A fantastic showcase of the cutting-edge designs by visionary architect Hernán Díaz Alonso, whose creations are revered by the design world. Hernán Díaz Alonso, one of today’s most influential and innovative architects, heads a multidisciplinary design practice, based in Los Angeles, called HDA-X (formerly Xefirotarch). Praised for its work at the intersection of design, animation, interactive environments, and radical architectural explorations, HDA- X combines these disciplines to create plans for sculptures, architectural ventures, and various objects. Featuring plans for the Helsinki Central Library, a Budapest Museum, and major architectural projects in Barcelona, this book is a spectacular survey of Díaz Alonso’s cutting-edge designs. With an essay by Benjamin H. Bratton and an interview with Díaz Alonso, The Surreal Visions of Hernán Díaz Alonso/HDA-X is perfect for architecture students, teachers, and practitioners, as well as anyone with a passion for design.

Design with Life chronicles the breakthroughs and projects of a nonprofit that is defining resolute new directions in socio-ecological design and other deep-seated intersections of synthetic biology, architecture, and urban systems. In the challenging context of accelerating climate dynamics, the core discipline of architectural design is evolving and embracing new forms of action. New York-based nonprofit Terreform ONE has established a distinctive design tactic that investigates projects through the regenerative use of natural materials, science, and the emergent field of socio-ecological design. This kind of design approach uses actual living matter (not abstracted imitations of nature) to create new functional elements and spaces. These future-based actions are not only grounded in social justice, but are also far-reaching in their application of digital manufacturing and maker culture. Terreform ONE tackles urgent environmental and urban social concerns through the integrated use of living materials and organisms.

A personal tour of Tokyo’s architecture, as seen through the eyes of one of the world’s most acclaimed architects who is also designing the primary venue for the Tokyo Olympic games. Tokyo is Japan’s cultural and commercial epicenter, bursting with vibrancy and life. Its buildings, both historical and contemporary, are a direct reflection of its history and its people. Kengo Kuma was only ten years old when he found himself so inspired by Tokyo’s cityscape that he decided to become an architect. Here he tells the story of his career through twenty-five inspirational buildings in the city. Kuma’s passion is evident on every page, as well as his curiosity about construction methods and his wealth of knowledge about buildings around the world, making this a unique commentary on Tokyo’s dynamic architecture. Kengo Kuma: My Life as an Architect is an intimate and truly inspiring book, revealing the beauty that exists in the world’s everyday spaces.

Reyner Banham and the Paradoxes of High Tech reassesses one of the most influential voices in twentieth-century architectural history through a detailed examination of Banham’s writing on High Tech architecture and its immediate antecedents. Taking as a guide Banham’s habit of structuring his writings around dialectical tensions, Todd Gannon sheds new light on Banham’s early engagement with the New Brutalism of Alison and Peter Smithson, his measured enthusiasm for the “clip-on” approach developed by Cedric Price and the Archigram group, his advocacy of “well-tempered environments” fostered by integrated mechanical and electrical systems, and his late-career assessments of High Tech practitioners such as Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Renzo Piano. Gannon devotes significant attention to Banham’s late work, including fresh archival materials related to Making Architecture: The Paradoxes of High Tech, the manuscript he left unfinished at his death in 1988. For the first time, readers will have access to Banham’s previously unpublished draft introduction to that book.

This volume is published on the occasion of the opening of the National Museum of Qatar in the state's capital, Doha. It explores and celebrates architect Jean Nouvel's innovative design which, inspired by the desert rose with its interlocking disks, responds to the country's desert location by the sea. The museum, built around Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al-Thani's original 19th-century palace, honours Qatar's heritage while looking to its future as a thriving cultural hub. This special edition is in a larger format with additional images, and is produced to the highest standard of quality with multiple paper stocks, sprayed edges, gatefolds and a beautiful slipcase.

Throughout her 20-year career, Neri Oxman has invented not only new ideas for materials, buildings and construction processes, but also new frameworks for interdisciplinary?and interspecies?collaborations. She coined the term ?material ecology? to describe her process of producing techniques and objects informed by the structural, systemic and aesthetic wisdom of nature. Groundbreaking for its solid technological and scientific basis, its rigorous and daring experimentation, its visionary philosophy and its unquestionable attention to formal elegance, Oxman?s work operates at the intersection of biology, engineering, architecture and artistic design, material science and computer science.0This book?designed by Irma Boom and published to accompany a midcareer retrospective of Oxman?s work?highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the designer?s practice. It demonstrates how Oxman?s contributions allow us to question and redefine the idea of modernism?a concept in constant evolution?and of organic design. Some of the projects featured in the book and exhibition include the Silk Pavilion, which harnesses silkworms' ability to generate a 3-D cocoon out of a single thread silk in order to create architectural constructions; Aguahoja, a water-based fabrication platform that prints structures made out of different biopolymers; and Glass, an additive manufacturing technology for 3-D printing optically transparent glass structures at architectural dimensions.00Exhibition: MoMA, New York, USA (22.02-25.05.2020).

This accessible book on the Surrealist movement features paintings, drawings, sculptures, photography, film stills, and architecture, displaying the enormous breadth and variety of Surrealism. The Surrealist movement that developed in Europe following the devastation of World War I swept energetically through all kinds of media as artists found expression in an imaginative pictorial language. This introduction to Surrealism shows 50 unique artworks that have lost nothing of their irresistible attraction to this day. Each work is featured on a beautifully illustrated spread. An informative text highlights each work’s classic characteristics, its unusual aspects, and its significance in the Surrealist movement. Including brief biographies of the artists, this book is a beautifully illustrated primer to Surrealism.