Founded in 2004 by David Montalba, Montalba Architects is an international architecture firm with offices in both Los Angeles and Lausanne. Raised between Switzerland and California, David has cultivated a design philosophy that balances precision and craft with humanistic architecture to form a cohesive presence of both the contextual and the conceptual. Place and Space encapsulates this insightful philosophy through the ideas and projects of the studio spanning more than a decade. Montalba Architects produces impactful architecture and urban design-related projects in a broad range of locations, from the rural landscapes of Wyoming and Switzerland to dense urban sites in New York and Los Angeles. The work engages in a collective pursuit of uncovering ideas and processes to create new forms of expression through space and scale. Projects featured in the book emphasise the importance of experience in architecture, and environments that are both socially responsive and aesthetically progressive, which build on the firm's trademark craft of volumetric landscapes, material integrity, natural light and pure spatial volumes. Place and Space explores the duality of Switzerland and California, and how these locations have inherently influenced the overall ideas and work of Montalba Architects. Woven throughout the text are conversations between David Montalba and other creatives and thinkers, including landscape designer Andrea Cochran, artist Andy Denzler, entrepreneurs David Alleman and Rich Pierson, and film director Zack Snyder, that cross-examine and explore different approaches to space and place. With a foreword by the acclaimed LA-based architect Lawrence Scarpa, alongside extensive photographs and reproductions of drawings, this book further shapes the philosophies that craft a cohesive connection between all Montalba Architects work and is a testament toward its continued influence within the industry.

The Modern House is, in part, the narrative of how some of the most important examples of modern houses were commissioned and built in the UK. The book presents an inspiring selection of properties from innovative estate agents, The Modern House, and is split into four sections: town houses, conversions, country houses and apartments. Iconic Modernist buildings such as Wells Coates' Isokon Building (1934) and Berthold Lubetkin's Highpoint (1935) are included, as well as more recent examples by renowned architects including Marcel Breuer, 6a Architects, John Pawson, Richard and Su Rogers, Adjaye Associates and Carl Turner, whose low energy Slip House, a cantilevered sculptural abode of translucent glass, steel and concrete was awarded the RIBA Manser Medal for the best house in the UK in 2013. As well as outlining an historical outline for each house, the book touches on the characteristics which make each of these buildings uniquely modern and such perfect spaces for living-functionalism, truth to materials, flowing space and natural light. Featuring an extended introductory essay by acclaimed architectural journalist Jonathan Bell, former architecture editor for Wallpaper* and contributing editor at Blueprint, this book is a second edition, following the success of the first edition published in 2015.

Share: Conversations about Contemporary Architecture - The Nordic Countries is the first book in a new global series of investigative interviews about the modern architectural process. Initiated and undertaken by the Norway-based Canadian architect Todd Saunders, the Nordic Countries edition features interviews with 30 architectural practices from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland. With more than 25 years of professional practice behind him, Saunders has always been fascinated by the role of creativity in everyday practice and the potential power alluded to it. In a series of interviews undertaken over the past year, Saunders has queried the changing role of the architect, the challenges of contemporary practice - especially the impact of the pandemic - and the ways in which architects can achieve the right balance in the relationship between site, client, craft and innovation. Presented as a series of candid conversations between architect and architect, the book offers insights that go beyond the polished histories that usually make it into print. In particular, the interviews explore the role of challenge and failure, conflict and mistakes, chance and coincidence; all familiar aspects of the architectural process yet elements that tend to be glossed over in conventional monographs. The Nordic Countries edition will be followed by companion volumes that explore the work of architects in North and South America, central Europe and the Far East.

A collection of essays that demonstrate how LGBT people played critical roles in local, state, and national politics In the 1970s, queer Americans demanded access not only to health and social services but also to mainstream Democratic and Republican Party politics. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s made the battles for access to welfare, health care, and social services for HIV-positive Americans, many of them gay men, a critically important story in the changing relationship between sexual minorities and the government. The 1980s and 1990s marked a period in which religious right attacks on the civil rights of minorities, including LGBT people, offered opportunities for activists to create campaigns that could mobilize a base in mainstream politics and contribute to the gradual legitimization of sexual minorities in American society. Beyond the Politics of the Closet features essays by historians whose work on LGBT history delves into the decades between the mid-1970s and the millennium, a period in which the relationship between activist networks, the state, capitalism, and political parties became infinitely more complicated. Examining the crucial relationship between sexuality, race, and class, the volume highlights the impact gay rights politics and activism have had on the wider American political landscape since the rights revolutions of the 1960s. The three sections of Beyond the Politics of the Closet conceptualize LGBT politics both chronologically and thematically. The first section highlights the ways in which the immediate post-rights revolution period created new demands on the part of sexual minorities for social services, especially in health care and housing. The second examines the impact of the AIDS crisis on different aspects of national and local LGBT politics. The last section considers how analyzing LGBT politics can reorient our understanding of "the closet" and illuminate the challenges for those seeking to integrate questions of sexual rights into broader political narratives, whether of the left or the right. Contributors: Ian M. Baldwin, Katie Batza, Jonathan Bell, Julio Capo, Jr., Rachel Guberman, Clayton Howard, Kevin Mumford, Dan Royles, Timothy Stewart-Winter

Providence, Rhode Island. The winter of 1999. Two young aspiring writers escape the sleet and dreary clime, holing up in an attic bedroom with their laptops and founding a secret brotherhood: MODMUS-More Drugs Make Us Smarter. Deviant writings ensue; nothing is off-limits. It is a time of crazed experimentation and much Robitussin abuse. Icehouse beer is consumed in abundance, as is New England shwag weed. It was a time not meant to last. Bell ended up in Ireland and then Bermuda. Staley moved to the Pacific Northwest. Other stories were written. But the two authors always harbored plans to someday turn their Providence writings into a batshit insane choose-your-own-adventure book. Someday turned out to be fourteen years later, and what you hold in your hands is the product. And we must warn you now: it is completely FUCKED. Your goal, dear reader is to navigate the maze of young Stacy's vision-haunted journey and find all six fragments of a mysterious cylinder which has come from the future and which is inscribed with the words of the One True Book of Solomon. They have been hidden within six locations upon Solomon's Island by various factions which seek to learn the secrets of its power. The Medicine Book of Solomon is a medicine to perplex the soul, so tread ye carefully, and keep your eye out for the yellow dog.