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When Kyle Tackwell Ball’s search for a quaint country home near Florence, Italy, in move-in condition somehow led to the purchase of an abandoned church in a small borgo near Greve-in-Chianti called Le Convertoie, she ended up with much more than a project to overcome her newly contracted “empty nest syndrome.” Ball soon found herself starring in a “Stones and Bones Classic”; the ruin she’d purchased would require years of renovation and an endless amount of money before it would become habitable. But her journey had unexpected rewards, too: she reconnected with some wonderful friends, made new ones, learned the language of her newly adopted home country, and became experienced in the Italian knack of getting around the system. Most importantly, she learned to appreciate Italian culture, food and wine, and how rewarding it is to give new life to a beautiful old building. Ball’s renovation was featured in the March 2010 “Before & After” issue of Architectural Digest, beautifully documented by Kim Sargent of Sargent Architectural Photography.
Trees have been deliberately connected with houses since they were introduced as a prominent part of architectural design. The relationships of contiguity between houses and trees have existed since ancient times. However, at the end of the 19th century those links became explicit in the design process, as the house emerged as one of the fundamental architectural programs, and as the result of an increasing sensibility towards environmental aspects and the landscape. The first part of this publication is to present a collection of exemplary five houses that evinced explicit relationships with pre-existing trees. The five twentieth century projects are: La Casa (B. Rudofsky, 1969), Cottage Ca...
Departing from a discussion on what it would be a mannerist attitude in the architecture of today, and theorizing around it, this book analyzes some works of contemporary European practices including Lutjens Padmanabhan, architekten de vylder vinck taillieu, TEd’A, Maio, 6a architects and AOffice KGDVS. Art critics between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries imprinted a long-standing derogatory meaning to the word “mannerism”. Even though scholars such as John Shearman or Wolfgang Lotz rehabilitated the term to a certain degree during the twentieth century, it is still uncommon nowadays to find the expression “mannerist” used without certain pejorative connotations. This book provides a contemporary revision of the mannerist attitude for the present, creating a framework to analyze and shed light not only on the work that these practices are carrying out, but also on the less evident filiations and affinities, as well as on their deeper implications.
The famous British Brutalist architect discusses his work and the process of thinking about architecture with students in a question-and-answer format.
The Middle Eastern bazaar is much more than a context for commerce: the studies in this book illustrate that markets, regardless of their location, scale, and permanency, have also played important cultural roles within their societies, reflecting historical evolution, industrial development, social and political conditions, urban morphology, and architectural functions. This interdisciplinary volume explores the dynamics of the bazaar with a number of case studies from Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Nablus, Bursa, Istanbul, Sana'a, Kabul, Tehran, and Yazd. Although they share some contextual and functional characteristics, each bazaar has its own unique and fascinating history, traditions, cultural practices, and structure. One of the most intriguing aspects revealed in this volume is the thread of continuity from past to present exhibited by the bazaar as a forum where a society meets and intermingles in the practice of goods exchange-a social and cultural ritual that is as old as human history.
A homage to the 1973 publication of Architecture and Utopia by Manfredo Tafuri—echoed in the title—this book is devoted to the radical experiences of the 1960s and to their consequences for the most recent developments in contemporary architecture. As a response to the profound crisis of Western culture the emerged in the 1960s, radical artists from Italy, Austria, England and Japan called into question the foundations of modernist utopias. They transmuted the difficulties of capitalism into a repertory of startling images that revealed the disturbing realities of consumer society, even in those places still resistant to the penetration of modern architecture, such as Superstudio and Arc...
Striving to adapt the progressive ideas of the pre-war modern movement to the specific human needs of post-war reconstruction, Alison and Peter Smithson were among the most influential and controversial architects of the latter half of the twentieth century. As younger members of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne) and as founding members of Team 10 they were at the heart of the debate on the future course of Modern Architecture. Their polemics and designs - addressing issues such as the rising consumer society and the orientation of urban planning - laid the foundations for New Brutalism and the Pop Art Movement of the 1960s. An important adaptation made by the Smithsons a...
Today’s architecture has failed the body with its long heritage of purity of form and aesthetic of cleanliness. A resurgence of interest in flesh, especially in art, has led to a politics of abjection, completely changing traditional aesthetics, and is now giving light to an alternative discussion about the body in architecture. This book is dedicated to a future vision of the body in architecture, questioning the contemporary relationship between our Human Flesh and the changing Architectural Flesh. Through the analysis and design of a variety of buildings and projects, Flesh is proposed as a concept that extends the meaning of skin, one of architecture’s most fundamental metaphors. It ...