The work of [STRANG] is beautifully explored in this comprehensive monograph which highlights the firm's site-specific and climate-driven designs. The ability to create stunning architectural designs while maintaining an acute awareness of the surrounding environment has come to define their work. Under the creative direction of Max Strang FAIA, the Miami-based firm continues to advance many of the timeless concepts set forth by the famed Sarasota School of Architecture. Strang's early exposure to that mid-century modernism movement resulted in a deep respect for structures that are intimately connected to their surroundings as they celebrate the Florida climate.

The book provides a privileged insight into how this groundbreaking architectural studio works, especially their innovative approach in which their primary inspiration is derived from the constraints of a given project, hence the subtitle, Inspired by constraints. It shows how XRANGE’s unconventional architecture places an emphasis on systemization and tactility, resulting in audacious but grounded and utterly unique buildings. To do so, it features texts by the principal architects, leading architecture critics, lavish documentation and photography, and in-depth examinations of such significant projects as The Wandering Walls, Ant Farm House, Stone Cloud, and many more.

50 Lessons to Learn from Frank Lloyd Wright presents the work and imaginings of this beloved architect in an accessible and compelling form. Here we may glean insight from an American master and find inspiration for the thoughtful design of our own homes. By means of succinct examples, pithy texts, and rich visuals, the authors share fifty lessons, or learning points, with an eye to Wright-designed houses and interiors, ranging from Inspired by Nature, Make a Room Flexible with Screens, and Creating Liveable Interiors with Textiles, to Learning from the East, Green Design and Seeking Harmony and Balance. Each lesson is accompanied by pearls of wisdom gathered from the master s trove of writings on architecture and design. This gorgeously designed volume offers an informal and yet richly detailed introduction to a seminal figure of architecture, world-famous for his romantic Fallingwater and magical Guggenheim Museum, and will be of much interest to the budding architecture enthusiast, to the interior designer, to those seeking ideas for their own homes, as well as to fans Frank Lloyd Wright looking for just the right book. Included are colour photographs, drawings, quotations from the writings, as well as newly commissioned diagrams and thoughtful analysis by the authors.

This book provides a privileged glimpse into the conception and execution of this superlative structure with a text by the renowned architectural critic Aaron Betsky, an introduction and interview with the architect by James Moore McCown, sumptuous photography by Stetson Ybarra, Stephen Morgan and Daniel Joseph Chenin, illuminating drawings, diagrams and layouts. An homage to the forts built when the area was first being settled, the building sits resplendently alone in the tranquility of the landscape: truly a modern masterpiece.

The white worlds Kim Utzon has created in Denmark and southern Sweden over the last few decades are stage sets for the ordered appearance of rational and reasonable human beings at work, at home, or at play. Clear in their composition, sequence, and scale, sensuous in their responseto light, and conducive to rest and reason more than anything else, theare a refinement of the Scandinavian Modern tradition in which he works. Combining sparse and light-filled rooms surrounded or defined by open grids with expressive roofs or objects, Utzon's work is able to make sense out of complex programs and create relaxed and continuous spaces.

When Joep van Lieshout (b. 1963) founded the art and architecture studio that bears his name, he set in motion what has been described as "a new Dutch architectural style dirty, delicious and direct." Now Atelier Van Lieshout is 10, and the first major monograph devoted to it, A Manual (1997), has been sold out for years. This new overview brings readers into AVL's contrarian applied art via luxuriously appointed "mobile homes," autonomous communes and surreal art projects, with equal time given to AVL-Ville (2001), a "free state" in Rotterdam's port, complete with its own flag, its own constitution and its own currency, and the revealing minutia of AVL's portfolio, from furniture to the "Bar Rectum," a perverse take on the Oscar-Meyer Weiner Mobile. The idea of art that can be used for a self-sufficient and independent lifestyle hits a uniquely high point in AVL-Ville, a culmination of all the work AVL has done before. And it lives on: After a successful and tumultuous year of work, AVL has recently located its first AVL-Ville export product in Park Middelheim in Antwerp: the AVL Franchise Unit. This richly illustrated survey tracks AVL's serious and often provocative portfolio through a crucial period in its growth and development.

Everybody is a designer! But why? Why do we color, organize, and form the world around us - and why do we call that a profession? In this book, Thonik, an Amsterdam-based studio led by lauded designers Nikki Gonnissen and Thomas Widdershoven, researches eleven personal reasons why they design - from the need to create impact to a constant search for independence; from the benefits of systems to the urgency of play. Why We Design looks back on twenty-five years of design practice and speculates on the future of graphic design.

At its root, modernism is that fundamental. It is a question of having something to represent that is of the moment. In the most radical interpretation, modernism always comes too late. The modern is that which is always new, which is to say, always changing and already old by the time it has appeared. Modernism is always a retrospective act, one of documenting or trying to catch what has already appeared - an attempt to fix life as it is being lived. Modernity is just the very fact that we as human beings are continually remaking the world around us through our actions, and are doing so consciously. Modernism is a monument to or memory of that act, which in its own making tries to remake the world it is pretending to represent.

Renny Ramakers is realizing projects that combine virtual technologies and social media with the craft of design to develop new social relations. For more than three decades, the Dutch art historian, critic, and curator has been changing the nature and purpose of design. As co-founder of the Droog Design collective, she has championed the notion of furniture and industrial design as a rethinking of today's world. When Droog first exhibited at the Milan furniture fair in 1993, its assemblies of found materials and witty forms instantly changed the landscape of design. Since then, Ramakers has worked with makers and creators to move beyond slick objects and towards critical projects that open our eyes to our multifaceted realities while offering easy access and great joy to users.

A concrete tree trunk growing in the middle of a commercial street in Tokyo, an airport terminal that looks almost like a bird's wing. A skyscraper facade that seems to move like ocean waves, a visitors' centre perfectly integrated into the landscape of Taiwan's largest lake - nature is everpresent in Japanese architect Norihiko Dan's buildings. His architecture never stands alone, for Dan always seeks symbiosis; this appears in his combination of geometric-archetypical with organic forms, in his urban planning projects, which bring submerged historic and cultural identities back to light, as well as in the ecological orientation of his buildings. With dramatic contrasts in architectural language and choice of materials, Norihiko Dan insistently calls for a relationship between human beings and their surroundings. The complex and fascinating work of this architect, who has received many honours in Japan and Taiwan, is presented here to a Western audience for the first time. A knowledgeable essay by Aaron Betsky and a conversation between Norihiko Dan and Fumihiko Maki complete this volume. Text in English and German.

Architecture matters. To our cities, to our planet, to our personal lives. How we design and what we build has an impact that usually lasts for generations. The more we understand the importance of architecture, and the thinking and decisions behind the buildings we create, the better world we will construct. Who better to guide readers into the rich and complex world of contemporary architecture than Aaron Betsky, former architect, author, curator and museum director, and today dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Combining his early experiences working and meeting cutting-edge architects with his frequent role as jury member selecting the world's most prominent global architects to build icon for cities, Betsky possesses rare insight into the mechanisms, politics and personalities that play a role in how buildings in our societies and urban centres come to be. In some fifty themes and drawing from his own experiences and encounters with people and buildings around the world, he explores a broad spectrum of topics, from the meaning of domestic space to the spectacle of the urban realm. Accessible, instructive and hugely enjoyable, this book will open the eyes of anyone dreaming of becoming an architect, and bring a wry smile to anyone that already is.