book sheds new light on the relationship between Kahn's work and the modern movement. The arguments are supported by case studies, including that of the Palazzo dei Congressi in Venice based on Kahn's words (like his lessons in Venice at IUA, International University of Art, in 1971) and others as the Trenton Bath House, the Salk Institute (La Jolla), the Kimbell Museum (Fort Worth), the Yale Gallery and the Mellon Center for British Art (New Haven) and more. Unlike much of the by now well-established literature on Kahn's work, Louis I. Kahn in Rome and Venice suggests that the basic premise of Kahn's invention is the idea of spatial, constructive organism, which explains how he created forms that were inextricably anchored in the past, without imitating any one kind of ancient architecture. The main objective of the book is to explain Kahn's methodology to architects and students, showing how he was able to design an architectural object with the characteristics of the best designed objects: organisms, in which each part contributes, with the whole, to creating "something made of indivisible parts".

This is a graphic novel about the contemporary architectural profession, in which it acts as the protagonist in the form of an imaginary city called Practiceopolis. The novel narrates quasi-realistic stories that exaggerate the architectural everyday and the tacit, in order to make them prominent and tangible. They depict and dramatise the value conflicts between the different cultures of practising architecture and between the architectural profession and other members of the building industry as political conflicts around the future of Practiceopolis. The book uses the metaphorical world of Practiceopolis to provoke big questions about everyday routines in the profession that practitioners may take for granted and to examine different ideologies at work among architects and other members of the construction industry. The novel ends in the tradition of dystopian worlds common in a certain strand of graphic novels. By vividly illustrating and narrating the critical issues he interrogates, the author has created a world which any architect, student or professional, will both instantly recognise and simultaneously reject, provoking the reader to challenge themselves and the profession at large.

Dynamic Cartography analyses the works of Rudolf Laban, Lawrence Halprin, Anne Bogart, Adolphe Appia, Cedric Price, Joan Littlewood, and Helio Oiticica. They are practitioners who have worked on different areas of enquiry from the existing relations between body and space through movement, events, or actions but whose work has never been presented from this perspective or in this context. The work and methodologies set up by these practitioners enable us to develop a practice-based exploration. Some of the experiments in the book - Micro-actions I and II - explore the presence of the body in the space. In Kinetography I and II, Laban's dance notation system - kinetography - is used to create these dynamic cartographies. Kinetography III proposes the analysis of an urban public space through the transcription of the body movement contained on it. The series Dynamic Cartographies I, II, and III analyses movement in geometrically controlled spaces through the Viewpoints techniques by Anne Bogart. Finally, Wooosh! and Trellick Tales present two projects in which performance is applied in order to analyse and understand urban and architectural space.

This book discusses architectural excellence in Islamic societies drawing on textual and visual materials, from the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT, developed over more than three decades. At the core of the discussion are the efforts, processes, and outcomes of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (AKAA). The AKAA recognises excellence in architectural and urban interventions within cities and settlements in the Islamic world which are continuously challenged by dramatic changes in economies, societies, political systems, decision-making, and environmental requirements. Architectural Excellence in Islamic Societies responds to the recurring question about the need for architectural awards, arguing that they are critical to validating the achievements of professional architects while making their contributions more widely acknowledged by the public. Through analysis and critique of over sixty awarded and shortlisted projects from over thirty-five countries, this book provides an expansive look at the history of the AKAA through a series of narratives on the enduring values of architecture, architectural and urban conservation, built environment sustainability, and architectural pluralism and multiple modernities. Architectural Excellence in Islamic Societies will appeal to professionals and academics, researchers, and upper-level students in architectural history and theory and built environment related fields.

This book considers the architect Le Corbusier's encounters with Australia and New Zealand as a two-way exchange, showing the impact of his ideas and projects on architects of the region whilst also revealing counterinfluences on Le Corbusier in his post-war career that were activated by his contacts. Compiled from detailed archival research undertaken at the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, and nationally based archives, Le Corbusier in the Antipodes brings together a set of episodes placing them in context with the history of modern art, architecture and urbanism in 20th century Australia and New Zealand. Key exchanges between Le Corbusier and others never before described are presented and analyzed, including Le Corbusier's contact with Australian architect Harry Seidler at Chandigarh, Le Corbusier's drawing of the plan of Adelaide in 1950 and his creative collaboration with Jorn Utzon on art for the Sydney Opera House. This book also includes analysis of previously unseen Le Corbusier artworks, which formed part of the Utzon family collection. In reading these personal and contingent moments of encounter, the book puts forward new ways of understanding the dissemination and mediation of Le Corbusier's ideas and their effects in post-war Australia and New Zealand. These antipodean contacts are set against the broader story of Le Corbusier's career, questioning received interpretations of his design methods and current assumptions about the influence of his work in national contexts beyond Europe.

A major overview of Singapore's most exciting architecture practice, documenting the complete corpus of WOHA's pioneering sustainable and built work. WOHA is at the vanguard of urban and ecological revitalization in Singapore and a pioneer of Southeast Asia's green-building revolution. Founded by Wong Mun Summ and Richard Hassell in 1994, Singapore's most dynamic architecture studio is known for delivering innovative and sustainable design solutions to combat the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and urbanization. Even within Singapore's leading-edge architecture scene, WOHA have broken new ground, and they are continuing to do so in our rapidly expanding cities where far-sighted thinking is imperative to sustainable and sociable development. Its projects stretch from Singapore to Bangladesh, China and Australia, where the practice's ambitions are being realized in works like the self-sufficient Punggol Digital District in Singapore. This complete overview documents WOHA's pioneering sustainable and built work, with important ongoing projects followed by a listed chronology. It is a timely assessment of the practical realization of WOHA's theories and principles, and the environmental responsibilities now shouldered by architects and urban planners worldwide.

Affect, Architecture, and Practice builds on and contributes to work in theories of affect that have risen within diverse disciplines, including geography, cultural studies, and media studies, challenging the nature of textual and representational-based research. Although numerous studies have examined how affect emerges in architectural spaces, little attention has been paid to the creative process of architectural design and the role that affect plays in the many contingencies and uncertainties that arise in the process. The book traces the critical, philosophic, and architectural theories to examine how affect, architecture, and practice are interlinked. Through a series of conversations and reflections, it examines three key contemporary architects, their practices and projects, all within a single coherent theme. Reiser + Umemoto (RUR Architecture DPC), USA, Kerstin Thompson Architects, Australia, and Shigeru Ban Architects, Japan, are critically studied through the lens of different aspects of practice, namely image-making, the design process, and the making of an everyday object/material. Through this investigation, author Akari Nakai Kidd demonstrates how affect theory allows a critical interrogation of the in-betweens of practice, its liminality and limits. It questions the stability of objects, the smooth temporality of practice, and its often under-conceptualised non-human dimensions. More significantly, the book demonstrates architectural practice's contribution to the reconceptualisation of theories of affect.

National Parks are Britain's breathing spaces - protected areas enjoyed by the millions of visitors attracted every year by their tranquillity, beauty and landscape. Fifteen National Parks cover a significant share of Britain's total land area - 10 per cent of England, 20 per cent of Wales, and 7 per cent of Scotland. Yet despite their importance, few people today are aware of the campaign in the 1930s and 1940s to establish National Parks. And fewer still know the name of the man who was its principal driving force. John Dower was an architect, a planner, a prodigious walker, an accomplished writer and, above all, a fighter. Fight for It Now is the first biography to be written about him, and the title reflects his one great objective and the increasing urgency of attaining it as his health declined. Drawing on extensive national archives and his private papers and letters, the book describes Dower's early work with pressure groups like the Friends of the Lake District and the Council for the Protection of Rural England, and then his subsequent move during the Second World War to an influential position inside government, focusing on post-war reconstruction. While German bombs were falling on British cities, it was part of Dower's job to quarter the English countryside and identify potential areas for National Parks. Dower's most influential contribution was his 'one-man White Paper' National Parks in England and Wales published at the end of the war in 1945. The 'Dower Report' addressed key questions on the criteria for selecting National Parks, where they should be located, who they were for, and how they should be administered, and it paved the way at last for the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. While overcoming opponents both outside and inside government, Dower wrote continuously as though his project could only be hammered out at white heat. And all the while, the one struggle he knew he could not win was the tuberculosis that eventually killed him, at the tragically early age of forty-seven.

* This book is the first comprehensive history of architectural modelmaking in Britain, or indeed of anywhere in the world. * An authoritative scholarly study based on six years of extensive research that draws from over 40 interviews, the analysis of over 4000 photographs of architectural models, and more than 700 documentary sources, written in an accessible style making it suitable for a broad audience. * Illustrated with never-before-seen photographs of historic architectural models from the 20th century drawn from private archives, including over 100 images from the Thorp archive, which is the largest known collection of material relating to architectural modelmaking in the world containing over 30,000 photographs and historic documents.

Since the release of his first monograph, Vincent Van Duysen has consolidated his reputation for buildings of exceptional spatial mastery and highly refined detailing, and built a growing international following. This beautiful companion volume presents thirty of the Belgian architect's most recent works produced over the past decade, much of which has been exquisitely captured by renowned photographers Helene Binet and Francois Halard. The buildings featured from this latest period include an array of elegant residences in Europe, New York, Paris and The Hamptons, as well as larger-scale commercial and public projects. Product and furniture designs, microcosms of the architect's rigorous attention to detail, are also featured, including yacht interiors and objets decoratifs. With a foreword by close friend and Academy Award-winning actor Julianne Moore, the broader context of Van Duysen's contribution to contemporary architecture is provided by architect Nicola di Battista and architecture critic Marc Dubois. An illustrated chronology provides a complete overview of the architect's recent projects. Van Duysen has established a reputation as one of the world's most refined and artful architects. This major new publication will further cement his uncompromising commitment to creating timeless places and spaces.

The bridge has always stood as a transitional structure - not purely a work of engineering, nor simply a work of architecture. Its functional requirements are more stringent than those of the average building; it not only must stand up; it must stand up, support those who cross it, and effectively span the space over which it stands. As Samuel Johnson said, "the first excellence of a bridge is strength ... for a bridge that cannot stand, however beautiful, will boast its beauty but a little while." The Scottish architect Robert Adam (1728-92) understood these precepts well, continually building bridges that were not just structurally sound, but also aesthetically pleasing. Unlike his contemporaries, Adam did not view bridges as mere skeletons upon which to apply ornament. Rather, he sought to achieve architectural totality, incorporating his bridge designs into greater architectural programs, thereby producing aesthetically pleasing and contextually specific designs. From the Pulteney Bridge in Bath to the ruined arch and viaduct at Culzean Castle in Ayrshire, The Bridges of Robert Adam: A Fanciful and Picturesque Tour will take the reader across Britain, shedding new light on an understudied aspect of the great architect's career.

The second volume in Thames & Hudson's monographic series on global architect Sir David Adjaye, winner of the 2021 RIBA royal gold medal. Following on from Adjaye - Works: Houses, Pavilions, Installations, Buildings, 1995-2007, published by Thames & Hudson in 2020, this book covers the impressive portfolio of work created by the architect between 2007 and 2015. During the years covered in this book, Adjaye became interested in developing an architecture that was more expansive, taking him outside Europe to work on major projects such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo. Designing buildings around the globe, including two projects connected with the post-Katrina reconstruction programme in New Orleans, Adjaye carefully tailored his approach to each place, sensitive to the important role architecture plays in affirming a sense of community and identity.

This book traces the evolution of the great palaces of the Louvre and Versailles, from Pierre Lescot's designs for expanding the former in the mid-16th century to the successive grands projets for the transformation of the latter over the course of the 18th century. Detailed architectural analysis is set in the context of the development of the medieval monarchy towards absolutism, the significance of Hispano-Burgundian court etiquette as a formative influence on planning, and the effect of the French monarchy's financial incontinence on royal building ambitions. On the basis of exhaustive original research, recalling contemporary testimony and re-examining the works themselves, the book challenges recent scholarly accounts of the contributions of Claude Perrault and Francois Mansart to the Louvre and demonstrates the influence of schemes by Italian masters Pietro Cortona and Bernini on Ange-Jacques Gabriel's designs for rebuilding Versailles. Finally, the book looks at the influence of the great French palaces on those seeking to emulate their ambition, from Stockholm in the late 17th century to the deliriously opulent late 19th-century palace of Ludwig II of Bavaria at Herrenchiemsee. The book includes a wealth of illustrative material and supporting documents, which bring this comprehensive and authoritative text to life.

In With Reference, Soo Chan of SCDA explores the fundamentals of architecture - going back to inspirations and precedents, examining basic building blocks and core values - in search of a universal spatial vocabulary for contemporary practice. As practice becomes increasingly globalised and fragmented, the applied design language has to absorb nuances of climate, craft, culture, and place. Through a rich diagrammatic analysis of seminal projects by SCDA as well as masters of architecture around the world, With Reference argues for the revival of a rule-based design language.

The definitive volume on Gaetano Pesce's incomparable life and career, as told in the iconoclastic artist-designer's own words. In a category all his own, Gaetano Pesce is widely considered one of the most important, and elusive, creative figures of the last half century. Bridging numerous key art and design movements, while never truly belonging to any of them, Pesce's singular practice has remained steadfastly provocative, defying widely held notions of convention, utility, and good taste. Yet as New York magazine demonstrated in its feature on the 'Pope of Gloop' upon the opening of his recent solo show at acclaimed gallery Salon 94, the world has arguably caught up to Gaetano Pesce. Now in his eighth decade, Pesce recounts his life and career to renowned design curator and critic Glenn Adamson, generating discussion conducted over several years that is as informative as it is surprising. Discussing his incomparable decades-long career which includes the creation of the classic articles of his UP series, the effusively postmodern design for Chiat/Day's headquarters, and countless works of furniture and design objects in his signature poured resin - Pesce shares his wide-ranging thoughts on art, design, and architecture. Always forward-looking, Pesce's process of reinterpreting and transforming the premises of modern design to create idiosyncratic and deeply personal works beat a path for multidisciplinary design practice seen everywhere today. Particularly in his exploration of introducing imperfections, if not 'defects' into the traditionally uniform systems of mass fabrication, Pesce turns out to be much more of a prophet of modern design than a curious detractor. Gaetano Pesce: The Complete Incoherence is the long overdue summary of an irreverent, wildly inventive career that should inspire practitioners across all creative disciplines.