AUGUST LIST
Juan José Lahuerta
Photography or Life Popular Mies
TENOV Books 2015
Photography or Life Popular Mies
TENOV Books 2015
Columns of Smoke is a four-volume collection. The first volume includes “Photography or Life” and “Popular Mies,” which illuminate overlooked aspects of modern architecture and photography and reveal a more nuanced—and plausible—conception of the modern world.
In “Photography or Life,” Juan José Lahuerta contrasts well-known images tied to the history of twentieth-century architecture with anonymous graphic materials and pictures from the popular press. In doing so, he demonstrates that pointing a camera at a building is neither natural nor innocent—it involves deliberate and telling decisions. His analysis of the work of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, for example, suggests irreconcilable differences between the two architects that represent radically opposed approaches to architecture and life. Furthermore, a close study of snapshots of Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building taken by teachers and students leads to new ways of understanding the myths associated with the Dessau school.
Using the same method in “Popular Mies,” Lahuerta looks at photographs of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s work and shows that Mies was influenced not only by Stieglitz and Camera Work, but also a mass culture that enjoyed zeppelins, music halls, x-rays, and phantasmagorical gadgets. At the same time, in their portrayals of Mies’s work, the press and anonymous photographers situated it in a popular context that stands as a counterpoint to the notion of a heroic modern era.
In “Photography or Life,” Juan José Lahuerta contrasts well-known images tied to the history of twentieth-century architecture with anonymous graphic materials and pictures from the popular press. In doing so, he demonstrates that pointing a camera at a building is neither natural nor innocent—it involves deliberate and telling decisions. His analysis of the work of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier, for example, suggests irreconcilable differences between the two architects that represent radically opposed approaches to architecture and life. Furthermore, a close study of snapshots of Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus building taken by teachers and students leads to new ways of understanding the myths associated with the Dessau school.
Using the same method in “Popular Mies,” Lahuerta looks at photographs of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s work and shows that Mies was influenced not only by Stieglitz and Camera Work, but also a mass culture that enjoyed zeppelins, music halls, x-rays, and phantasmagorical gadgets. At the same time, in their portrayals of Mies’s work, the press and anonymous photographers situated it in a popular context that stands as a counterpoint to the notion of a heroic modern era.
Éric Tabuchi
LIFE SIZE a google search
Lendroit editions 2015
LIFE SIZE is a photographic journey where the scale of human being confronts the scale of natural or industrial sites. Throughout the pages, Man occupies an increasingly important place.
This work proposes a reading of the iconographic source under an imposed constraint of the scale and measurement: the industrial culture and archaeological sites, anonymity and human presence, reality and virtuality, accumulation and unity.
Eric Tabuchi invites us to investigate the details, the perception, the incompatibility and the similarities in that flux of hiding informations, chaotic and systematic at the same time. The artist's work reveals the issues in his practice : the image as source, the atlas as and artistic act.
This work proposes a reading of the iconographic source under an imposed constraint of the scale and measurement: the industrial culture and archaeological sites, anonymity and human presence, reality and virtuality, accumulation and unity.
Eric Tabuchi invites us to investigate the details, the perception, the incompatibility and the similarities in that flux of hiding informations, chaotic and systematic at the same time. The artist's work reveals the issues in his practice : the image as source, the atlas as and artistic act.
Log 34
Why would an architecture journal devote an entire issue to thinking about food? Log 34: The Food Issue explores food in its many aspects and reveals a boundless realm of contemporary cultural production. In this Spring/Summer 2015 issue, contributions from inside and outside the worlds of food and architecture – from chefs and architects to artists, critics, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and eaters – highlight the many parallels between cuisine and architecture (beyond the basic needs for food and shelter) and demonstrate that food is everywhere and in everything. Log 34 features renowned chefs, including Ferran Adrià, Dan Barber, Massimo Bottura, Magnus Nilsson, Jacques Pépin, and Christina Tosi, as well as critically acclaimed artists like Carsten Höller, Tobias Rehberger, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. In short, countless reasons to focus on food today, from the obvious to the surprising.
Sara Marini
Future Utopia
Carte Blanche
Bruno 2014
Future Utopia
Carte Blanche
Bruno 2014
Future is Twelve Cities in Search of. Future is no Longer What it Used to be. Future is to Ask Yourself Where We Are Now. Future is an Utopian Vision, Future is also Back to Utopia: Future as Utopia. Future is Power, Power for a not Schedulable Life. Future as Practice. I Can Only Say One Thing About the Future: What I Wouldn't Want it to be. Future is Visions, Visions of Future. Future is the Space of Expectations. Future is Architecture and Prophecy. Future is also Accidents: the City of Failure, Without Landscape; the Laboratory-City, Recycle and Repair. Future is the Hegemony of the Present: a New Aesthetic of Reality, the History of the Monkey and the Path. Future is Reform or Revolution? We Are Looking For Urban/Human Futures. But No More Alibis, please.
Future Utopia collects twenty-two definitions of the future. The definitions insist on what we will bring in the future: they show the details of today in which is hidden the time to come and reveal the utopia that will feed the cities that are now in search of a future.
Deane Simpson
Young-Old
Urban Utopias of an Aging Society
Lars Muller Publisher 2015
Young-Old examines contemporary architectural and urban mutations that have emerged as a consequence of one of the key demographic transformations of our time: aging populations. Distinguishing between different phases of old age, the book identifies the group known as the “young old” as a remarkable petri dish for experiments in subjectivity, collectivity, and environment. In investigating this field of latent urban and architectural novelty, Young-Old asserts both the escapist and emancipatory dimensions of these practices.
Richly illustrated with drawings, maps, and photographs, the volume documents phenomena ranging from the continuous, golf-cart-accessible urban landscapes of the world’s largest retirement community in Florida and the mono-national urbanizaciones of “the retirement home of Europe” on Costa del Sol, to the Dutch-themed residential community at Huis Ten Bosch in the south of Japan.
Sara Marini and Alberto Bertagna
Venice. A Document
Carte Blanche
bruno 2015
Venice. A Document
Carte Blanche
bruno 2015
There is an area between Venezia and Venice, between the reality and the logo, between the city and its brand. In this middle-earth conflicts rise frequently like fumes, clashes between truths and promises. In this space the imagination finds the humus needed to manifest itself. Here the two cities face off, mingle, declare war on a daily basis, they exchange the meaning of things and words. Only the stranger who lives in Venezia, remaining a stranger, can see this limbo; only by looking at Venezia in Venice and living the two dimensions with detachment can one understand The Possibility of an Island.
Hans Georg Hiller von Gaertringen
Pop, Politik und Propaganda
Pop, Politik und Propaganda
Das Amerika Haus Berlin im Wandel der Zeit
C/O Berlin Foundation
Hatje Cantz 2015
Millions of Berliners gained access to information in its library and
at screenings of films. Robert Kennedy and Willy Brandt came to visit.
It was attacked with eggs and Molotov cocktails, and it was protected by
barbed wire. Lyonel Feininger, Robert Rauschenberg, and exhibited their
works here—in the course of the last fifty years, the Amerika Haus in
Berlin has time and again been the focal point of cultural and political
discussions and international controversies.
In addition, it is
an architectural gem. Built in 1956–57 by Bruno Grimmek, the delicate,
open structure is based on the concept of the “idea of space”—a fluid
space that is borne by a transparent exterior membrane.
Beginning
in fall 2014, the building will be the new home of C/O Berlin. On this
occasion, the book traces the checkered history of the Amerika
Haus—supplemented by interviews with contemporary witnesses such as Otto
Schily, John Kornblum, and Astrid Proll as well as photographic
documentation and reflections by Jörg Sasse and Michael Disqué.
LABICS: STRUCTURES
(3 structures, 50 models)
Claudia Clemente - Francesco Isidori
NERO - 2015
curated by Luca Molinari
Structures is an installation consisting of 50 architectural models realized by the studio Labics between 2014 and 2015.
The models were constructed from an abstract matrix whose generators can be traced back to few, simple, spacial archetypes that exemplify, in a synthetic manner, some of the recurring themes in the studio’s research: the boundary between interior and exterior, between dilated spaces and compressed spaces, between singular object and series, between architecture and landscape.
The matrix was set up, from the beginning, as a logical process based on three successive choices that came to form the rules of the game.
The matrix was set up, from the beginning, as a logical process based on three successive choices that came to form the rules of the game.
Architecture Without Content
Edited by Kersten Geers, Joris Kritis, Jelena Pancevac, Giovanni Piovene, Dries Rodet and Andrea Zanderigo
Architecture Without Content is architecture reduced to its
very perimeter. Only the economy of the envelope determines the success
of the building. Its radical frugality does not make it less critical.
Economy of means is the weapon of choice to express its ideology.
Architecture Without Content finds its roots in the Big Box.
Architecture Without Content is too big to ignore.
This set of five studio reports is a re-edition of the original
booklets, made to conclude each of the studios which were held between
2011 and 2013 at Columbia University, Accademia di Architettura
Mendrisio, TU Graz and EPFL.
Man•i•fes•t
Architectural
Association 2014
Man•i•fes•t is collectively edited, designed and produced by
students in the Publish on Demand studio at the Architectural
Association. This publication looks at manifestos with a view to
understanding the ways in which these public declarations of purpose and
principle used publications as a site for the dissemination and
realisation of their radical agendas.
Douglas Coupland
Shopping in Jail
Stemberg Press 2014
In Douglas Coupland's writing, the doldrums of a world afflicted by the pains of dotcom booms and busts, the ascendency of subcultures to pop cultures, and the subsequent struggle for identity are counterbalanced by droll, personal, and incisive analyses. This collection of nonfiction essays provides an illuminating meander through what we call culture today. Douglas Coupland is a Canadian writer, visual artist, and designer. His first novel, Generation X, was an international bestseller. He has published fourteen novels, two collections of short stories, and seven nonfiction books; written and performed for the the Royal Shakespeare Company; and has penned a number of works for film and television. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, Wired magazine, and the Financial Times.
Berlin, 2014, 19.4 x 13 cm, 94pp. Paperback.
For the artist Thomas Hirschhorn, writing is a crucial tool at every
stage of his artistic practice. From the first sketch of
an idea to appeals to potential collaborators, from
detailed documentation of projects to post-disassembly
analysis, Hirschhorn's writings mark the trajectories of his work. This
volume collects Hirschhorn's widely scattered texts,
presenting many in English for the first time.
In these writings, Hirschhorn discusses the full range of his art, from works on paper to the massive Presence and Production projects in public spaces. "Statements and Letters" address broad themes of aesthetic philosophy, politics, and art historical commitments. "Projects" consider specific artworks or exhibitions. "Interviews" capture the artist in dialogue with Benjamin Buchloh, Jacques Rancière, and others. Throughout, certain continuities emerge: Hirschhorn's commitment to quotidian materials; the centrality of political and economic thinking in his work; and his commitment to art in the public sphere. Taken together, the texts serve to trace the artist's ideas and artistic strategies over the past two decades. Critical Laboratory also reproduces, in color, 33 Ausstellungen im öffentlichen Raum 1998--1989, an out-of-print catalog of Hirschhorn's earliest works in public space
Thomas Hischorn
Critical Laboratory: The Writings of Thomas Hirschhorn
Critical Laboratory: The Writings of Thomas Hirschhorn
The MIT Press 2013
In these writings, Hirschhorn discusses the full range of his art, from works on paper to the massive Presence and Production projects in public spaces. "Statements and Letters" address broad themes of aesthetic philosophy, politics, and art historical commitments. "Projects" consider specific artworks or exhibitions. "Interviews" capture the artist in dialogue with Benjamin Buchloh, Jacques Rancière, and others. Throughout, certain continuities emerge: Hirschhorn's commitment to quotidian materials; the centrality of political and economic thinking in his work; and his commitment to art in the public sphere. Taken together, the texts serve to trace the artist's ideas and artistic strategies over the past two decades. Critical Laboratory also reproduces, in color, 33 Ausstellungen im öffentlichen Raum 1998--1989, an out-of-print catalog of Hirschhorn's earliest works in public space