This publication shows the ambitious transformation of Skanderbeg Square, in Tirana, Albania. The project was initiated by the then Mayor of Tirana and current Prime Minister of Albania Edi Rama and realized under current mayor Erion Veliaj. It is the result of a collaboration between Belgian architecture office 51N4E, Albanian artist Anri Sala, Belgian environmental designers Plant en Houtgoed, and Albanian company for project implementation iRI. Transforming the central square of a nation that is founded only in 1912 and that is now a developing young democracy, the project compresses all the hope and tension that come with that transition. With its focus on transition, this publication is a pilot episode of a series called Chapters, a progressive documentation of the work of architecture office 51N4E and its collaborations with related people and practices. Every Chapter combines the presentation of one or more projects with a forward-looking reflection on the key issues that shape them. Produced progressively over the course of the next years, the ambition of the whole series is to outline how 51N4E aims to engage with contemporary society in all of its complexity.

This text explores the work of 51N4E, a Brussels-based architectural practice.

"The architectural offices 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework operate at the seams of urbanization, with projects situated in transitional settlements in Ulaanbaatar, in the new vernacular of rural China, in the transforming centres of Western European cities and in Albania's shifting public spaces. Comparing their research and design processes, The Things Around Us questions the extents and certainties of architecture against backdrops of unstable planetary urbanization, insecure economies and ecologies, and indeterminate notions of citizenship."--Page 4 de la couverture

Brussels-based 51N4E deals with matters of architectural design, concept development, and strategic spatial transformations. Headed by Johan Anrys and Freek Persyn, the office was founded in 1998 and aspires to contribute to social and urban transformation. This book - part photo-novel, part real-life journey - tells the story of 51N4E in multiple ways. Combining short stories by Falma Fshazi with photographs by Stefano Graziani, it is a narrative of discovery and embracing otherness, as well as a retrospective look at projects since 2004. It describes the encounters and processes by which the architects learned to operate in a culture and context very different from their own.

Something Fantastic is the multifaceted manifesto of three young architects - Julian Schubert, Elena Schütz and Leonard Streich. It is also the name of their new Berlin-based studio; both book and studio derive from a diploma thesis at the University of the Arts, Berlin. Something Fantastic calls for increased consciousness in architectural thought and action, particularly in relation to the environment, energy and contemporary politics. Excerpts from thinkers and theorists - from Thomas Hobbes to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - and interviews, including with Markus Miessen and Werner Sobek, inform a publication determined to call for change, and offer hope for the future.

'A scathing, lively and timely look at the "European city", from one of our most provocative voices on culture and architecture today' Owen Jones A searching, timely account of the condition of contemporary Europe, told through the landscapes of its cities Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere. In Trans-Europe Express, Owen Hatherley sets out to explore the European city across the entire continent, to see what exactly makes it so different to the Anglo-Saxon norm - the unplanned, car-centred, developer-oriented spaces common to the US, Ireland, UK and Australia. Attempting to define the European city, Hatherley finds a continent divided both within the EU and outside it. 'The latest heir to Ruskin.' - Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Hatherley is the most informed, opinionated and acerbic guide you could wish for.' - Hugh Pearman, Sunday Times 'Can one talk yet of vintage Hatherley? Yes, one can. Here are all the properties that have made him one of the most distinctive writers in England - not just 'architectural writers', but writers full stop: acuity, contrariness, observational rigour, frankness and beautifully wrought prose.' - Jonathan Meades

Brings together parts of the Lacanian discourse that have remained isolated in their respective research areas and outlines the shape of Lacanian discourse, showing the relation of Lacan's thought to philosophy, science, literature and aesthetics, gender and sexuality, and psychoanalytic theory.