Ashley Simone - Böcker

"The text and generous illustrations will appeal most to those who know the author's work and will serve as a testimony to her achievements." — Urban DesignThis book examines the social, political, and cultural factors that have and continue to influence the evolution of the urban waterfront as seen through production created from art and design practices. Reaching beyond the disciplines of architecture and urban design, Occupation:Boundary distills the dual roles art and culture have played in relation to the urban waterfront, as mediums that have recorded and instigated change at the threshold between the city and the sea.At the moment in time that demands innovative approaches to the transformation of urban waterfronts, and strategies to foster resilient boundaries, architect Cathy Simon recounts her career building at and around the water’s edge and in service of the public realm. In so doing, the work of contemporary architects is presented, while the origins and principles of a guiding design philosophy are located in meditations on art and observations on coastal cities around the world. The port cities of New York and San Francisco emerge as case studies that structure the reflections and mediate a narrative that is at once a professional and personal memoir, richly illustrated with images and drawings.Comprising three parts, the first two corresponding parts of Occupation:Boundary draw connections between the past and present by tracing the rise and fall of urban, industrial ports and providing context—in the forms of textual and visual media—for their recent transformations. Such reinterpretations, achieved via design, often serve the public through environmentally conscious strategies realized through inventive approaches to cultural and recreational programs. The work of visual artists, both historical and contemporary, appears alongside architecture, poetry, and literary references that illustrate and draw connections between each of these sections. The third section features select architectural work by the author, framed by critic John King and the architect and urbanist Justine Shapiro-Kline. Introduced with a foreword by the prominent landscape architect Laurie Olin, Occupation:Boundary draws on artistic and cultural intuitions and the experience of an architect whose practice negotiates the boundary between urban contexts and the bodies of water that sustain them. Together, the instincts, reflections, and architectural production collected here evidence the role of art and design in the creation of an equitable and inviting public realm.

This Architectural Design Journal focuses on how architectural skills are deployed in entertainment to communicate design and form the backdrops for stories to play out. It includes articles on installations, exhibition designs, entertainment architecture, narrative projects, speculations on future human identities, video gaming, and memorial tombs - an international plethora of staged examples of how architectural thinking can bring vitality to situations not usually perceived to be within the realms of traditional practice. The issue engages with popular culture, fictions, art, performance, technology, and architectural history and theory. Exploring the full spectrum of spatial propositions that architects can bring to staging events, the work featured is theatrical and exuberant, and the product of many collaborative architectural voices including curators, artists, performers, digital intelligences, fabricators, and writers.

Architects have designed some of the most iconic items of furniture. This Architectural Design Journal features ingenious architect-protagonists of this genre, and explores the recent history and chronology of architectural involvement in the discipline.Furniture augments architect-designed environments, contributing to the holistic ambience of a space and displaying in microcosm architects’ preoccupations with material palettes, haptic sensitivities and structural invention. It can take the form of props for commercial purposes including business meetings and offices, for spaces susceptible to the weather, or for convivial, domestic settings. Whatever the programmatic imperative, architects have contributed in the most aesthetic ways. This issue honours some of the best.

Tradition and precedent inspire invention, architectural drawing, and media practice. This issue presents a series of encounters with printed drawings, leading to their transformation and re-imagination in a series of new works. Archival media from the John Nichols Printmakers Archive, located at the a83 gallery in New York City, is the foundation for these new inventions by contemporary architects. International contributors extend the discourse on architectural representation and its evolution through print media, offering critical reflections on specific pieces. The project and exhibition from which this issue stems concerns questions of the archive; modes through which archival materials may become activated; situated approaches to intricate material objects that allow them to be read in non-normative ways; media transformations; and issues of disciplinary indebtedness and influence. The writers have been invited to address and/or extend these concerns in their consideration of specific works.

As the first English translation of Toshio Nakamura’s 2015 memoir, this expanded facsimile of Architects in Memories offers a new audience access to a seminal text that intimately charts the evolution of modern global architecture from a post-war Japanese perspective. As the founder/editor of the influential architecture magazine a+u, Nakamura was deeply engaged, personally and professionally, with leading figures in architecture worldwide, such as Louis Kahn, Philip Johnson, and Peter Eisenman. His diary records reflections from 1953 to 2015 and later became his memoir, chronicling personal observations, pivotal moments, interactions, and observations that collectively offer insight into the making of postmodern architecture and architectural culture.The translation by Junichi Satoh carries images by Michael Moran. It is complimented by other media, expanding the original volume with essays by Kenneth Frampton and Ashley Simone, and images of each cover produced during Nakamura’s tenure as the editor-in-chief of a+u.