Pamphlet Architecture 13: Edge of a City


Book Description

Pamphlet Architecture was begun in 1977 by William Stout and Steven Holl as an independent vehicle for dialogue among architects, and has become a popular venue for publishing the works and thoughts of a younger generation of architects. Small in scale, low in price, but large in impact, these books present and disseminate new and innovative theories. The modest format of the books in the Pamphlet Architecture Series belies the importance and magnitude of the ideas within.




Pamphlet Architecture 31


Book Description

Holl attempts to answer these questions with his idea for "Dense-Pack Villages," a type of courtyard housing that could be built with recycled concrete from fallen buildings and steel and would be hurricane- and earthquake-resistant. Each "village" could house approximately 200 occupants, and the courtyards would be filled with greenery and fruit trees. Holl proposes that these houses use solar cells on their roofs to provide electricity, allowing the villages to potentially operate off the grid. Water can be supplied from desalinization plants in each village, and also from new reservoirs, replacing the outdated reservoirs that were destroyed in the earthquake.




Pamphlet Architecture 30


Book Description

Participants in the Pamphlet Architecture 30 competition were asked to respond to the theme "Investigations in Infrastructure," and propose new directions for architecture, transportation, energy, cities, and agriculture at a continental scale. The winning entry, Coupling, imagined six daring projects: a high-speed rail system across the Bering Strait that also collects freshwater from the seasonal iceshelf; a decommissioned airport transformed into a geothermal data farm and agriculture site; thickening on/off ramps around "big box" stores into circular parking lots; a call to include landfills in the list of preserved open spaces; and a saline terminal lake turned into a water farm, recreational retreat, and habitat haven. Coupling argues that infrastructures behave as artificially maintained natural systems. Rather than a New Deal approach of massive engineering or iconic infrastructure, Coupling employs adaptable, responsive, small-scale interventions whose impacts are global in scale.




Pamphlet Architecture 21: Situation Normal


Book Description

In this volume, the latest addition to the award-winning Pamphlet Architecture series, the authors examine common architectural forms (chairs, doors, and walls) and programs (a cinema, a health club, a skyscraper) in order to dissect and reconfigure them. In the process they create ten new projects that draw their power from an oscillation between the recognizable and the surreal. Cleverly undermining the conventions and norms of contemporary architectural design, the authors pose a direct challenge to the seemingly endless search for new styles, arguing instead that the greatest potential for architecture in the twenty-first century rests on an imaginative examination of what we take for granted. Designed by authors, Situation Normal... weaves together text, photographs, and drawings. An introductory essay establishes the theoretical and historical position of the book.




Interpreting Site


Book Description

Interpreting Site explains the basic methods architects use to translate what you perceive to represent the complex conditions that physically and mentally "construe" a site, helping to shape the ultimate design. Within each of the four themes---defining site, experiencing site, spatializing site, and systematizing site--- theoretical, conceptual, and analytic methods and representational tools are introduced to give you a foundation to develop your own approach to the conditions of a site. Author Genevieve S. Baudoin examines longstanding representation methods in relation to emerging and experimental methods, offering an idiosyncratic and provocative look at different approaches. Four highly illustrated full colour case studies of key contemporary projects in Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Norway demonstrate how architects have used conditions discovered on a site in their final design.




Pamphlet Architecture 12: Building; Machines


Book Description

Pamphlet Architecture was begun in 1977 by William Stout and Steven Holl as an independent vehicle for dialogue among architects, and has become a popular venue for publishing the works and thoughts of a younger generation of architects. Small in scale, low in price, but large in impact, these books present and disseminate new and innovative theories. The modest format of the books in the Pamphlet Architecture Series belies the importance and magnitude of the ideas within.




Pamphlet Architecture 28


Book Description

In 1977 Steven Holl and William Stout created a grittier alternative to mainstream architectural publishing called Pamphlet Architecture. With Holl's Bridges, the landmark series was born, and for 30 years Pamphlet has served as soapbox and laboratory for such notable architects and theorists as Lebbeus Woods, Zaha Hadid, Lars Lerup, and Michael Sorkin. With its twenty-eighth installment, Pamphlet Architecture celebrates its thirtieth anniversary no less bold than when it began. Augmented Landscapes features a landscape architecture practice for the first time in Pamphlet history. London's Smout Allen presents five projects that respond to the way in which man has enlarged the landscape through architecture and infrastructure, manipulating and blurring perceptions of what is natural and what is artificial.




Pamphlet Architecture 29


Book Description

Ambiguous Spaces, the newest installment in the Pamphlet Architecture series and a return to Pamphlet's own progressive roots, features the architectural fictions "The Pregnant Island" and "Nuclear Breeding." These two projects develop alternative urban concepts that address the challenges presented by the specific situations and social dynamics described in controversial locations such as the Brazilian Tucurui Dam, the Three Gorges Dam in China, and former English nuclear test sites. Using narrative techniques, fictional programs, ambiguous spaces, and building devices, Ambiguous Spaces explores people, communities, and even entire cities oppressed by a lack of freedom.




Pamphlet Architecture 26


Book Description

The thirteen projects take as their subject a site of contested transportation infrastructure--the Sheridan Expressway. By proposing new typologies for this site, these studies seek to mediate the spaces in the city where local and regional meet. Referencing the introduction of the modern parkway into the Bronx, the grading of the Central Park transverse roads, and other works that have redefined the relationship between parks and roads, author Jonathan Solomon suggests a system by which large projects might again be built in American cities.




Pamphlet Architecture 27: Tooling


Book Description

We all know that today's architectural design has moved from the sketchpad to the screen - the era of the Mayline and the drafting board now seems downright Paleolithic - but techniques for using the computer not just as a tool for rendering but as a generative instrument remain woefully unexplored. The technologically progressive young firm Aranda/Lasch illustrates how advanced computational methods and algorithmic codes can be used to foster architectural design. "Tooling" explores patterns generated by computer codes that in turn create an organizational template assembling projects. By openly sharing these codes, the authors seek to foster further investigation into their methods, allowing other architects to model and evolve more critical and insightful geometries and patterns.