Charlotte Malterre-Barthes - Böcker

An intimate and inventively presented biography of Eileen Gray, an industrial designer who made revolutionary work with lacquer and whose architectural opus, E1027, has long been incorrectly attributed to Le Corbusier.

Closer to Things: Drawing Practices as Spatial Research examines drawing as a critical research methodology in architecture and the spatial disciplines. Moving beyond drawing’s conventional role as a prescriptive design tool, the publication addresses how drawing can be deployed as an analytical instrument to investigate, or get “closer to,” urgent matters of concern in the existing built environment. Through this lens, drawing becomes a potent tool to reveal and communicate complex and often obscured spatial conditions of social inequality, economic asymmetries, environmental degradation or climatic crisis. This publication comprises an extended text by the authors interrogating different forms of research agency performed through drawing; a curated archive of relevant historical and contemporary drawings paired with theoretical reflections; and a series of new interviews and conversations on drawing’s research agency with practitioners and researchers such as Momoyo Kaijima, Eyal Weizman, Fei Fei Zhou, Laura Kurgan, Huda Tayob and Denise Scott-Brown, amongst others. Relevant reading for researchers, practitioners and students alike, Closer to Things frames drawing not just as a creative act, but as a powerful tool of critical spatial inquiry.

Urbanisation reconsidered in the face of ongoing climate emergenciesIn the face of the ongoing climate emergency, can humanity keep chipping at its food sheds via urbanization? This is the paradoxical question raised by residential forms of urbanization: On the one hand, housing settlements across the world devour thousands of hectares of arable fields at the periphery of growing cities. On the other hand, housing is a human right. This publication investigates these complexities. After On Architecture and Greenwashing (2024), it is the second volume in the series The Political Economy of Space and presents a cross-section of positions on architecture and its political economies from different perspectives.

From the office to the construction site – what is the value of work? Why is architecture so remote from labor struggles, with poorly negotiated labor contracts and barely any self-management models? What possibilities emerge when we acknowledge the glaring class divide between the architectural firm and the construction site? What insights do the stories of workers provide about the construction industry? How do different design practices emerge if designers and construction workers unite? On Architecture and Work is a collection of essays on the relationship between construction, architecture, work, and labor. From complaints over grueling working conditions on construction sites to demands for better benefits in design offices, asking candidly “who can afford to be radical?”, this is the third publication in the series The Political Economy of Space, after On Architecture and the Greenfield (2024) and On Architecture and Greenwashing (2024).Edited by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, head of the RIOT laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology—EPFL in Lausanne, this volume updates the discussion on architecture and work by giving answers from construction workers, scholars, and design practitioners.