Jean Prouvé – Highlights 1917–1944


Book Description

The most important works from 1917–1944 of Jean Prouvé, one of this century’s most significant designers and constructors, have been gathered together in a low-priced softcover edition.




Jean Prouvé


Book Description

With his exploration of technical thinking and the objects that arose from this pursuit, Jean Prouve is one of the major figures in architecture and design of the 20th century. This book provides an overview of his ideas and concepts, accompanied by his own texts and drawings.




Le Corbusier in the Antipodes


Book Description

This book considers the architect Le Corbusier’s encounters with Australia and New Zealand as a two-way exchange, showing the impact of his ideas and projects on architects of the region whilst also revealing counterinfluences on Le Corbusier in his post-war career that were activated by his contacts. Compiled from detailed archival research undertaken at the Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, and nationally based archives, Le Corbusier in the Antipodes brings together a set of episodes placing them in context with the history of modern art, architecture and urbanism in 20th century Australia and New Zealand. Key exchanges between Le Corbusier and others never before described are presented and analyzed, including Le Corbusier’s contact with Australian architect Harry Seidler at Chandigarh, Le Corbusier’s drawing of the plan of Adelaide in 1950 and his creative collaboration with Jorn Utzon on art for the Sydney Opera House. This book also includes analysis of previously unseen Le Corbusier artworks, which formed part of the Utzon family collection. In reading these personal and contingent moments of encounter, the book puts forward new ways of understanding the dissemination and mediation of Le Corbusier’s ideas and their effects in post-war Australia and New Zealand. These antipodean contacts are set against the broader story of Le Corbusier’s career, questioning received interpretations of his design methods and current assumptions about the influence of his work in national contexts beyond Europe.




Lessons from Modernism


Book Description

This valuable reference for today’s green building movement examines twentieth-century modern architecture, including buildings by Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, through the lens of sustainability. The hottest topics in contemporary architectural design and architectural history—the focus on sustainability and the evaluation of the modern movement—meet in Lessons from Modernism, a partnership with The Cooper Union that explores the ways in which the straightforward functional approach of modernist design creates environmentally sensitive solutions. Lessons from Modernism provides new insights into 25 buildings by a diverse selection of architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Paul Rudolph, Jean Prouvé, and Arne Jacobsen, and demonstrates how these architects integrated environmental concerns into their designs. Buildings are located across the United States, Central and South America, Cuba, Japan and more—and include houses, art centers, commercial buildings, and civic buildings. Lessons from Modernism is an affordable reference work for all interested in how architecture intersects with the green movement, pairing full descriptions of all buildings with analytical essays, featuring charts of climate zones and solar movement, and concluding with a comprehensive chronology that details how environmental consciousness evolved throughout the twentieth century.







The Structural Basis of Architecture


Book Description

This new edition is completely updated and rewritten, covers an expanded range of topics, and includes many worked-out examples inspired by built projects. The approach throughout is to present structures as a fundamental basis for architecture. --Book Jacket.




From Agit-prop to Free Space


Book Description

Cedric Price proposed radically new concepts of architecture and redefined the ways in which the architect might enhance human life, extend human potential and promote social change. Price perceived architectural possibilities amidst the apparent cultural anarchy of post-war Britain where many pundits and social critics saw only the waning of an old order. Forsaking tradition, he dealt with variable structures, firmly believing in impermanent constructions designed for continual change; that architecture should "enable people to think the unthinkable". From Agit-Prop to Free Space: The Architecture of Cedric Price tells the story of Price's architecture, how his thinking expressed the changing character of life and society, and how his work has shaped architectural discourse today. It focuses specifically on two of Price's major unrealised works. The Fun Palace and The Potteries Thinkbelt. Not buildings in any conventional sense, these two projects were instead socially interactive machines, highly adaptable to the shifting conditions of their time and place. From Agit-Prop to Free Space is the result of extensive research based on vast quantities of unpublished archive material, including letters, memos, notes, drawings and interviews. It paints a portrait of an architect who was a true radical, and who overturned conventional ideas of what architecture means, having a major impact on architecture across the world from Japanese Metabolism to High-Tech.




Design Dispersed


Book Description

Design Dispersed pursues the complex and heterogeneous connections between migration and design in the 20th and 21st centuries. The edited volume gathers contributions by international researchers and curators on the question of how design practices and (historical) objects articulate, respond to and critically reflect on migration, flight and displacement: Besides a collage which highlights the aesthetic effects resulting from the networking, overlapping and mixing of forms, another strand of the book looks at the political and social dimensions of design. How are design objects material modes of a critical inquiry on movements of people and things? What role do object trajectories play in the émigré movements of the 1930s and 1940s? Other texts follow the question of how migrants and refugees form their experience and political fight for acceptance into design and architectural productions. A final essay contributes to wordings and projections - what vocabulary do we need in order to adequately think and write about a design dispersed?




Components and Systems


Book Description

Construction systems reduced to the smallest possible number of identical elements have long been used by architects to build structures as well as dismantle and change them as quickly, efficiently, and economically as possible. Think of the architecture of the nomads, the Crystal Palace designed by the architect John Paxton for the London World’s Fair of 1851, or the modern construction systems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in steel, concrete, and wood. Coupled with modern digital planning and production methods, modular precast construction systems that are adaptable for many combinations and capable of being combined with one other will play an increasingly important role in architecture in the future. The volume Components and Systems offers an in-depth and clearly organized presentation of the various types of precast building components – from semifinished products to building with components, open and closed systems, and skeleton and panel construction all the way to spatial cell constructions. The systems are accompanied by detailed drawings and color photographs. Discussions of transporting and assembling the various systems round off the topic and make this book an indispensable practical companion. Seit jeher werden in der Architektur auf möglichst wenige, gleiche Elemente reduzierte Bausysteme verwendet, um möglichst schnell, effizient und ökonomisch ein Bauwerk errichten oder auch abbauen und verändern zu können. Man denke an die Architektur der Nomaden, den Kristallpalast, der 1851 anlässlich der in London stattfindenden Weltausstellung von dem Architekten John Paxton entworfen wurde, oder die modernen Bausysteme des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts in Stahl, Beton oder Holz. Elementierte, vorgefertigte, für viele Kombinationen anpassungsfähige und untereinander kombinierbare Systeme werden zukünftig, gekoppelt mit modernen digitalen Planungs- und Produktionsmethoden, einen immer wichtigeren Aspekt in der Architektur darstellen. Der neue Band Elemente und Systeme zeigt fundiert und übersichtlich die verschiedenen Arten vorgefertigter Bauteile auf – von Halbfabrikaten über das Bauen mit Komponenten, offenen und geschlossenen Systemen, Skelett- und Paneelbauweisen bis zu Raumzellenkonstruktionen. Ergänzt werden die Systeme durch detaillierte Zeichnungen und Farbfotos. Transport und Montage der verschiedenen Systeme runden das Thema ab und machen dieses Buch in der Praxis unverzichtbar.




Energy Design Strategies for Retrofitting


Book Description

Providing a coherent and realistic vision of the implications of the energy issue in the future development of our cities; places emphasis on the links between very specific and technical topics and the most challenging issues concerning energy savings and the transition to a low carbon society. A great part of the built environment in most European cities consists of buildings dating from 60s to early 90s, for residential purposes: this stock clearly presents several problems related to its functional layout, as well as its energy/thermal behaviour. Applying sustainable and energy savings principles to retrofitting interventions on the stock above is one of the most urgent challenges to be met in the very near future. Giving some examples and case studies, this book investigates retrofitting interventions in terms of energy balance: from design strategies to choice of materials and components; from market trends analysis to economical assessment, from the targeted energy performance to the energy investments needed for achieving it. The reader will benefit from the real life experiences and related results described in this book and acquire all the tools for a constructive evaluation of the different options available to him/her, when faced with retrofitting interventions, thanks to a global view of all the issues involved.