from the pages of Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools
Prior to the publication of Revolution of Forms in 1999, few were aware that the most outstanding architectural achievement of the Cuban Revolution, the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte (National Art School), stood neglected just outside Havana. Three architects who aimed to reinvent architecture just as the revolution hoped to reinvent society were commissioned. However, before construction was completed, the school was subjected to an ideological attack that branded it as not in keeping with anti-revolutionary ideals. The organic complex of brick and terra-cotta Catalan-vaulted structures was abandoned, until the original publication of Revolution of Forms brought it to the attention of the world and swayed the Cuban government to commit to its restoration. This updated edition of the classic book adds a new preface, epilogue, and a revised chronology to the first edition’s numerous photographs, drawings, and interviews.
Signature arches & vaulted ceilings define Cuba’s forgotten art schools
—as seen in Revolution of Forms.
From the pages of Fast Forward Urbanism
In the wake of recent failures in America’s urban infrastructure, an emerging group of activist designers are calling on architects to rethink their relationship to the city. For them, the future of the American city lies not in modernism’s large-scale master plans or new urbanism’s nostalgic community planning. Instead, they favor working with the realities of urban space, finding hidden opportunities in what already exists in our cities; they eschew monolithic, top-down approaches. Fast-Forward Urbanism presents a mixture of essays, opinions, and design projects by well-known architects and theorists including Stan Allen, Will Alsop, Lars Lerup, and Keller Easterling. Equal parts theory and practice, their ideas lay the groundwork for the next American metropolis. Fast-Forward Urbanism will be a useful tool for designers as well as anyone working in the federal recovery effort, from policy-makers to engineers to builders to planners.
![spread from OneFiveFour by Labbeus Woods
*Visit today’s BLDG BLOG for an article on the underground Berlin as meticulously illustrated in Labbeus Woods’ monograph of imaginary futures, OneFiveFour.
“Woods both describes and draws a series of projects set in what we might call a speculative sister-city of Berlin. Called “Centricity,” it is a metropolis populated with titanic physical devices: “oscilloscopes, refractors, seismometers, interferometers, and other, as yet unknown instruments, measuring light, movement, force, change. Tools for extending perceptivity to all scales of nature are built spontaneously, playfully, experimentally, continuously modified in home laboratories, in laboratories that are homes.”[Image: From “Underground Berlin” by Lebbeus Woods].
Lebbeus Woods is a true visionary, whose drawings are among the richest and passionate as any in the history of architecture. For his first monograph, OneFiveFour, Woods painstakingly drew a book of two-page spreads that weave text, architectural elements, math, and physics into a unique vision of a new humanism for the information age. The powerful immediacy of the art makes it one of the most influential books we have ever published. Critic Michael Sorkin says it best: “In the mesmerizing, astonishingly wrought images of Lebbeus Woods…we are plunged into unfamiliar territory, a world of architecture beginning again….His ever-expanding discourse of the almost impossible is an inspiration not just to build, but to think.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lli5cmkQKH1qdcuc9o1_500.jpg)
spread from OneFiveFour by Labbeus Woods
*Visit today’s BLDG BLOG for an article on the underground Berlin as meticulously illustrated in Labbeus Woods’ monograph of imaginary futures, OneFiveFour.
“Woods both describes and draws a series of projects set in what we might call a speculative sister-city of Berlin. Called “Centricity,” it is a metropolis populated with titanic physical devices: “oscilloscopes, refractors, seismometers, interferometers, and other, as yet unknown instruments, measuring light, movement, force, change. Tools for extending perceptivity to all scales of nature are built spontaneously, playfully, experimentally, continuously modified in home laboratories, in laboratories that are homes.”
[Image: From “Underground Berlin” by Lebbeus Woods].
Lebbeus Woods is a true visionary, whose drawings are among the richest and passionate as any in the history of architecture. For his first monograph, OneFiveFour, Woods painstakingly drew a book of two-page spreads that weave text, architectural elements, math, and physics into a unique vision of a new humanism for the information age. The powerful immediacy of the art makes it one of the most influential books we have ever published. Critic Michael Sorkin says it best: “In the mesmerizing, astonishingly wrought images of Lebbeus Woods…we are plunged into unfamiliar territory, a world of architecture beginning again….His ever-expanding discourse of the almost impossible is an inspiration not just to build, but to think.”
From the pages of Architectural Lighting: Designing With Light And Space
Architectural Lighting, the latest addition to the Architecture Briefs series, provides both a critical approach to and a conceptual framework for understanding the application of lighting in the built environment. The key considerations of lighting design are illuminated through accessible texts and instructional diagrams. Six built projects provide readers with concrete examples of the ways in which these principles are applied. Short essays by architect Steven Holl, artist Sylvain Dubuisson, and landscape architect James Corner explore the role of lighting in defining spatial compositions.
From the pages of Reveal: Studio Gang Architects
Chicago is famous for its role in fostering modern architecture. Now Jeanne Gang, founder of Studio Gang Architects, is giving the epithet “Chicago School” a new meaning. Her recently completed 82-story Aqua residential tower is already an icon of the Chicago skyline and has been universally hailed as a masterwork for the young firm. Reveal presents an in-depth look at the firm’s unique work and working process through drawings, diagrams, sketches, and photographs that illuminate the evolution of each of the book’s eight featured projects, both public and private, and ranging in size from exhibition to high-rise.
Boston-based Leers Weinzapfel Associates’ deeply rooted interest in the aesthetic, cultural, and civic power of architecture has resulted in a portfolio of stunningly tailored buildings fitted to their specific set of conditions, and conveying both conceptual consistency and individual character. Made to Measure, the firm’s first monograph, captures the handcrafted spirit of their work. The practice has built a reputation for its ability to meet extraordinary building challenges with uncommon design clarity, elegance, and refinement. They approach highly constrained and technically demanding design problems with a clear set of modernist core principles, a passion for material and detail exploration, and a desire to create meaningful places for social interaction.
NYC’s Highline as featured in Architectural Lighting: Designing With Light and Space
Architectural Lighting, the latest addition to the Architecture Briefs series, provides both a critical approach to and a conceptual framework for understanding the application of lighting in the built environment. The key considerations of lighting design are illuminated through accessible texts and instructional diagrams. Six built projects provide readers with concrete examples of the ways in which these principles are applied. Short essays by architect Steven Holl, artist Sylvain Dubuisson, and landscape architect James Corner explore the role of lighting in defining spatial compositions.
From the pages of Animate Form by greg Lynn
When published in 1999, Animate Form, the first book on the work of architect Greg Lynn, literally pushed back the boundaries of architectural form. It inspired an entire generation of designers to think of architecture as elastic, malleable, and mutable, bounded only by imagination. Using high-end computer animation software, Lynn opened an entire new paradigm of thinking about and discussing architectural form, and, in the process, introduced an entire new vocabulary—blobs, bodies, hypersurfaces, and polysurfaces—to describe the biomorphic shapes he and his followers create. A highly sought after title, we are delighted to bring Animate Form, back into print as one of the books from our 30-year history that changed the world of architecture.
@PAPressPrinceton Arch PressJoin Bing Thom Architects today from 12-1pm at the @Van_Alen Institute for an impromptu signing of their monograph http://bit.ly/ijkpZh via TweetDeck Favorite Retweet Reply
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