Marco Iuliano – författare

Number One Poultry, London EC2R 8EJ, was a commission awarded by Peter Palumbo to James Stirling, Michael Wilford and Associates in May 1985. Designed from July 1985 onwards, it was completed in 1998. In 2016 it was listed grade II* and it is currently the youngest ever listed building in England.This book records the conversations between One Poultry and those involved with it over its controversial lifetime: Peter Palumbo, developer and patron; Michael Wilford, Stirling’s lifetime working partner; Laurence Bain, Number One Poultry project architect; Peter Rees, the City of London Planning Officer at the time; and Charles Jencks, architectural historian and theoretician of Post-Modernism. The book includes original, unpublished sketches and drawings of the building from conception to realisation, documentation that explains the value of its architecture and a selection of letters sent by distinguished individuals to the City of London Planning Office to protest against threatened, heavy alterations that anticipated the listing.One Poultry Speaks, devised and edited by Marco Iuliano, is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool, whence James Stirling graduated in 1950, and the Royal Institute of British Architects, which awarded him its Royal Gold Medal in 1980.

2026 sees the opening of the new Liverpool School of Architecture, the design of which was selected through a competition which also functioned as an educational project. This book documents the process from the initial pedagogical discussions to the building’s completion, beautifully captured by photographers Richard Pare, Martin Winchester, and Hélène Binet. It records the selection of the architectural practices invited to participate, O’Donnell + Tuomey’s winning proposal, and the construction phase which became a learning tool in itself. A central requirement of the brief was that the new building establish a meaningful relationship with its existing context: a Georgian terrace and a 1930s modernist block, adapted in the 1980s. The project needed to respect this heritage while anticipating future approaches to architectural education. Conversations with leading North American architectural educators on architectural education, culture and practice further informed the brief, and are included in the book. The competition was structured in multiple stages to encourage inclusivity and dialogue among students, staff, and University representatives. Eighteen prominent British and European practices were invited, among them 6a Architects, Barozzi and Veiga, Carmody Groarke, David Chipperfield Architects, Flores & Prats, Grafton Architects, Lacaton & Vassal, Níall McLaughlin Architects, Eric Parry Architects, and Rogers Stirk Harbour. In the first stage, practices submitted concise portfolios outlining their approach. Nine were shortlisted, from which six finalists were selected. Final presentations took place publicly in June 2019 and the decision was made by jurors Maria Balshaw, Kenneth Frampton, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Michael Wilford. The book presents a wonderful range of submissions across all stages and concludes with an essay by Nicholas Ray on how architects learn, focusing on the studio.

Over a period of forty years, Hélène Binet has photographed both contemporary and historical architecture – this is the complete monograph of her work, with two extensive critical essays. Marco Iuliano details Hélène Binet’s background, from her childhood in the Italian fishing village of Sperlonga and in Rome, through her early ‘discovery’ of architectural photographer Lucien Hervé, to other significant influences, like the collaborations with Daniel Libeskind, John Hejduk and the connections at the Architectural Association (AA) in London where she met Zaha Hadid. The essay highlights in detail Binet’s approach to photography, her process and archive.Martino Stierli sets Binet’s work within the conceptual framework of architectural photography, discussing whether an architectural photograph is an inventory of a building or space, a translation into a two-dimensional image or, rather, an image in its own right; an artifact that loosely relates to the original object or phenomenon. Within this context, Stierli argues that Binet’s oeuvre seems to oscillate between two obsessions: a desire to translate spatial phenomena into the two-dimensional space of the image and a quest to articulate the modulation of light on a surface. The two essays are followed by a catalogue of Binet's work, which is framed within a series of her recurring themes emerged through dialogues between the authors and the photographer.