The Songyang Story


Book Description

In 2014, Xu Tiantian, founder ofBeijing-based studio Design and Architecture (DnA) began to work inSongyang County, in China's Zhejiang Province. Her exemplary holisticplanning concept of Architectural Acupuncture, which has gained thesupport of local administrative and political leadership, aims atrevitalising rural areas and comprises the renovation of productionplants and of tourist and technical infrastructure as well as thecreation of venues for culture and education and of social housing. Eachof Xu's small-scale interventions at local level is unique, only thesmall budget is common to all of them. Moreover, they are allinter-related with each other and in their entirety serve the broadergoal of mutual enhancement. This book introduces Xu's concept ofArchitectural Acupuncture and discusses the influence of architecture oncultural self-understanding and economic renewal in 21st-century ruralChina. It features some 20 new buildings and conversions of existingstructures with diverse functions. Published alongside are essays byinternational economists, sociologists, and curators as well as by thesecretary of the Songyang County Party Committee, examining the social,political, and economic implications of sustainable planning andcollective action in the Chinese province.




Critical Care


Book Description

How architecture and urbanism can help to care for and repair a broken planet: essays and illustrated case studies. Today, architecture and urbanism are capital-centric, speculation-driven, and investment-dominated. Many cannot afford housing. Austerity measures have taken a disastrous toll on public infrastructures. The climate crisis has rendered the planet vulnerable, even uninhabitable. This book offers an alternative vision in architecture and urbanism that focuses on caring for a broken planet. Rooted in a radical care perspective that always starts from the given, in the midst of things, this edited collection of essays and illustrated case studies documents ideas and practices from an extraordinarily diverse group of contributors. Focusing on the three crisis areas of economy, ecology, and labor, the book describes projects including village reconstruction in China; irrigation in Spain; community land trust in Puerto Rico; revitalization of modernist public housing in France; new alliances in informal settlements in Nairobi; and the redevelopment of traditional building methods in flood areas in Pakistan. Essays consider such topics as ethical architecture, land policy, creative ecologies, diverse economies, caring communities, and the exploitation of labor. Taken together, these case studies and essays provide evidence that architecture and urbanism have the capacity to make the planet livable, again. Essays by Mauro Baracco, Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Jane Da Mosto, Angelika Fitz, Hélène Frichot, Katherine Gibson, Mauro Gil-Fournier Esquerra, Valeria Graziano, Gabu Heindl, Elke Krasny, Lisa Law, Ligia Nobre, Meike Schalk, Linda Tegg, Ana Carolina Tonetti, Kim Trogal, Joan C. Tronto, Theresa Williamson, Louise Wright Case studies aaa atelier d'architecture autogérée, Ayuntamiento BCN, Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury/Urbana, Cíclica [Space.Community.Ecology] + CAVAA arquitectes, Care+Repair Tandems Vienna (including Gabu Heindl, Zissis Kotionis + Phoebe Giannisi, rotor, Meike Schalk + Sara Brolund de Carvalho, Cristian Stefanescu, Rosario Talevi and many others), Colectivo 720, Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, EAHR Emergency Architecture & Human Rights, Fideicomiso de la Tierra del Caño Martín Peña CLT, Anna Heringer, Anupama Kundoo, KDI Kounkuey Design Initiative, Lacaton & Vassal, Yasmeen Lari, muf architecture/art, Paulo Mendes da Rocha + MMBB, RUF Rural Urban Framework, Studio Vlay Streeruwitz, De Vylder Vinck Taillieu, Xu Tiantian/DnA_Design and Architecture, ZUsammenKUNFT Berlin Copublished with Architekturzentrum Wien




City Lust


Book Description

Charlie Koolhaas is an artist, photographer, and writer in Rotterdam. City Lust is the name of a fragrance that she found in a Dubai perfumery wholesale showroom, but it is also the starting point of an expedition that leads Koolhaas to a variety of places in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. In Lagos, Guangzhou, Dubai, London, and Huston, she explores the rapid changes that a globalized economy forces upon these so very different metropolises. ​ During extended stays in each place, Koolhaas took a vast number of photographs, many of them of striking intensity. Her aim is not only to show the increasing uniformity of cities around the world, but also to demonstrate the discrepancy between cultural standardization and local diversity in the age of globalization. City Lust is a brilliant combination of everyday photography, pure documentation, and captivating observation. Accompanying the photos is an equally fascinating and illuminating essay by Koolhaas that brings together her own insights into global trade and its protagonists.




The Dim Sum Field Guide


Book Description

A whimsically illustrated yet authoritative guide to the "taxonomy" of dim sum, based on a popular Lucky Peach story. Author and illustrator Carolyn Phillips demystifies the rich, nuanced culinary institution of teahouse snacks in The Dim Sum Field Guide, a pocket-size, definitive resource featuring 80 hand-drawn illustrations. With entries for all the dim sum classics--including siu mai, xiaolongbao, char siu, roast duck, and even sweets like milk tarts and black sesame rolls--this handy reference is perfect for bringing on-the-go to your next dim sum outing. Armchair travelers and Asian food enthusiasts alike will be delighted by this detailed yet accessible look at the distinctly Chinese art of eating well. — NPR's Best Books of 2016




Ghost Music


Book Description

From the author of the “original and electric” Braised Pork (Time), An Yu’s enchanting and contemplative novel of music and mushrooms follows a former concert pianist searching for the truth about a vanished musician For three years, Song Yan has filled the emptiness of her Beijing apartment with the tentative notes of her young piano students. She gave up on her own career as a concert pianist many years ago, but her husband Bowen, an executive at a car company, has long rebuffed her pleas to have a child. He resists even when his mother arrives from the southwestern Chinese region of Yunnan and begins her own campaign for a grandchild. As tension in the household rises, it becomes harder for Song Yan to keep her usual placid demeanor, especially since she is troubled by dreams of a doorless room she can’t escape, populated only by a strange orange mushroom. When a parcel of mushrooms native to her mother-in-law’s province is delivered seemingly by mistake, Song Yan sees an opportunity to bond with her, and as the packages continue to arrive every week, the women stir-fry and grill the mushrooms, adding them to soups and noodles. When a letter arrives in the mail from the sender of the mushrooms, Song Yan’s world begins to tilt further into the surreal. Summoned to an uncanny, seemingly ageless house hidden in a hutong that sits in the middle of the congested city, she finds Bai Yu, a once world-famous pianist who disappeared ten years ago. A gorgeous and atmospheric novel of art and expression, grief and survival, memory and self-discovery, Ghost Music animates contemporary Beijing through the eyes of a lonely yet hopeful young woman and gives vivid color and texture to the promise of new beginnings.




Kazuo Shinohara


Book Description

One of the greatest and most influential architects of Japan's postwar generation, Shinohara Kazuo (1925-2006) has remained virtually unknown outside the small community of devoted followers. As one of the leaders of architectural movement Metabolism, Shinohara achieved cult- figure stature with sublimely beautiful, purist houses that break away from Japan's postwar suburban architecture.Perhaps the most iconic of Shinohara's works, House of White (1964-66), rearranges a familiar design palette: a square plan, a pointed roof, white walls, and a symbolic heart pillar-to give the almost oceanic spaciousness through abstraction. The underlying formalism in Shinohara's architecture-its basic explorations of geometry and color-lends his work a poetic quality that fuses simplicity and surprise, the ordered and the unexpected.This volume brings together new scholarship from the foremost specialists on Shinohara and Japan's modern architecture. New perspectives and historical frameworks range from the development of the small house as a building type in postwar Japan to Shinohara's engagement with French critical theory.Hitherto unpublished archival drawings and personal travel photographs by Shinohara complement the essays. AUTHOR: Seng Kuan holds a PhD in architectural history from Harvard University and teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. SELLING POINTS: * Kazuo Shinohara (1925-2006) was a Japanese architect who developed a cult following for his purist houses. He helped develop the architectural movement, Metabolism which is characterized by pure white spaces and megastructures. One of his most well known buildings is House of White. * This book brings together new scholarship from the foremost specialists on Shinohara. * This book deals with Japanese modern architecture which is very influential around the world. * This volume includes previously unpublished archival drawings and personal travel photographs of Shinohara.




Staring Down the Tiger


Book Description

Captivating stories of the courage, resilience, and everyday brilliance of Hmong American women




The Generals of the Yang Family


Book Description

This book offers a complete translation of four early plays of the Yang Family Generals. The story of the Yang Family Generals, particularly its female generals, was a perennial favorite on the Chinese stage in the 19th and 20th centuries. In detailing the role of this military family in the Song-Khitan wars of the late 10th and early 11th centuries, these four plays are all in the form of zaju, a type of play that originated in the 13th century. These plays are from the 15th and 16th centuries and allow a glimpse into earlier renditions of the Yang Family saga, which is a decidedly more male-centered tradition than that performed in the Qing dynasty. This volume offers the only complete English-language translation of these early plays. These plays allow access to the earliest phase in the development of the Yang Family saga. The plays provide information on the staging of large battle scenes on the stage and have considerable literary and cultural value.




Historic Monuments of Mount Songshan


Book Description

This book tells the story of the Mount Songshan area architecture in simple terms, while also providing detailed information on the history of Buddhist architecture. The history of the Mount Songshan area can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty in the 23rd century B.C. The heritage architecture in this area has seen the rise and fall of various powers – including the Han Dynasty, Northern Wei Dynasty, Tang and Song Empires, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, and the Ming and Qing Empires – and reflects the character of each historical period. Over the past 2,000 years, history has been continuously woven into the architecture. The Mount Songshan area is, therefore, a perfect representation of the perpetual Chinese civilization, and the most magnificent museum of ancient Chinese architecture. Most importantly, these various types of architecture offer valuable insights into the architectural design and technologies of each historical period. The products of ingenuity and innovation, they are marvellous creations that ancient Chinese people took great pride in.




The Last Song


Book Description

NOVEL LEARNING SERIES(TM) THE LAST SONG by Nicholas Sparks STUDENT EDITION Seventeen-year-old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father . . . until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in North Carolina with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church. The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels--first love, love between parents and children-that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts . . . and heal them. With a NOVEL LEARNING SERIES(TM) Student Guide · Questions about the text after every few chapters check your comprehension · Quizzes throughout help you prepare for standardized tests with SAT- and ACT-style questions using vocabulary and grammar from the book · Sample writing prompts and essays at the end guide you through the elements of an above-average, average, and below-average essay-and explain why!