Anna Yudina - Böcker

A spectacular global survey of the new buildings merging architecture and nature to transform our cities for a sustainable future. Concrete horizons, urban sprawl, high-density living: never have our cities and their buildings been in greater need of greening. Yet what’s required is more than an occasional vertical garden or living roof. Featuring seventy projects from around the world – some built, some ongoing, some from the future – Garden City looks at the increasingly inventive ways in which architects and designers are incorporating nature into the built environment, transforming the city for the benefit of all. From office buildings that incorporate urban farms and exchange the CO2 produced by humans for food and oxygen produced by plants, to lightweight systems for growing gardens on vertical surfaces; from ‘tree houses’ the size of city blocks to civic buildings that are ‘plugged into’ existing water-management systems – there are rich and often unexpected ideas for every inquiring designer. The future of our urban architecture is biologically alert, naturally self-sustaining and alive. Garden City is this future’s first manifesto.

A compact sourcebook of ideas for innovative furnishing, interior environments and small-scale architectural interventions. As the definition of ‘designer’ expands and architects today create everything from jewelry to urban masterplans, a new wave of objects is transforming our interior spaces. They include bookshelves that can dynamically divide and reshape a room, chairs that create intimate room-like enclosures, home-office spaces-within-spaces, and self-contained kitchen cubes that can be expanded to reveal every conceivable cooking and eating function. Furnitecture presents some 200 examples of this new design typology. From Danish studio KiBiSi’s design for a reconfigurable bookshelf system and Japanese architect Shigeru Ban’s moving boxes within rooms, to Dutch designers Makkink & Bey’s conversational Ear Chairs and the French atelier 37.2’s series of self-standing cubes, there is an interior world of innovation in these pages. And a personal space just for you.

How far can we expand the concept of ‘urban nature’? How would it make us feel? And how is it going to transform our cities – and, eventually, ourselves? Garden City captures the growing global movement among contemporary architects for biodesigning buildings less as skin and bodies – structure and façade – and more as living entities, capable of being ecologically autonomous, horticulturally productive and ultimately pleasing to our day-to-day lifestyles. It presents more than 100 (mostly completed) projects, a life-affirming range of buildings and design ideas that can be applied to new buildings and those needing rehabilitation. From office buildings that incorporate urban farms and exchange the CO2 produced by humans for food and oxygen produced by plants, to lightweight systems for growing gardens on vertical surfaces; from ‘tree houses’ the size of city blocks to civic buildings that are ‘plugged into’ existing water-management systems – there are rich and often unexpected ideas for every inquiring designer. The future of our urban architecture is biologically alert, naturally self-sustaining and alive. Garden City is this future’s first manifesto.

Growing numbers of us work not only from home, but from anywhere; job flexibility has become a key requirement for employers and workers alike. This, in turn, has created new challenges for architects and designers – many of whom themselves start out working from home – who are tackling demand head on with innovative solutions that allow clients to transform their spaces to suit a wide range of needs, from multifunctional studios to homes that seamlessly combine work and family life. Divided into five thematic sections, this book explores the exciting variety of ways that the workplace can be integrated into the domestic environment. From stand-alone multifunctional furniture to mobile room dividers and dynamic solutions that fold out or pop up to create new work areas, each design addresses the unique needs of the space, client and working practices for which it was required, and tackles new questions about the rapidly evolving relationship between work and domestic life in the 21st century. This essential and timely resource for homeworkers and practitioners offers fresh ideas for how to strike the perfect balance between living and working at home.