a+t architecture publishers

This second issue of Civilities is a selection of architectures that are closely related to their location. Some form part of urban regeneration projects while others represent public realm in the middle of a private territory or behave as simple centres of life in a deserted landscape. In other cases, the architecture is added to existing places, to memories and uses that become a stratus of new constructions.
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Interview realized by Irénée Scalbert

London, 1 August 2001. - Irénée Scalbert: You have lived in London for a long time. Can you tell me about your background? Tony Fretton: I was born in the East of London. My father was an electrician... He and his seven brothers grew up in Hackney. His own father was a commercial glass blower. My mother also grew up in Hackney. She had four sisters. Her father was a tunnel digger.
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Some nurseries offer a new advantage to parents, cameras strategically placed in their facilities so that parents can observe the behaviour of their children online. The idea seems somewhat perverse because, although it does encourage transparence and information by allowing parents to see if their baby eats or takes a nap, it is also a way of monitoring the educator.
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DBOOK is based on a group of 64 collective housing projects, analysed because of their contribution to the dense city. After the publication of Density, New Collective Housing, DBOOK is the next step in the sharing of examples that will promote the compact development of urban settlements. In both publications exist differences that are typical of a path that is in the process of creation, on which new travellers appear.
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Density projects contains 36 ideas on collective housing that are committed to increasing density. They are projects that propose savings in land use and, consequently, a more sustainable environment. The design strategy of the authors, the implementation in the context and the development of the housing typologies are analysed and compared by themes, following the path begun by the a+t series dedicated to Density.
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From 2002 to 2004, the architecture and technology magazine a+t did a study on collective housing. The results of this study became the basic material of four issues falling under the generic theme of “Density”.
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The term civilities relates to the conventions that regulate community life; it is as well the addition of civic + facilities. The new a+t series begins under this name and attempt to present a new focus on life in common and buildings that keep up society’s pulse. This topic embraces therefore all kinds of constructions and programs implying shared relations, converging activities and experiences to be exchanged.
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Article written by Gerard Maccreanor

"If one want to express something abstract, something that doesn't immediately relate to the visible reality, the best thing is to relate to the immediate surroundings. Then it stays clear and things never become easily vague" (1) We are all familiar with historical examples, such as the Amsterdam canal houses or London Georgian town houses, that have undergone many changes from single family dwellings to apartments and offices. Even hotel, night-club, art gallery shopping and light industrial uses have been found for these buildings. More recently, industrial warehouse buildings dating from the late 19th and early 20th century have also found new uses. It is the adaptability of these buildings that creates a vibrant urban structure: ever changing and lively, with different parts of the city developing different characters and generating new forms of urban contact and sociability.
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Article written by Martin Musiatowicz

During the 1960’s a number of revolutionary groups, among them Archizoom, Superstudio and the Situationist International, critical of changes in modern society, came about in an attempt to resist capitalism, resurrect the individual and redefine modern life.
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The test site is located on the former site of the Berlin Wall, at only a few kilometres away from the Alexander-Platz. Abandoned military wasteland, the place is nowadays an empty urban space. Today, it has become a rupture within the traditional urban structure. At the time of the wall, the enclosure of the wall tore the town in two and was a physical void, the so-called “Corridor of Death”.
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Article written by Rem Koolhaas, published in a+t 23. New Materiality I

Trouble. According to statistics, a student and his or her parents decide, within five seconds of arrival, whether to apply to a given university or not.
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Article written by Martin Musiatowicz

For over two decades something has been stirring on Melbourne’s water’s edge. Ever since the setting out of Melbourne’s city grid in 1837, which was aligned to the Yarra River at the meeting point of the salt waters of Port Philip Bay and the freshwater of the river, the city has been denied direct access to the water.
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Article written by Xavier González

The history of urban planning has shown us that in any urban area, whether it be a developed or spontaneous area, three basic functions exist. These functions are residence, materialised as a group of dwellings that takes up the majority of the built-up area; activities, found in workplaces or in facility-containing places; and lastly, the flow, movement supported by the infrastructural network.
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Article written by Carlos García Vázquez

Public space and contemporary urban logic Literature specializing in urban studies has for over a decade now been tackling a phenomenon that is radically altering the way we perceive and live in our cities: the crisis of public space.
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Article written by Martin Musiatowicz

An investigation regarding public and open spaces is intimately tied to an understanding of landscape. Historically, architecture has held the aspiration of standing out, as a demonstration of the presence of culture or society facing nature, with a certain respect.
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Article written by Aaron Betsky

The new Student Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology marks the transition from the era of “God is in the detail” to that of “No money, no details”. From Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s fetishism about the appearance of construction and its absolute relationship to the modulation of spatial relations we have arrived at Rem Koolhaas’ desire to make buildings that are appropriate and critical condensers of existing technologies and social relations into spaces so complex that they cannot be defined in static terms and planes that graphically represent those enabling conditions.
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Article written by Atelier Kempe Thill

This article describes some of the new effects in mass housing with the intention to give a new outlook towards housing. The article is based on demographic research during 2001 in our office. Furthermore most of the ideas and conclusions relate to work on 10 housing competitions between 1998-2002 and our building experience on various housing projects in the Netherlands. The text is illustrated by 4 projects produced by our office.
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Article written by Xavier González

Though customs are constantly evolving in accordance with fashions or social and economic transformations, the appearance of new uses has become the main agent for the invention of new spatial or architectural typologies. Thus, are stations, pedestrian passages, department stores, airports, and shopping centers an enlargement, a limit, a reduction, or a mere refuge of public space? Such ambiguity, and even interference, of the indicators of and limits between public and private space, magnified by the urbanistic heritage of the Modern Movement, gives the impression that public space belongs to everybody and nobody at the same time.
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Article written by Xavier González

Blue eyes or brown, blonde hair or black, fair or dark skin –the details of the famous doll change to facilitate local identification for kids. But beyond the slight differences, Barbie’s body doesn’t change: the matrix stays the same. And if her vital statistics recall (in miniature, metric) those of Naomi Campbell (86-58-81) or Claudia Schiffer (96-62-92), before anything else her body represents a model: the universal sublimation of the standard young woman and her charms.
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Article written by Xavier González

Poring over all sorts of reviews to prepare and document my article, I suddenly became aware of the manner in which my attention was caught by one project or another. As I look at pictures, examine documents and leaf through magazines, the flow of my reading is arrested now and then by a detail.
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Article written by Xavier González

Savory and plump, and melting in the tea, la petite madeleine has become, even for those who have not read Proust, the object-symbol that summarizes remembrance, the survival of images and the sudden re-emergence of the past within the present. Spontaneously we recognize those things once familiar to us and which, from somewhere deeply buried in our recollection are suddenly revived through the madeleine’s mysterious savor.
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Article written by Xavier González

Several books and articles have been published throughout the world on Jean Nouvel; he himself has regularly expressed his ideas in a large number of interviews and lectures. Yet, what is particularly striking is the extreme diversity of his projects, the sense that they are rooted in their place and in to the present time. For the past twenty years, Jean Nouvel has questioned the very basis of architecture by substituting the spatial discourse and the endogenous heritage of architecture for a sensitive approach that engages perception and emotion.
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Article written by Xavier González

“Flexibility is not the exhaustive anticipation of all possible changes. Most changes are unpredictable. (...) Flexibility is the creation of a capacity with a wide margin that enables different and even opposing interpretations and uses” (1) According to Charles Darwin, animal and plant species alike must adapt to their environment in order to survive. The same can be said of architecture.
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Clearly, the human body and architecture have a long history in common. The human body has been in reality, the first instrument of measurement, so that units such as feet and inches are still used today in manycountries. Measurement has become, for this reason, the sense of size and proportion...

Article written by Antonio Román

In Central Europe, the term neue Einfachheit seems to be coming into its own in order to group current architectures that point towards a new simplicity.1 New reviews of rationalism have appeared in countries with a deep-rooted gothic tradition, such as Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and even Great Britain. Some recent reviews relate this fact to the 20th century avant-gardes.
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Tuché. Andy Warhol wrote about repetition in his work: “When you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn’t really have any effect” (1).
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The current debate on cities focuses mainly on the issue of density. Land is identified more and more as a precious asset that must be protected and used in the appropriate manner. The dichotomy between the dispersed city and the compact city, Sprawl versus Compactness, of some years ago, has affected urban planning and has conditioned everything, from the design of roads to policies involving the introduction of large companies that control consumption at a world level. But this debate is not new.
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Sensitivity to surroundings. The Zelig syndrome Several objects inspired by Zelig cover a table: from clocks to ashtrays, and the inevitable board games. (...) A woman in the kitchen wears an apron which bears the drawing of a chameleon with glasses and a legend which says: “Let’s change a little at dinner time”.
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PROJECT International is a Russian language review on foreign architecture and design, showing the latest works of the worlds most famous architects and designers.
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Using contour lines is the only precise way of communicating the grading of freely shaped landforms in plan; so you had better become an expert!

Peter Petschek 2008, 221 p. 70 illus., Softcover ISBN: 978-3-7643-8502-6 Publishing House: Birkhäuser

Professor Hans Loidl, landscape architect and lecturer

A landscape architect has to consider functional, aesthetic and ecological criteria when making design decisions. Grading is of.
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This anthology gathers together for the first time the most influential architectural texts from the Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Many of the texts appear for the first time in English, making them available to a worldwide readership.
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Author: Martin Pawley Editor: David Jenkins Hardback 480 pages 350 b/w and colour ills 25.0 x 17.5 cm / 10.0 x 7.0 in ISBN-10: 1906155194 ISBN13: 978 1 906155 19 3 Publishing House: Black Dog Publishing Ltd

The Strange Death of Architectural Criticism is a collection of 100 essays and articles by Martin Pawley, one of the most important and entertaining voices in post-war architectural criticism. Pawley studied architecture at the Oxford School of Architecture, the Ecole Na.
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Thierstein, Alain; Förster, Agnes (Eds.) 2008, 288 p. 135 illus. in color.
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Leisure has a huge impact on the European landscapes. Contemporary Western life has given rise to all sorts of mobilities, flexibilities and incentives that fuel the sometimes dramatic changes in the landscape we are witnessing today. Can the relationship between leisure and landscape be a productive one and, if so, under what conditions?.
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Cities and neighborhoods are composed of urban building blocks and a knowledge of these elementary components is part of the basic equipment of city planning. Study of these city building blocks represents a first step toward understanding, and successfully developing, the built structure of the city as a physical and social habitat.
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Cedric Price was one of the most visionary architects of the late twentieth century, taking a playful, interactive approach to his projects that was wholly lateral and completely unconventional. From Agit-Prop to Free Space is the first and only authoritative text on the early work of this visionary architect and thinker.
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