Skin

Skin
Author: Ellen Lupton
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2007-06-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781568987118

A companion to an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution from May to September 2002 illustrates designs relating to coverings that resemble, in some way or another human skin. Organics, artificial and digital skin, vessels and membranes, padding and protection, and warps and folds are among the dimensions explored. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Herzog & de Meuron

Herzog & de Meuron
Author: Herzog & de Meuron
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2005
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9783037780497

More than any of their contemporaries, Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are challenging the boundaries between architecture and art. Natural History explores that challenge, examining how the work of this formidable pair has drawn upon the art of both past and present, and brought architecture into dialogue with the art of our time. Echoing an encyclopedia, this publication reflects the natural history museum structure of the exhibition which it accompanies, organized by the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Models and projects by Herzog & de Meuron, as well as by other artists, are structured around six thematic portfolios that suggest an evolutionary history of the architects' work: Appropriation & Reconstruction, Transformation & Alienation, Stacking & Compression, Imprints & Moulds, Interlocking Spaces, and Beauty & Atmosphere. Each section is introduced with a statement from Herzog, and more than 20 artists, scholars, and architects have contributed essays, including Carrie Asman, Georges Didi-Huberman, Kurt W. Forster, Boris Groys, Ulrike Meyer Stump, Peggy Phelan, Thomas Ruff, Rebecca Schneider, Adolf Max Vogt, and Jeff Wall.

Libraries, Literatures, and Archives

Libraries, Literatures, and Archives
Author: Sas Mays
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2013-11-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1135013853

Not only does the library have a long and complex history and politics, but it has an ambivalent presence in Western culture – both a site of positive knowledge and a site of error, confusion, and loss. Nevertheless, in literary studies and in the humanities, including book history, the figure of the library remains in many senses under-researched. This collection brings together established and up-and-coming researchers from a number of practices – literary and cultural studies, gender studies, book history, philosophy, visual culture, and contemporary art –with an effective historical sweep ranging from the time of Sumer to the present day. In the context of the rise of archive studies, this book attends specifically and meta-critically to the figure of the library as a particular archival form, considering the traits that constitute (or fail to constitute) the library as institution or idea, and questions its relations to other accumulative modes, such as the archive in its traditional sense, the museum, or the filmic or digital archive. Across their diversity, and in addition to their international standard of research and writing, each chapter is unified by commitment to analyzing the complex cultural politics of the library form.

The Picturesque

The Picturesque
Author: John Macarthur
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2013-03-07
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1134956975

In this fresh and authoritative account John Macarthur presents the eighteenth century idea of the picturesque – when it was a risky term concerned with a refined taste for everyday things, such as the hovels of the labouring poor – in the light of its reception and effects in modern culture. In a series of linked essays Macarthur shows: what the concept of picture does in the picturesque and how this relates to modern theories of the image how the distaste that might be felt today at the sentimentality of the picturesque was already at play in the eighteenth century how visual values such as ‘irregularity’ become the basis of modern architectural planning; how the concept of appropriating a view moves from landscape design into urban design why movement is fundamental to picturing the stillness of buildings, cities and landscapes. Drawing on examples from architecture, art and broader culture, John Macarthur's account of this key topic in cultural history, makes engaging reading for all those studying architecture, art history, cultural history or visual studies.

Pictures of Architecture – Architecture of Pictures

Pictures of Architecture – Architecture of Pictures
Author: Jacques Herzog
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2004-05-04
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9783211203491

Jeff Wall and Jacques Herzog are among art and architecture's most successful representatives. Award-winning photographer Wall's photography of Herzog & de Meuron's Dominus Winery in California (1999) represents the point of departure for a discussion on the relationship between art and photography. Questions arise on topics such as "photogenic architecture," the construction of pictures and buildings, and the question of time.

Materiality and Architecture

Materiality and Architecture
Author: Sandra Loschke
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2016-03-17
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1317555872

Once regarded a secondary consideration, in recent years, materiality has emerged as a powerful concept in architectural discourse and practice. Prompted in part by developments in digital fabrication and digital science, the impact of materiality on design and practice is being widely reassessed and reimagined. Materiality and Architecture extends architectural thinking beyond the confines of current design literatures to explore conceptions of materiality across the field of architecture. Fourteen international contributors use elucidate the problems and possibilities of materiality-based approaches in architecture from interdisciplinary perspectives. The book includes contributions from the professions of architecture, art, architectural history, theory and philosophy, including essays from Gernot Böhme, Jonathan Hill and Philip Ursprung. Important 'immaterial' aspects such as presentation, agency, ecology and concept are examined, deepening our understanding of materiality’s role in architectural processes, the production of cultural identities, the pursuit of political agendas, and the staging of everyday environments and atmospheres. In-depth illustrated case studies examine works by Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, and Lacaton & Vassal, interspersed with visual essays and interviews with architects such as MVRDV providing a direct connection to practice. Materiality and Architecture is an important read for researchers and students with an interest in architectural theory and related fields such as art, art history, or visual and cultural studies.

The Function of Ornament

The Function of Ornament
Author: Farshid Moussavi
Publisher: Actar D, Inc.
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2022-02-04
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1638409552

Architecture needs mechanisms that allow it to become connected to culture. It achieves this by continually capturing the forces that shape society as material to work with. Architecture's materiality is therefore a composite one, made up of visible forces (structural, functional, physical) as well as invisible forces (cultural, political, temporal). Architecture progresses through new concepts that connect with these forces, manifesting itself in new aesthetic compositions and affects. Ornament is the by-product of this process, through which architectural material is organized to transmit unique affects. This book is a graphic guide to ornaments in the twentieth century. It unveils the function of ornament as the agent for specific affects, dismantling the idea that ornament is applied to buildings as a discrete or non-essential entity. Each case operates through greater or lesser depth to exploit specific synergies between the exterior and the interior, constructing an internal order between ornament and material. These internal orders produce expressions that are contemporary, yet whose affects are resilient in time.

Materials, Form and Architecture

Materials, Form and Architecture
Author: Richard Weston
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2003-01-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0300095791

"First published in Great Britain in 2003 by Laurence King Publishing Ltd, London."--T.p. verso.