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20 Sep Green Obsession
Cities have contributed for centuries to the promotion of some of humanity’s greatest ideas, we must now urgently include them as among the principal players in the environmental debate and at the forefront of any policy tackling climate change. Nevertheless, even today one of the most significant technologies capable of absorbing CO2 and restoring our environment is photosynthesis. Planting trees, in addition to protecting, restoring and managing existing natural areas and biodiversity, together with de-carbonization, renewable energies, digitalization, smart mobility and the circular economy could be the set of tools necessary to counter the climate crisis. Today the effects of the Anthropocene age are ever more visible, changing our environment and affecting every species that lives within it. Green Obsession offers a path to be taken, a hard but still necessary paradigm shift –even for architecture and urbanism– that aims to give a voice to this much needed ecological transition. This book aims to unveil the processes and the complexity involved in the search for a new kind of urbanism, while raising questions and opening old wounds related to the relationship between the human species and Nature and finally putting these fragments together to create a portrait of our era.
19 Sep All Words and One – Mark Manders
This is a book about a single word: 'Skiapod'. What started with the task to take a single word out of all existing words, and to extend and change the meaning of that word, soon became a fascinating journey through our human history and our strange human minds. In this book you can see how an idea can travel through different periods, crystallize in different artists minds and freeze in various media. From cave drawings to a fax, from Malevich to Guston. The book also formulates questions: why do we need to create images and meaning? What do we try to grasp by creating an image of a mythical figure? Why do we need to do that? And exactly where can we find truth in the different chapters of this book? Does this book also say something about all other existing words? Shall we start making other books about other words? And what is the exact word for the blue printed on the cover of this book?
19 Sep Die Lithografin – Gaby Bazin
Welcome to the lithographer’s workshop! Step by step, she reveals the secrets behind the art of the lithograph, a printing technique that can be so amazing, it seems like magic. She explains how water and oil do not mix, how drawings vanish and then later reappear. In this workshop, materials are drawn, inked, etched, rolled, and ground with sand until magical pictures can be printed. This wonderful volume is illustrated in lithographic style—in blue, red, and yellow—and takes us back to the origins of this fascinating reproduction technique. It tells of the many attempts the inventor Alois Senefelder made more than two centuries ago to be able to print multiple copies of ideas, musical notation, and art more easily. He experimented like a chemist until he succeeded in providing stone with a memory, as it were. To this day, lithography is a special art, yet at the same time it also gave rise to the processes that are still used today to print books, newspapers, and posters.
13 Sep Intact – Clare Chambers
What would it take for your body to be good enough? The pressure to change our bodies is overwhelming. We strive to defy ageing, build our biceps, cure our disabilities, conceal our quirks. Surrounded by filtered photos and surgically-enhanced features, we must contort our physical selves to prejudiced standards of beauty. Perfection is impossible, and even an acceptable body seems out of reach. In this mind-expanding book, Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers argues that the unmodified body is a key political principle. While defending our right to change our bodies, she argues that the social pressures to modify undermine equality. She shows how the connected ideas of the natural body, the normal body, and the whole body have been used both to disrupt and to maintain social hierarchies - sometimes oppressing, other times liberating. The body becomes a site of political importance: a place where hierarchies of sex, gender, race, disability, age, and class are reinforced. Through a thought-provoking analysis of the power dynamics that structure our society, and with examples ranging widely from bodybuilding to breast implants, deafness to male circumcision, Intact stresses that we must break away from the oppressive forces that demand we alter our bodies. Instead, it offers a bold, transformative vision of the human body that is equal without expectation.
08 Sep UNStudio – Transform
Founded in 1988 by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, UNStudio is one of the most successful architectural practices in the Netherlands. With projects such as the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Arnhem Central Station, Raffles City Hangzhou in China or the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, the studio has produced some of the most innovative and prestigious works of its generation. In UNStudio Transform, the architects reflect on the theme of transformation. Using illustrations drawn from the studio?s work over the past thirty years, the book illuminates their creative process, demonstrating how theoretical ideas and conceptual models are developed into physical form. The underlying concept of creative enlightment is reflected in the book?s design: from the use of colour to the typeface, from the rectangular to the circular shape, from the radiating colourful appearance during daytime to a glowing effect when exposed to darkness. This limited-edition art publication was initially conceived as an addendum to the annual report of the lightning company Zumtobel Group.
30 Aug Cabin – Will Jones
The story of the author’s cabin build in the wilderness, packed with practical advice for aspiring builders and insights into of the history of cabin culture around the world.In 2010, journalist and author Will Jones gave up London life to move to rural Canada with his young family. His dream was to build a remote cabin in the woods that would be a silent retreat from the world. This is the story of how he created the ultimate hideaway, inspired by cabin-building practices around the world.Throughout history, people around the world have built cabins as homes, naturewatching huts and even follies. In recent times, many have been drawn to cabinbuilding by a yearning to connect with nature and spend time in the wilderness. From the homes of indigenous peoples and the settlers of the New World to contemporary Nordic summer homes and artists’ retreats, the emotive lure of cabin-building shows no sign of abating. In this book, Will Jones explores the history and romance of cabin building and delves into the architectural styles, vernacular idiosyncrasies and tools and techniques of historical and modern builders.Weaving the personal story of his cabin build with illustrated practical know-how on everything from deciding on site and orientation, to foundations and interior design, Jones’s essential book is full of inspirational ideas. The urge to escape the city and live in nature has never been stronger. Part story, part history and part practical guide, this is the ultimate read for anyone dreaming of building a cabin of their own.
24 Aug The Long Form – Kate Briggs
It’s early morning and there’s a whole new day ahead. How will it unfold? The baby will feed, hopefully she’ll sleep; Helen looks out of the window. The Long Form is the story of two people composing a day together. It is a day of movements and improvisations, common and uncommon rhythms, stopping and starting again. As the morning progresses, a book – The History of Tom Jones by Henry Fielding – gets delivered, and the scope of the day widens further. Matters of care-work share ground with matters of friendship, housing, translation, aesthetics and creativity. Small incidents of the day revive some of the oldest preoccupations of the novel: the force of social circumstance, the power of names, the meaning of duration and the work of love. With lightness and precision, Kate Briggs renews Henry Fielding’s proposition for what a novel can be, combining fiction and essay to write an extraordinary domestic novel of far-reaching ideas.
04 Aug Critical Coast
Critical Coast is a cross-disciplinary reader that explores the ecologies and spaces of coastal landscapes, the urgencies of contemporary coastlands and diachronic ideas about coastal futures. In continuation of the exhibition Coastal Imaginaries curated by Josephine Michau in the Danish Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura di Venezia 2023, Critical Coast presents a series of artistic representations, essays, poetry, found material, visual suites, fairy tales and empirical conversations with numerous international voices such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Emanuele Coccia, Rebecca Solnit, Susannah Drake, Inuuteq Storch, Virginia Woolf, Amitav Ghosh, Jane da Mosto, Katherine Richardson, Superflex, Theodor Storm, Julia Watson, Billy Fleming, Bathsheba Demuth, Hans Christian Andersen, Amalie Smith, Rakel Haslund-Gjerrild, Lars Skinnebach, Melody Jue, Juliana Spahr, Kim Stanley Robinson and many others. Critical Coast comes in the format of a handbook made in a durable hardcover that readers can bring along into the field – into imaginary coastal landscapes as well as those at risk of disappearing today.