"Developed as a research project parallel to FUNDAMENTALS - the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale, curated by Rem Koolhaas - this book introduces a radically new way of seeing Venice. With examinations of twelve different architectural elements, the guide allows readers to better understand the fundamental transformations that have shaped Venice over the past ten centuries."--Back cover.

"Une mine d'or à parcourir encore et toujours, un de ces livres qui fournira aux bâtisseurs actuels et futurs de notre monde tout le savoir dont ils ont besoin pour aborder les questions actuelles et celles auxquelles ils seront confrontés". ArchDaily Architecture is a compelling mixture of stability and flux. In its solid forms, time and space collide, amalgamating distant influences, elements that have been around for over 5, 000 years and others that were (re-)invented yesterday. Elements of Architecture focuses on the fragments of the rich and complex architectural collage. Window, facade, balcony, corridor, fireplace, stair, escalator, elevator : The book seeks to excavate the micro-narratives of building detail. The result is no single history, but rather the web of origins, contaminations, similarities, and differences in architectural evolution, including the influence of technological advances, climactic adaptation, political calculation, economic contexts, regulatory requirements, and new digital regimes. Derived from Koolhaas' exhaustive and much-lauded exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, this is an essential toolkit to understanding the pieces, parts, and fundamentals that comprise structure around the globe. Designed by Irma Boom, the book contains essays from Rem Koolhaas, Stephan Trueby, Manfredo di Robilant, and Jeffrey Inaba; interviews with Werner Sobek and Tony Fadell (of Nest); and an exclusive photo essay by Wolfgang Tillmans.

From the myth of Arcadia through to the twenty-first century, ideas about sustainability – how we imagine better urban environments – remain persistently relevant, and raise recurring questions. How do cities evolve as complex spaces nurturing both urban creativity and the fortuitous art of discovery, and by which mechanisms do they foster imagination and innovation? While past utopias were conceived in terms of an ideal geometry, contemporary exemplary models of urban design seek technological solutions of optimal organisation. The Venice Variations explores Venice as a prototypical city that may hold unique answers to the ancient narrative of utopia. Venice was not the result of a preconceived ideal but the pragmatic outcome of social and economic networks of communication. Its urban creativity, though, came to represent the quintessential combination of place and institutions of its time. Through a discussion of Venice and two other works owing their inspiration to this city – Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Le Corbusier’s Venice Hospital – Sophia Psarra describes Venice as a system that starts to resemble a highly probabilistic ‘algorithm’, that is, a structure with a small number of rules capable of producing a large number of variations. The rapidly escalating processes of urban development around our big cities share many of the motivations for survival, shelter and trade that brought Venice into existence. Rather than seeing these places as problems to be solved, we need to understand how urban complexity can evolve, as happened from its unprepossessing origins in the marshes of the Venetian lagoon to the ‘model city’ that endured a thousand years. This book frees Venice from stereotypical representations, revealing its generative capacity to inform potential other ‘Venices’ for the future.

In this colourful new history of Venice, Elizabeth Horodowich, one of the leading experts on Venice, tells the story of the place from its ancient origins, and its early days as a multicultural trading city where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together at the crossroads between East and West. She explores the often overlooked role of Venice, alongside Florence and Rome, as one of the principal Renaissance capitals. Now, as the resident population falls and the number of tourists grows, as brash new advertisements disfigure the ancient buildings, she looks at the threat from the rising water level and the future of one of the great wonders of the world.

Marko Pogacnik researched the inner meaning of patterns in Venice. His tools for this inner workthe science of intuitionincluded the classic four elements of earth, water, air and fire; the Chinese polarity of yin and yang; and the alchemical concept of creation as the wedding of feminine and masculine.

The New York Times–bestselling author of Unto Us a Son Is Given continues “one of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever” (The Washington Post). When a dying hospice patient gasps that her husband was murdered over “bad money,” Commissario Brunetti softly promises he and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. They discover that the man had worked in the field, collecting samples of contamination for a company that measures the cleanliness of Venice’s water supply, and that he had recently died in a mysterious motorcycle accident. Piecing together the tangled threads, Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region. But justice in this case proves to be ambiguous, as Brunetti is reminded it can be when he reads Aeschylus’s classic play The Eumenides. Praise for Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti Mysteries “[Leon] has never become perfunctory, never failed to give us vivid portraits of people and of Venice, never lost her fine, disillusioned indignation.” —Ursula K. LeGuin, author of Dancing at the Edge of the World “You become so wrapped up in these compelling characters. . . . Each one is better than the last.” —Louise Erdrich, winner of the National Book Award for Fiction “Leon’s Venetian mysteries never disappoint, calling up the romantic sights and sounds of La Serenissima even as they acquaint us with the practical matters that concern the city’s residents.” —The New York Times Book Review “The sophisticated but still moral Brunetti, with his love of food and his loving family, proves a worthy custodian of timeless values and verities.” —The Wall Street Journal

What does writing Greek books mean at the height of the Cinquecento in Venice? The present volume provides fascinating insights into Greek-language book production at a time when printed books were already at a rather advanced stage of development with regards to requests, purchases and exchanges of books; copying and borrowing practices; relations among intellectuals and with institutions, and much more. Based on the investigation into selected institutional and private libraries – in particular the book collection of Gabriel Severos, guide of the Greek Confraternity in Venice – the authors present new pertinent evidence from Renaissance books and documents, discuss methodological questions, and propose innovative research perspectives for a sociocultural approach to book histories.