Jean-François Chevrier – författare

Brooklyn-born photographer Helen Levitt (1913–2009) was an assistant to Walker Evans and a friend of Henri Cartier-Bresson, but forged her own path with fierce independence and endless curiosity about the world around her. She is best known for her street photography, capturing children at play on the streets of Depression-era New York and chalk drawings on walls, but she also cast her eye upon the adult world, seeking out moments of movement, transience and theatricality. Following her first solo exhibition at MoMA in 1943, she devoted more than a decade to filmmaking, but returned to photography in the late 1950s and began to work in colour as well as black and white. Lyrical and witty, her images reveal the streets of New York as flowing with life and unexpected poetry.With 68 illustrations

Jeff Wall (b.1946) adopts the nineteenth-century poet Baudelaire's famous description of one of his contemporaries as 'a painter of modern life' to describe his own very different work: huge transparencies mounted on to light boxes that diffuse a brilliant glow of white light evenly through his photographs of contemporary urban scenes and 'constructed' social situations.Wall is foremost among the pioneering artists who since the late 1960s have brought photography to the forefront of contemporary art. His constructed images employ the latest sophisticated technology in the creation of compelling tableaux, which are evocative of subjects ranging from Hollywood cinema to nineteenth-century history painting. When exhibited in their glowing light boxes they evoke both the seduction of the cinema screen and the physical presence of minimalist sculptures such as Dan Flavin's fluorescent light installations or Donald Judd's metal and Perspex wall reliefs. All of these elements - traditional figurative painting, cinema, Minimalism, Conceptual art, documentary photography - are consciously evoked and explored in Wall's work. Associated closely since the late 1960s with Conceptual artists such as Dan Graham, with whom he collaborated on The Children's Pavilion (1988-93), Wall has engaged at a sophisticated level with theories of representation and its social dimensions both as an artist and as a theoretical writer on contemporary art and culture.

the global success story of the Basel architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron has local roots. This book traces these origins while identifying the essential ideas, professional ethics, and development of their architectural practice, established in 1978. The biographies of both architects and the activities of their practice are intimately bound up with the town of Basel. With this embeddedness in Basel as a point of departure, the authors elucidate central themes of their architectural oeuvre: from habitat to monument. With reference to exemplary buildings, they analyze the motifs, constructive principles, and spatial design of the architectonic works of Herzog & de Meuron. In addition, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron lead us on tours through Basel and its surroundings: statements by the architects, along with photographs taken especially for this volume by George Dupin, present the locales and buildings that have played key roles for the work of these architects. The book is rounded out by an intensive exchange of ideas between the architects and Jean-François Chevrier.

The global success story of the Basel architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron has local roots. This book traces these origins while identifying the essential ideas, professional ethics, and development of their architectural practice, established in 1978. The biographies of both architects and the activities of their practice are intimately bound up with the town of Basel. With this embeddedness in Basel as a point of departure, the authors elucidate central themes of their architectural oeuvre: from habitat to monument. With reference to exemplary buildings, they analyze the motifs, constructive principles, and spatial design of the architectonic works of Herzog & de Meuron. In addition, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron lead us on tours through Basel and its surroundings: statements by the architects, along with photographs taken especially for this volume by George Dupin, present the locales and buildings that have played key roles for the work of these architects. The book is rounded out by an intensive exchange of ideas between the architects and Jean-François Chevrier.

Die globale Erfolgsgeschichte der Basler Architekten Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron hat ihre lokalen Wurzeln. Ihnen spürt dieses Buch nach und arbeitet so die wesentlichen Leitlinien, die Berufsethik und die Entwicklung des 1978 gegründeten Büros heraus. Sowohl die Biografien der beiden Architekten als auch die Tätigkeit ihres Büros sind eng mit der Stadt Basel verbunden. Von dieser Basler Verankerung ausgehend, erörtern die Autoren zentrale Themen dieses Oeuvres: vom Habitat bis zum Monument. Anhand exemplarischer Bauwerke analysieren sie Motive, konstruktive Prinzipien und Raumgestaltung im architektonischen Werk von Herzog & de Meuron. Darüber hinaus führen Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron in Rundgängen durch Basel und die Umgebung: Statements der Architekten und eigens für das Buch aufgenommene Fotografien von George Dupin stellen Orte und Gebäude vor, die eine Schlüsselrolle für die Arbeit der Architekten spielen. Ein intensiver Gedankenaustausch der beiden Architekten mit Jean-François Chevrier rundet das Buch ab.