How architects can move toward a more just, harmonious, and non-exploitative designed environment. Architecture--and architects--have immense influence in defining the way we live, work, and interact as communities. Architecture, in fact, could be described as the very process through which our collective priorities take shape in the environment. Today, buildings generate nearly forty percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. As awareness of the true cost of inaction grows, every human activity will be rethought--and the material economy of the building industry is one of the places where new thinking is most urgently needed. Architects have the opportunity to reclaim their relevance by becoming the advocates and masterminds of a new way of building. What kind of architecture will be born once its primary purpose is serving communities and not capital accumulation? How can we compel the market to factor in the true long-term costs of construction and material production? How can we reduce the sense of abstraction that separates "consumers" of architecture from the environmental damage wrought at the sites of material extraction? How can communities become fully involved in every stage of the production of architecture, not just its final consumption? This book attempts to frame the problem, and begins the process of delineating alternative paths forward. The first step architects can take towards a more just, harmonious, and non-exploitative designed environment is to redesign themselves, and what the word "architect" stands for.

How architects can move toward a more just, harmonious, and non-exploitative designed environment. Architecture--and architects--have immense influence in defining the way we live, work, and interact as communities. Architecture, in fact, could be described as the very process through which our collective priorities take shape in the environment. Today, buildings generate nearly forty percent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. As awareness of the true cost of inaction grows, every human activity will be rethought--and the material economy of the building industry is one of the places where new thinking is most urgently needed. Architects have the opportunity to reclaim their relevance by becoming the advocates and masterminds of a new way of building. What kind of architecture will be born once its primary purpose is serving communities and not capital accumulation? How can we compel the market to factor in the true long-term costs of construction and material production? How can we reduce the sense of abstraction that separates "consumers" of architecture from the environmental damage wrought at the sites of material extraction? How can communities become fully involved in every stage of the production of architecture, not just its final consumption? This book attempts to frame the problem, and begins the process of delineating alternative paths forward. The first step architects can take towards a more just, harmonious, and non-exploitative designed environment is to redesign themselves, and what the word "architect" stands for.

This publication is a summary of the content, ideas and thoughts that were discussed in the seminar on the current situation of the Mediterranean forest, systems of timber construction, stakeholders, designers, and industries that are shaping the non-extractive architectural principles it fosters. With the seminar The Tectonics of Non-extractive Architecture, compiled here, ETSALS introduced ALEC, a new research line in the framework of La Salle R+D, aimed at making our society, industry and designers ready for a post-carbon future based on new strategies for architectural design and construction.

During the last decade, the South American continent has seen a strong push for transnational integration, initiated by the former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who (with the endorsement of eleven other nations) spearheaded the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA), a comprehensive energy, transport, and communications network. The most aggressive transcontinental integration project ever planned for South America, the initiative systematically deploys ten east-west infrastructural corridors, enhancing economic development but raising important questions about the polarizing effect of pitting regional needs against the colossal processes of resource extraction. Providing much-needed historical contextualization to IIRSA’s agenda, Beyond the City ties together a series of spatial models and offers a survey of regional strategies in five case studies of often overlooked sites built outside the traditional South American urban constructs. Implementing the term “resource extraction urbanism,” the architect and urbanist Felipe Correa takes us from Brazil’s nineteenth-century regional capital city of Belo Horizonte to the experimental, circular, “temporary” city of Vila Piloto in Três Lagoas. In Chile, he surveys the mining town of María Elena. In Venezuela, he explores petrochemical encampments at Judibana and El Tablazo, as well as new industrial frontiers at Ciudad Guayana. The result is both a cautionary tale, bringing to light a history of societies that were “inscribed” and administered, and a perceptive examination of the agency of architecture and urban planning in shaping South American lives.

ATLAS of emerging practices provides an overview of the state of the architect's profession: analyzing themes, trends, projects, and methods that characterize the professional practice, and understanding this discipline through the research carried out with a selection of emerging architectural practices in the European territory. New Generations is a project conceived by Itinerant Office that investigates the changes in the architectural profession since the economic crisis. Since 2012 New Generations has been able to identify and involve some of the most interesting emerging studios in the European scene, gathering more than 300 emerging architectural firms and a variety of experts of other fields. This publication gathers the work of a selection of 95 emerging practices in Europe, with the aim of providing useful tools and insight for architecture students, new graduates, and emerging practices in the early stages of their careers. The 95 participants were involved in an online survey and their responses were collected and further analyzed in this publication. Following an introduction on the New Generations project and its evolution over the years, the publication develops in four main sections: organization, business, media, and project. The "organisation" section analyses different organisations structures, with diagrams and data highlighting the huge variety of configurations that reflect the array of different approaches used by the various firms. The section "Business" highlights various types of commissions --public, private, and unsolicited-- ranging in budgets, scale, and program. "Media" introduces the potential of digital tools, not only for the on-line communication of the offices activities, but also for the development of projects such as encouraging participation through social media, or managing the organisational aspects of the studio. The section "Projects" collects a selection of executed interventions by some of the participants of the ATLAS. The final chapter of ATLAS emphasises the need to rethink the architectural profession. Organisation, Business, Media, and Projects become central and inextricable themes to build a new generations of architect aware of their role in today's society.

From the Gothic to the contemporary, glass has transformed the structural, formal and philosophical principles of artchitecture. In The Glass State, Annette Fierro views the many meanings of transparency in architecture. Specifically, she analyzes the transparent monumental buildings that were built in Paris between 1981 and 1988 as part of Francois Mitterand's program of Grands Projets. The Grands Projets provide a rare opportunity to study a finite set of buidings constructed of similar materials, in the same time period, in a specific urban landscape, and with related ideological missions.