Since the firm's founding twenty-five years ago, AKT II have forged an international practice that unifies the cultures and disciplines of architecture and structural engineering. This book is an engine for critical reflection on the scope, potential, and limits of what they have come to define as design engineering. Structured into five discursive domains-scale, variability, attitude, reverse engineering, and the craftsmanship of engineering-the book presents a robust selection of the firm's endeavours, which together demonstrate a vast range of encounters and processes in design. Common among them is a desire to understand and reshape the boundaries of the discipline of structural engineering, along with its links to fields such as philosophy, computer science, and geography. Interlaced with the projects, texts by contributors from varying fields engage the theoretical discussions and social conditions that bind contemporary practice. Matters of Engineering Design: AKT II balances structural concerns that require an equilibrium of internal and external forces, a clear understanding of boundary conditions, and knowledge of the properties of material with the overarching challenges that society faces today, including advances in technology, changing economic orders, and ecological responsibility. With contributions by William Baker, David Basulto, Hanif Kara, Jayne Kelley, Priya Khanchandani, Adrian Lahoud, Lesley Lokko, Ibrahim Mahama, Stephen Parnell, Vicky Richardson, and Ellis Woodman.

The Melnikov House, a building designed by the architect Konstantin Melnikov in Moscow for his family (1927 - 1929), is an icon of the architectural avant-garde. The house was originally built as an experimental cylindrical house to test out Konstantin Melnikov's very own concept of mass construction of residential estate. The original layout, elegant spatial arrangement, and smart engineering techniques made this masterpiece world famous. According to the words of Melnikov, the essence of the house lies in its "even distribution of weight, light, air, and heat". Being of a unique architectural form, it still looks modern while retaining the authentic memorial atmosphere of the twentieth century, thus reflecting the tragic life of this maverick architect. This book covers the house in its current condition - during its transformation from a family home to the State Melnikovs Museum, awaiting an in-depth survey by specialists and conservation works. The book contains rich archival materials as well as recent photographs. It describes the challenges and choices that need to be made during the process of museumification. Many of the memorial objects from the house linked to the professional life of the architect will be published for the first time.

Interloop-Architecture is a Houston-based design office founded in 2001 by principals Dawn Finley and Mark Wamble, who both also teach at Rice University's School of Architecture. The firm's focus is on innovative building technologies, inventive forms, and precise material finishes. Their project types range from the design of custom furniture and fixtures to private residences, research complexes, and cultural institutions. System of Novelties is the first book on Interloop-Architecture's work to date, tracking the firm's formation and trajectory. It operates between a monograph and a field guide, presenting novel works of architectural design within a broader context of influence, procedures, and techniques that are threaded from project to project over a period of two decades. It features a diverse collection of built and speculative designs that are framed through three research topics: Information - Shape, Procedure - Assembly, and Material - Pattern. All this is supplemented with graphic notes that synthetically connect the unique and recurring systems engaged in this innovative architectural practice. System of Novelties offers unique insights on innovative forms of contemporary practice in architecture and demonstrates the firm's technical expertise with material, manufacturing, and delivery processes.

Frank Lloyd Wright presents a stunning overview of the work of this towering American genius, encompassing the entirety of Wright's long and extraordinarily prolific career. From his earliest work, such as the Home and Studio in Oak Park, IL, of 1889, to the wonderfully evocative textile block houses of Los Angeles of the mid-1920s, to such seminal masterpieces as Fallingwater, of 1935, in the Pennsylvania wilderness, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, of 1956, in New York, the book offers an extraordinarily abundant trove of architectural riches. Featuring more than a hundred discrete works, from the well known to the obscure, expertly discussed in the text of highly respected Wright scholar Kathryn Smith, Frank Lloyd Wright weaves a gorgeous tapestry that will engage the mind and delight the eye.

For long, spatial design has been seen as an action that could be performed by people and for people only. And today, even though some of the most meaningful projects of our times seem to challenge this concept, qualitative researches still struggle to emerge. This is why this book collects, reconstructs, and discusses archetypal models of posthuman architecture, from the cabin of Henry David Thoreau to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. To show how architectural, landscape, and industrial designers, be they professional practitioner or not, redefined their tools in order to meet the functional and symbolic needs of new and different kinds of subjects. All this in ten monographic architectural tales, thought to trace the evolution of an extended idea of coexistence between humans and other species and technologies.

This book examines the social, political, and cultural factors that have and continue to influence the evolution of the urban waterfront as seen through production created from art and design practices. Reaching beyond the disciplines of architecture and urban design, Occupation:Boundary distills the dual roles art and culture have played in relation to the urban waterfront, as mediums that have recorded and instigated change at the threshold between the city and the sea. At the moment in time that demands innovative approaches to the transformation of urban waterfronts, and strategies to foster resilient boundaries, architect Cathy Simon recounts her career building at and around the water's edge and in service of the public realm. In so doing, the work of contemporary architects is presented, while the origins and principles of a guiding design philosophy are located in meditations on art and observations on coastal cities around the world. The port cities of New York and San Francisco emerge as case studies that structure the reflections and mediate a narrative that is at once a professional and personal memoir, richly illustrated with images and drawings. Comprising three parts, the first two corresponding parts of Occupation:Boundary draw connections between the past and present by tracing the rise and fall of urban, industrial ports and providing context-in the forms of textual and visual media-for their recent transformations. Such reinterpretations, achieved via design, often serve the public through environmentally conscious strategies realized through inventive approaches to cultural and recreational programs. The work of visual artists, both historical and contemporary, appears alongside architecture, poetry, and literary references that illustrate and draw connections between each of these sections. The third section features select architectural work by the author, framed by critic John King and the architect and urbanist Justine Shapiro-Kline. Introduced with a foreword by the prominent landscape architect Laurie Olin, Occupation:Boundary draws on artistic and cultural intuitions and the experience of an architect whose practice negotiates the boundary between urban contexts and the bodies of water that sustain them. Together, the instincts, reflections, and architectural production collected here evidence the role of art and design in the creation of an equitable and inviting public realm.

Published in association with the Architecture Foundation, NEW ARCHITECTS 3 showcases the wealth of emerging architectural talent in the UK. It provides a unique guide to over 85 of the most innovative and talented young architectural practices, many of which are destined to become the leading practices tomorrow. With this publication, the third in a groundbreaking series that began in 1998, the Architecture Foundation continues its tradition of championing new generations of architects and helping the development of many young practices. The first edition of NEW ARCHITECTS was cited by architects and clients alike as the one key reference source for the commissioning of public and private projects, offering a critical outlook on the buoyant UK architectural scene. The Observer newspaper said of NEW ARCHITECTS 2, published in 2001 by Merrell, 'In terms of providing an insight into future trends in architecture, it is hard to beat.' Today the UK scene remains lively and diverse with London marked out as arguably the pre-eminent international city for ambitious and innovative design. Yet it is still difficult for young practices to gain commissions. This brand new book, featuring practices selected by a jury of architectural professionals, represents the next generation of talent, and will be invaluable for all those interested in the best new additions to our built environment.The book arranges the featured practices in alphabetical order, and provides a comprehensive, independent expert assessment of each practice, along with contact details and a total of 450 colour illustrations of recent projects. Offering both practical information on how to get the most out of the client/architect relationship and an overview of the architecture scene in the UK, this book will not only serve as a reference for clients, advisers and urban planners, but also as resource to inspire readers and celebrate the value of high-quality contemporary architecture.

Edward Schroder Prior designed the cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement (St Andrew's Church, Roker), perfected the popular butterfly plan in his houses, and published what is still the seminal work on medieval gothic art in England in 1900. Highly regarded by critics such as Ian Nairn, Prior is sometimes considered to have narrowly missed out on a place in the architectural pantheon of his age, alongside contemporaries such as Charles Voysey and William Lethaby. The result of extensive archival and field research, Edward Prior - Arts and Crafts Architect sheds new light on Prior's architecture, life and scholarship. Extensively illustrated, it showcases Prior's work in colour, including many of his architectural drawings and photographs of most of his extant buildings. Prior is the missing link of the Arts and Crafts Movement, in both a theoretical and a practical sense, as he was possibly the only practitioner who genuinely translated the artistic theories of Ruskin and Morris into architectural reality. He went on to found the School of Architecture at the University of Cambridge in 1912.

Kazunari Sakamoto (born 1943) has mainly been working on smaller residential buildings, in which he questions and explores the principles of architecture. His buildings and theoretical works have had a big influence on the contemporary Japanese architecture. The lecture in this book is about his search for spaces, which enables the people to be free from the constraints and restrictions of our society and to develop freely. Text in English and Japanese.

The ideas of architects are usually conveyed by their buildings. Vladimir Belogolovsky takes a different approach in his new work. The New York based author gives a detailed picture of contemporary architects - through words. The publication consisting of almost 600 pages presents interviews with 30 architects, which Belogolovsky conducted in the framework of his long-term, international activities as a curator and author. The names of the interviewees read like a "Who-is-Who" of modern architecture.The fame surrounding these avant-garde masters has eclipsed merely professional circles and reached the conscience of the wide general public. Their iconic work has attracted so much attention over the last years in the mass media that it is often referred to as Starchitecture. Interviews with: David Adjaye, Will Alsop, Alejandro Aravena, Shigeru Ban, Elizabeth Diller, Winka Dubbeldam, Peter Eisenman, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, Kengo Kuma, Daniel Libeskind, Jurgen Hermann Mayer, Giancarlo Mazzanti, Richard Meier, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Glenn Murcutt, Gregg Pasquarelli, Joshua Prince-Ramus, Wolf Prix, Kevin Roche, Robert Stern, Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov, Bernard Tschumi, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Rafael Vinoly, Alexandro Zaera-Polo.

The Open Call in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking, northern part of Belgium) is more than just another architecture competition: any governmental agency or public institution can choose to work with an Open Call for any given construction project. Since its invention by the first Flemish Government Architect bOb Van Reeth in 2000, more than 700 assignments have been published in this procedure, resulting in almost 350 completed public architectural and infrastructural projects so far. This volume compiles 70 of these, from all over Flanders-from its west coast to the Dutch border in the east-to illustrate the astounding quality of these projects. They prove that public architecture can be daring, thought-provoking, cooperative, and well-done at the same time. The book takes an extensive look at how this procedure works, how it is received by architects, politicians, and clients-and ultimately, at the outstanding public architecture in Flanders as an example for other countries to study closely. Including buildings by 51N4E, Bovenbouw Architectuur, Compagnie O, Dierendonckblancke, KAAN, Ney & Partners, noAarchitecten, NU architectuuratelier, OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, RCR Arquitectes, Robbrecht en Daem, Sergison Bates, Eduardo Souto de Moura, Xaveer de Geyter, Zaha Hadid, among others

This book presents a curated selection of Balkrishna Doshi's exceptional writings since the 1950s, with some published here for the first time. The collection of 15 lectures, articles and essays is richly illustrated with more than 50 of Doshi's personal hand-drawn sketches.

*Blue Sky Living features spectacular designs from an outstanding Canadian firm including stunning full-colour photography*The book is written by the architects themselves - giving you the inside story on what inspires their work Blue Sky was born out of the ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it has proved to have much more talent, tenacity and imagination than most other idealistic initiatives from that time. Blue Sky s work proves that even in the 21st century, Arts and Craft style can work on the West Coast. The projects contained in this book are inspirational and humane: Blue Sky are inheritors of the Organic tradition of Modernism. The work of Helliwell and Smith is deeply involved with the ecology and topography of southern British Columbia and their projects underscore the dramatic interweave of sea, forest and rock.

Ever since the firm's establishment in 1989, Frankfurt-based Stefan Forster Architekten (SFA) had a special focus on housing. A starting point for this was the urgent necessity of refurbishment and modernisation of the vast housing developments constructed of prefabricated concrete slabs as part of the urban rebuilding programmes in the newly founded federal states of eastern Germany following the country's re-unification in 1990. From the initial 'Haus 07' in Leinefelde, Thuringia, SFA have moved on, creating a remarkable body of work in metropolitan housing. Their designs comprise large-scale public multi-unit blocs and single-family town houses on small plots, as well as the transformation of former office and public administration structures. This first monograph on SFA highlights how the firm has constantly worked on raising the standards in residential architecture, years before the current shortage of housing in urban areas has made such improvements so urgent. The book features 30 designs that exemplify SFA's approach and philosophy. Text in English and German.