It was not by chance nor by a trick of fate that Javier Mariategui dedicated himself to gardening. He grew up among gardens. Both his grandmothers were gardening enthusiasts, one of them, the Marchioness of Casa Valdes, wrote the book Spanish Gardens, which describes the history of Spanish gardening from Roman times to the present day. This book ......
"A house is a representation of the idea of the world, of life, of existence." Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926 to 2007) In the course of his life, Ungers built himself and his family no less than three houses, two in the Cologne suburb of Muengersdorf, and one in the Eifel highlands. Even the first house, to which this richly illustrated volume is ......
The new Musee des Confluences in Lyon was opened to the public, in late 2014. It was created by Wolf D. Prix of the Coop Himmelb(l)au team, which was founded in the 1970s. Many avant-garde groups from those wild years - such as Archigram, Superstudio, Archizoom, Haus-Rucker-Co, and the Japanese Metabolists - are now consigned to the past, but the ......
Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974) is unquestionably one of the outstanding architects of the 20th century - in spite of the fact that he fell silent early, leaving behind only limited work that was insufficiently publicised, and restricted almost exclusively to Moscow, the city of his birth in which he spent nearly his entire life. In the late ......
The juxtapositions of Zaha Hadids architectural models and drawings and Judith Turners photographs of the architects buildings in this volume reveal that Hadid and Turner are complicit. There is a clear agreement of sensibilities. Each understands the other. Hadid does not design with complete geometries in stable con-figurations, but designs ......
Exotic Buildings of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Europe
In the eighteenth century the idea of the landscape garden spread all over Europe. At the same time the garden became the land of illusion: Chinese pagodas, Egyptian tombs and Turkish mosques, along with Gothic stables and Greek and Roman temples, formed a miniature world in which distance mingled with the past. The keen interest in a fairy-tale ......
The building of the National Library of Latvia is a landmark of the capital city of Riga, a spatial symbol and architectural icon, created by one of the 20th century renowned modernists-the Latvian-born American architect Gunnar Birkerts. It is one of the largest cultural buildings in Northern Europe in the 21st century and acquired a symbolic and ......
This book examines the application of the principle of layering in architecture, its mechanics, possible application and meaning. Layering is widely used in the discussions of the 20th and 21st centuries architecture but rarely defined or examined. Layering bridges the tectonics of structure and skin, offers a system for the creation of different ......
A Plea for Improving Rural Domestic Building in Asia & Africa
Early nomadic shelters, including caves, animal skin tents, and igloos, were used for protection against wind, rain, snow, sunlight, and other forces of nature. These basic homes also provided defence against predators and were used to store a few important possessions. They were temporary, and proximity to a water source was of prime importance. ......
