In January of 1972, The Museum of Modern Art hosted "The Universitas Project," a two-day conference sponsored by the Museum's International Council and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. The distinguished participants, from a wide range of scholarly and artistic disciplines, including Jean Baudrillard, Umberto Eco, Gyorgy Kepes, Octavio Paz, Anatol Rapoport, Meyer Schapiro, Carl Schorske and Jivan Tabibian, among many others, engaged in a multidisciplinary debate on the future of design and design institutions in the postindustrial era. The project, conceived and directed by the noted architect and designer Emilio Ambasz, then Curator of Design at the Museum, was originally described as "a critical and prospective inquiry into the relation of man to the natural and the sociocultural environment...specifically planned to explore the possibility of establishing in the United States a new type of institution centered around the task of evaluating and designing the man-made milieu." This important volume publishes in their entirety the various components of the conference: the working papers that set the terms of the debate; the essays submitted by the invitees; the proceedings of the symposia responding to the papers; and the postscripts provided by the participants after the event. It makes this chapter in the intellectual history of the Museum, addressing issues and ideas still relevant today, available for the first time to scholars, the architecture and design community and the general public.

The twentieth century offered up countless visions of domestic life, from the aspirational to the radical. Whether it was the dream of the fully mechanised home or the notion that technology might free us from home altogether, the domestic realm was a site of endless invention and speculation. But what happened to those visions? Are the smart homes of today the future that architects and designers once predicted, or has 'home' proved resistant to radical change? Home Futures: Living in Yesterday's Tomorrow -accompanying a major Design Museum exhibition of the same title-explores a number of different attitudes toward domestic life, tracing the social and technological developments that have driven change in the home. It proposes that we are already living in yesterday's tomorrow, just not in the way anyone predicted. This book begins with a lavishly illustrated catalogue portraying the 'home futures' of the twentieth century and beyond, from the work of Ettore Sottsass and Joe Colombo to Google's recent forays into the smart home. The catalogue is followed by a reader consisting of newly commissioned essays by writers such as Dan Hill and Justin McGuirk, which explore the changes in the domestic realm in relation to space, technology, society, economy and psychology.

This comprehensive volume documents the work of the Argentine architect, graphic designer, and industrial designer Emilio Ambasz. Ambasz's main concern is to integrate nature and construction into architectural design, which is why he is regarded as one of the most important pioneers of Green Architecture. In his work a combination of landscape and architecture emerges, in which his respect for the environment and ecological sustainability becomes clear. A prime example of this is the Fukuoka Prefectural International Hall in Japan: a building that houses more than 100,000 m2 of exhibition spaces, theaters, and offices is also an open green area in the form of a hanging garden.In addition to the documentation of Ambasz's architectural, graphic, industrial, and exhibition design, this publication contains essays by Barry Bergdoll, Kenneth Frampton, and Peter Buchanan, as well as three interviews with Emilio Ambasz, conducted by Michael Sorkin, James Wines, and Hans Ulrich Obrist.