For thousands of years, architects have used models to invent, experiment and communicate. A world in miniature, such models are even more varied in their purposes and materials than their full-scale counterparts. This beautifully designed book explores the uniquely fascinating nature of the architectural model through 26 illustrated essays, one for each letter of the alphabet - from A for 'Ancient' (on the world's oldest models) to Z for 'Zoom' (on the photography of models). Unbound by the practicalities of life-size construction, models allow architects the flexibility and freedom to think in three dimensions. Whether made for purely speculative exercises or to solve a specific problem, they are aids to the imagination. Equally, they can be used as detailed and accurate representations of particular places (either built or as yet unrealized) in order to convey information to patrons or the public. Models can be made in a wide variety of media, from paper, cork and wood to such ephemeral materials as sugar and jelly. Most recently, the advent of digital technologies has transformed possibilities for prototyping, which in turn has greatly influenced architectural design. Models also have a vibrant life beyond the design process. Souvenir models collected on the Grand Tour, 1:1 scale plaster models of architectural fragments displayed in museums, and architectural toys that have delighted children and adults alike are just some of their manifestations outside the architect's office. Written by architects, model-makers, curators, conservators and scholars, the texts in this absorbing Alphabet explore such varied but fundamental issues as modelling materials and techniques, scale, and the role of the model in the design process. They also go beyond conventional accounts to look at models under the X-ray machine, their use in film, and edible models. The result is a wide-ranging, insightful and original account of the multiple lives of the architectural model. AUTHORS: Dr Teresa Fankhanel is a Curator at the Architekturmuseum der Technischen Universitat, Munich. Olivia Horsfall Turner is Senior Curator of Designs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, and the V&A's Lead Curator for the V&A+RIBA Architecture Partnership. Dr Simona Valeriani is Senior Tutor on the V&A/Royal College of Art History of Design MA. Dr Matthew Wells is a Lecturer at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (GTA), ETH Zurich. 40 illustrations

Including previously unpublished and recently re-discovered designs for the interior of the Museum, Olivia Horsfall Turner's fascinating new book, the latest in the V&A 19th-Century Series, looks at the relationship between architect and designer Owen Jones and the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A) in the period from the Museum's establishment in the 1850s to Jones's death in 1874. It focuses on key moments in Jones's relationship with the Museum: the creation of his well-known publication The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and his less widely known Examples of Chinese Ornament (1867), and the decoration of the Museum's so-called Oriental Court between 1863 and 1865. Jones's collaboration with the Museum over a period of almost 20 years is of special interest not only thanks to his status as one of the most influential design theorists of the 19th century, but also for the light that it sheds on the identity of the early Museum and its imperial context.

Blending architecture, design, and technology, a visual tour through futures past via the objects we have replaced, left behind, and forgotten. So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused-superseded, unfashionable, or simply forgotten. Extinct gathers together an exceptional range of artists, curators, architects, critics, and academics, including Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll, Deyan Sudjic, Tacita Dean, Emily Orr, Richard Wentworth, and many more. In eighty-five essays, contributors nominate "extinct" objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world. Extinct is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never came to pass. It is also a visual treat, full of interest and delight.