Owning a home is the pinnacle of the American Dream, the ultimate status symbol of the middle class. But is the dream in crisis? As the suburban single-family home has been endlessly multiplied and mass-marketed, it has become entwined with environmental catastrophe and economic crisis. Never before have we been so badly in need of a reconsideration of our cultural values and consumption from an architectural perspective. With Atlas of Another America, Keith Krumwiede has written a bold and highly original work of speculative architectural fiction that calls on Americans--and, increasingly, the rest of the world--to seriously reconsider the concept of the single-family home. Krumwiede's "Freedomland" is a fictional utopia of communal superhomes constructed from the remains of the suburban metropolis. Eschewing formal innovation for its own sake, Freedomland's radical architects rely on artful appropriation and the reorganization of found forms. Krumwiede produces the complete plans for Freedomland in the style of a historical architectural treatise, supplemented with more than two hundred plans and drawings and five essays that draw on a long lineage of architectural thought--from Piranesi to Ledoux, Branzi, and Koolhaas. Among the essays, "Atypical Plans" is a redaction of Koolhaas's landmark text "Typical Plan," "Supermodel Homes" looks at the mad genius of developer David Weekley," and "New Homes for America" is a short story in which a young architect produces new forms of communal living.

Atlas of Another America: An Architectural Fiction

Arts & Photography

Krumwiede, Keith

Architecture

Park Books

The Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace (ALICE), affiliated with the School of Architecture at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, is an educational facility focusing on preparing students for the practice of architecture. To cultivate the ability to create or shape space, students must be confronted with an educational framework that prepares them for the field’s many practical challenges, from cultural, social, environmental, and physical concerns to working with the wide range of collaborators who must bring their creativity and expertise together in the design process. The first volume in a four-part series on ALICE, this book focuses on how its innovative curriculum primes students to recognize the cultural practices embedded in the invention of space. Architectural spaces are conceived—and experienced—collectively within the incorporating culture. How can culture, together with a raft of competing concerns, be best translated in the design process? The book explores this and related questions through a fictional narrative, in essays and with two-hundred full-color illustrations. ALICE plays a key role in the success one of Europe’s leading schools of architecture, and this book, together with the three other volumes in the series, provides an opportunity to explore the exceptional learning environment ALICE offers.

The Invention of Space: All About Space, Volume 1 (Volume 1)

Iñaki Ábalos and Juan Herreros established the renowned architectural firm Ábalos & Herreros in Madrid in 1984. At the time, following the end of the Franco regime, architects were valued more for their technical ability than for their contributions to theoretical research. In this context, Ábalos and Herreros’s melding of design with a range of publications and curatorial projects presented a remarkable challenge to assumptions about the role of an architect.In 2012, the Canadian Centre for Architecture obtained the Ábalos & Herreros archive, which contains documents related to more than 160 projects. The material comprises sketches, slides, models, collages, and drawings. The archive presents a compelling opportunity to reconstruct Ábalos and Herreros’s planning and design process. Each of the book’s three contributors—two of whom worked with Ábalos and Herreros—approaches the archive with specific questions, and their essays explore topics including the architects’ fascination with industrial architecture, their capacity to construct a hybrid materiality without recourse to building technology as language, and their innovative visions for landscape architecture.While many have written about the work of Ábalos and Herreros, previous books have been based mainly on their built projects and ongoing research. Ábalos & Herreros Selected by Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, Juan José Castellón and SO–IL is the first book to draw on the firm’s archive to offer a new take on this important architectural practice.

AP 164: Ábalos and Herreros

If you’ve decorated on a budget, you’ve probably braved IKEA, where the promise of a brighter and better living space comes sealed in a cardboard box. But what do we lose when big-box retailers rule the home furnishings marketplace—and, by extension, our homes? Wouldn’t it be more satisfying to surround ourselves with handcrafted pieces that perfectly suit our needs? While making your own furniture is not a requirement for a well-planned home, it is certainly possible—no matter one’s budget, skill level, or space—and immensely gratifying.             For Dust Free Friends, Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald of the London-based architectural firm 6a architects offer the plans for a series of small pieces of furniture that can be simply assembled with a few common tools and in even the most confined spaces. Inspired in equal parts by the utilitarian forms created on construction sites and the do-it-yourself designs of modernist furniture designer Enzo Mari, each of the sixteen chairs, stools, shelves, and other small pieces of furniture is built of affordable and lightweight plywood, which can be dressed to suit any taste. The plans are easy to follow and just as easy to modify, making the possibilities nearly endless.

Dust Free Friends

As a child, architect Arna Mačkić experienced firsthand the Bosnian civil war, and with her family she fled her native country for the Netherlands. In 1999, she was able to visit bosnia and the city of Mostar again for the first time to witness the utter devastation—the war had left seventy percent of the buildings destroyed. This experience inspired Mačkić’s research to explore the emotional effects of war damage on a city’s inhabitants and the possibilities for rebuilding collective and inclusive identities through architecture. Mortal Cities and Forgotten Monuments tells a moving story of architecture and history. The first two parts of the book provide historical background on the war in Bosnia and its relationship to the built environment of the region. The final section demonstrates Mačkić’s ideas for architectural interventions, applying a new design language that goes beyond political religious, or cultural interpretations—an openness that allows it avoid tensions and claims of truth without ignoring or denying the past. Using this as a foundation, she proposes designs for urban and public space that are simultaneously rooted in ancient traditions while looking toward the future.

Mortal Cities and Forgotten Monuments

Revised, updated, and expanded by nearly a hundred projects, this new edition of the catalog for the Architekturzentrum Wien’s permanent exhibition on Austrian architecture is the authoritative survey of the country’s architects, buildings, and styles. Featuring more than 2,300 images and plans, accompanied by explanatory texts—structured chronologically as well as thematically—the book points out both historical connections and contemporary movements. Including a timeline, an overview of all relevant media since 1836, brief biographies, and an index, this is the definitive reference for Austrian architecture during the last two centuries.

Architecture in Austria in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Josef Frank (1885–1967) ranks among Europe’s most significant architects of the twentieth century, and his designs for furniture and textiles have made him one of the eminent figures of modernist interior design. Though there have been many studies of Frank’s architecture previously, Josef Frank—Spaces is the first comprehensive book to look specifically at Frank’s single-family houses. Architects Mikael Bergquist and Olof Michélsen explore the evolution of Frank’s designs for single-family homes over the years, and they investigate the influences that shaped his work, such as Adolf Loos’s “spatial plan” concept, Le Corbusier’s ideas, and Hermann Muthesius’s groundbreaking book The English House. The authors also look at Frank’s architectural concepts of movement and his use of stairs in residential buildings. The book also includes an in-depth examination of six of Frank’s houses, including both built projects— the Villas Claëson and Wehtje in Falsterbo, Sweden, and Villa Beer in Vienna—and unrealized ones—House for Vienna XIII, House MS in Los Angeles, and Fantasy House 9 (Accidental House). This section includes images and plans of each of the houses and a close analysis of their specific characteristics. A complete catalog of Frank’s single-family houses rounds out the book. Featuring new material and many previously unpublished images and plans, Josef Frank—Spaces will be the authoritative reference to this renowned architect’s contributions to the design of residential dwellings.

Josef Frank-Spaces: Case Studies of Six Single-Family Houses

Bergquist, Mikael

Michélsen, Olof

During the past fifty years, documentary photography and architecture have become increasingly interdependent, blurring the disciplinary boundary between the two. Seamless looks at the work of a new generation of European photographers and architects working together to produce images of architecture made from fragments of reality. At the same time, it investigates how shared digital technologies influence the creation of architecture and its photographic representation through images. Based on a series of interviews, Seamless discusses the collaborations between Filip Dujardin and Jan De Vylder, Philipp Schaerer and Roger Boltshauser, and Bas Princen and OFFICE Kersten Geers David van Severen. Each of the three sections is illustrated with a series in images that form parallel narratives within the book. In the concluding essay, architect Jesús Vassallo pulls together the treads of the conversations to investigate questions about the impact of digital technology on the value assigned to images, how shared technological platforms enhance the influence photographers and architects have on each other, and why they have often chosen to focus on the dirty realism of the urban spaces.

Seamless: Digital Collage and Dirty Realism in Contemporary Architecture (Architecture at Rice)

Vassallo, Jesús

Photography & Video

The Friendship Centre in Gaibandha, Bangladesh, was built for the local NGO Friendship, which provides services for poor citizens of the region. Built by Dhaka-based architect Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury, it was designed to provide an inviting and accessible space for those who use the Centre’s services. This book looks closely at the Centre’s design and construction. Situated on two acres, the complex is designed to blend with the natural environment while echoing the ruins of Mahasthan, a Buddhist dwelling from the third century BC, located nearby. It is constructed and finished primarily of one material—local handmade bricks, and individual pavilions, courtyards, pools, and green spaces are woven throughout. The result, as evidenced in the book’s photographs by celebrated Swiss architectural photographer Hélène Binet, is a building that is a celebration of the essential and simple beauty.   

Kashef Chowdhury-The Friendship Centre: Gaibandha, Bangladesh

FRAMPTON, Kenneth

WILSON, Robert

The Structure explores the work of Mahendra Raj, India’s most significant structural engineer. Examining Raj’s sixty prolific years of practice, this volume looks at his unusually inventive and intuitive work and how he has offered pioneering engineering solutions for buildings in exposed concrete. As this book shows, many of his structures can be seen as monuments narrating the history of architecture in post-independence India. The Structure features twenty-eight of Mahendra Raj’s buildings in detail through rich photographs and color reproductions of archival plans. Essays are contributed by Raj himself and by the architects Neelkanth Chhaya and Jaimini Mehta. Also included are interviews with Raj by the architect Sanjay Prakash and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, a conversation with the architect BV Doshi, as well as an illustrated complete list of Raj’s works.

The Structure: Works of Mahendra Raj

Science & Math

Mehta, Vandini

Mehrdiratta, Rohit Raj

Huber, Ariel

Technology

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