Lacaton & Vassal


Book Description




Freedom of Use


Book Description

"Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are known for an architecture that privileges inhabitants’ freedom and pleasure through generous, open designs. The Paris-based architects opened their 2015 lecture at Harvard University with a manifesto: study and create an inventory of the existing situation; densify without compressing individual space; promote user mobility, access, choice; and most importantly, never demolish. Freedom of Use reflects on these core values to present a fluid narrative of Lacaton and Vassal’s oeuvre, articulated through processes of accumulation, addition, and extension. The architects describe built and unbuilt work, from a house in Niger made of little more than branches; to the expansive Nantes School of Architecture; to a public square in Bordeaux where, after months of study, their design solution was: do nothing."--Sternberg Press website (viewed Sept. 29, 2015)




Post DomestiCity


Book Description

PostDomestiCity is an inquiry and speculative exercise into the conditions of obsolescence in the post-industrial city, from a contemporary perspective. Working with three paradigmatic cases that were conceived from industrial logics—the Packard plant in Detroit, Lima’s PREVI neighbourhood, and theGrand’Mare complex in Rouen—, we explore alternative ways of reusing, reprogramming, and redensifying the built environment as alternatives to demolition. Relevant voices in the field of architecture share their approaches and visions of the future for the pre-existing city, helping us imagine post-domesticity in the current climate crisis and socio-technological context. With Contributions of Anne Lacaton, Marina Otero, Ippolito Pestellini, Duplex Architects, Lacol, Antonio Vázquez de Castro, Carmen Espegel, Luis Takahashi, Lys Villalba, O.F. architects, DABG, Patricia Lucas, Ramón Araujo, Paulo Dam, Renato Manrique, CoLaboratorio (Diego García-Setién, Enrique Espinosa, Begoña de Abajo, Almudena Ribot).




Together! the New Architecture of the Collective


Book Description

The last decade has seen a growing social movement towards collectivity, sharing and participation. This paradigm shift is reflected in architecture as well: In recent years, increasingly innovative collective housing projects, organized around the principle of trading in private spaces for larger, more luxurious shared spaces, have been emerging across the globe - many of them realized through bottom-up grassroots initiatives. The return of the collective in architecture has resulted in surprising architectural solutions that also create new urban spaces. The publication Together! The New Architecture of the Collective presents around twenty international building projects from Europe Japan, and the US that provide innovative platforms for collective living in the present day. A selection of projects are discussed in detail, ad extensive photo essays offer rich and vivid impressions of the daily collective and private lie and everyday routines in these buildings. Interviews with movers and shakers from the collective housing scene, written by international journalists, offer insights and background information on the processes and people that have made each project possible. All that is complemented by theoretical and historical context, including analytical essays by experts in the field, info graphics providing facts and figures, diagrams explaining how different collective housing models work, and an extensive timeline detailing genealogy of the collective housing movement in the twentieth century.




Your Guide to Downtown Denise Scott Brown


Book Description

"The exhibition catalogue is published in the form of a guidebook, Your Guide to Downtown Denise Scott Brown. This new book offers a fresh view of Scott Brown's achievements as a preeminent architectural designer, urbanist, theoretician, and teacher. It is a fantastic guide to her life and ideas, it also reveals her humanism, complexity, and wit. Accompanied by previously unpublished material and an extensive conversation with the architect herself the book leads readers through Denise Scott Brown's life and work and explains the genesis of the exhibition". (éditeur).




Architecture as Measure


Book Description

In light of the current political crisis around climate change, what can architecture possibly contribute towards a new planetary imaginary of our contemporary environment beyond environmentalism and technological determinism? Instead of conceptualizing the idea of the environment as purely natural and in need of protection, as solely a problem that needs to be managed, or merely as the Earth, which limits the scope with a scalar bias, can we speculate on architecture as a measure both to assess and to act upon the world? 'Architecture as Measure' is an elaboration on this question, and on the disciplinary and cultural potentials of such a provocation. It positions climate change as a cultural and political idea that requires a renewed architectural environmental imagination.0The book takes on this task by presenting a set of unconventional collisions between architecture and climate change, which all extrapolate broader concerns of the city, environment, and geography through the lens of specific architectural questions such as form, representation and materiality.




Amplifying Nature. The Planetary Imagination of Architecture in the Anthropocene


Book Description

Where did the term ?amplifying nature? come from? What does it mean that light oscillation, gravity and water circulation are materials of architecture? Where in the history of Polish architecture do we look for planetary design? Can a building be as dynamic as a climate? What has the roof got us used to and can we get unused to it?0The book that accompanies the Amplifying Nature exhibition, presented with the participation of CENTRALA ? Malgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis, with the collaboration of Iza Tarasewicz and Jacek Damiecki at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition ? La Biennale di Venezia, uses examples of local Warsaw projects, proposing a reconfiguration of the narratives on architecture-in-nature and nature-in-architecture. In its optics, a planetary scale is necessary for architectural analysis: the Earth in a geological-astronomical system as a system supporting life as we know it.00Exhibition: Polish Pavilion, 16th Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy (26.05. - 25.11.2018).




Grands Ensembles de Logements : Territoire D'exception


Book Description

En las décadas de 1960 y 1970 se construyeron en Francia y en toda Europa numerosos conjuntos de vivienda colectiva que, si bien lograron paliar la apremiante necesidad de viviendas de la posguerra, hoy en día presentan graves carencias. Frédéric Durot, Anne Lacaton y Jean-Philippe Vassal se enfrentan a esta problemática desde una actitud novedosa y proponen su radical transformación para adaptarlas a los modos de vida actuales. 'No derribar nunca, no restar ni reemplazar nunca, sino añadir, transformar y reutilizar siempre.' Esta es la premisa en la que se basa la propuesta de los autores. A partir de un análisis de los elementos que conforman la vivienda, en un recorrido que va de dentro afuera del edificio, los autores recuperan el placer de habitar desde una actitud precisa y delicada que tiene en cuenta todas las preexistencias. Los siete proyectos que aquí se presentan son el resultado de este planteamiento, en unos casos estudios y, en otros, propuestas ganadoras de concursos de arquitectura donde se desarrollan los objetivos y las ideas planteados en los primeros.




Dot, Line, Shape


Book Description

As much as skills and styles matter when it comes to design, every visual begins with a fundamental element that can be enhanced or expanded into an aesthetically pleasing and meaningful piece of work. Whether they serve as simple points of focus or building blocks for complex patterns, these elements present countless possibilities when combined with purpose and principles like contrast, balance, rhythm, and white space. Going back to basics, DOT, LINE, SHAPE is a comprehensive collection of projects that manifest the three elements in inspiring and ingenious ways to bring unique creative visions to life. No matter how trends or platforms change over time, they serve as timeless components that provide designers and artists around the world with infinite means of expression to make a lasting impact.