Edition Axel Menges – förlag

Rome is where the history of European architecture was written. The foundations were laid in ancient Roman times when the first attempts were made to design interiors which could be experienced as something physical. Ancient Roman architects also started to develop building types that are still valid today, thus creating the cornerstone of later Western architecture. This guide has been arranged chronologically. Every epoch is preceded by an introduction that identifies its key features. This produces a continuous, lavishly illustrated history of the architecture of Rome, indeed, the whole of the West. The book includes an alphabetical index and detailed maps, whose information does not just immediately illustrate the historical picture, but also makes it possible to choose a personal route through history. In order to clarify the historical development, the key buildings of each period and other major works are emphasised both in the text and on the maps.

Text in German & English. When the small farmstead in the south-western corner of Sanssouci park came up for sale in 1825, Hofmarschall von Maltzahn wrote to the King of Prussia to say that the grounds of Sanssouci would be much improved by the addition of this plot. It was clear that Peter Joseph Lenné, who produced a first plan for the garden as soon as the land was presented to the Crown Prince, later King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, was behind the letter. Schinkel, the architect of Charlottenhof, and Lenné, the designer of the surrounding park, had met in 1816 when they were working for Chancellor Hardenberg in Glienicke, between Berlin and Potsdam. They established a community of interest that architecture critics have compared with the best years of co-operation between John Nash and Humphry Repton. The palace, set on a severe garden axis, was built from 1826 to 1829. It was followed from 1829 to 1840 by the freely developing area of the Hofgärtnerhaus and its adjacent facilities, all of which has become known as the "Roman Baths". The Crown Prince involved himself in the planning process, contributing over 100 sketches. He called Charlottenhof "my Siam", understood as a synonym for a better world, and he was pursuing with it his intention of presenting his own future style of government, based on romantic theories of the state and striving for a harmonious balance of all classes and interests. Charlottenhof is Schinkel's only work to have survived complete inside and outside, surrounded by Lenné's landscape garden, which has also been carefully looked after and preserved.

Text in English & German. If laziness is the mother of all inventions, then the car is its masterpiece. The earliest means of locomotion was walking, followed by riding on horses or camels; finally, with the invention of the wheel, came the ability to use carriages, which not only made locomotion far more comfortable but also brought the transportation of goods to a whole new level. However, it then took millennia for carriages to go from being propelled by horses or oxen to engines, initially steam-driven, then propelled by internal combustion engines and early experiments with electric propulsion. Cars were initially the result of pure craftsmanship, and as passenger cars were based on the concept of the carriage. The assembly line had not entirely abandoned the carriage look, but already showed a typical automobile profile: equal-sized wheels, engine bonnet, passenger compartment. The predominant body colour of cars manufactured between 1910 and 1930 was black, while all makes of car had an almost uniform appearance. As manufacturers moved away from metal-panelled wooden frames to an all-steel design, they hesitantly ventured to adopt new forms. Improved undercarriages and higher engine performance were initially limited by air resistance, which above a speed of 60 kilometres per hour is the strongest of all driving resistances. This led to the development of new body shapes that offer less resistance to the airstream. Engineers still determined the form of the car, sometimes even achieving formal elegance. It was only rarely that members of other professions, such as the architects Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius, were commissioned to design a car. Between the two World Wars North America had the worlds largest fleet of cars; this also meant that their design became an increasingly important sales factor. Professsional automobile design was established. As they continued to develop technically, cars in the 1950s moved further and further away from the physically logical form of a moving body. One of the last and most outstanding examples of a form with optimum resistance to the airstream is the Citroën ID/DS of 1955. Others, indeed almost all, opted for the pure symbolism of speed and power, whose most important ingredients were tail fins and chrome. Today, with a global annual production of close to 100 million passenger cars, automotive style has come to be represented by a wide range of almost every imaginable form. Architect Hans-Ulrich von Mende has worked with partners in an independent practice since 1990. For 50 years his writings and drawings on automotive design have appeared in books, trade journals (mot, autobild) and the daily press (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung).

Text in German. The theme of this book is nutrition: the manufacture and availability of foodstuffs, and their preparation and presentation in the context of a societys social and cultural development. Nutrition and physical wellbeing are closely linked. Human beings and animals alike need to eat in order to survive. In our rich industrial nations, where the availability of food is taken for granted, attitudes towards food tend toward extremes: asceticism on the one hand, and overindulgence and excess on the other. Over the centuries, methods of food consumption and food preparation have become refined in tandem with the ever more differentiated organisation of human coexistence between these two poles. Regional and social differences in taste-related culture have arisen, each representative of the lifestyle of their time. Today, cooking and the arranging of food may have an almost artistic form, with high expectations for the quality of the product and its preparation. The fact is, however, that we live in a society in which almost all products are industrially produced. We have no power to influence the production process, and the lists of ingredients on the packaging that provide information on the composition of individual foods are puzzling, and make us doubt whether the product is really what it pretends to be. In a wide-ranging tour dhorizon, this book investigates the complex contemporary semantic fields of foods, their production and preparation, their presentation in a commercial context, and their marketing in the media. The author also takes a critical look at the new enthusiasm for DIY food production, baking, and even livestock slaughter, and examines the star system way cooking is presented in the media. The resulting book is a cultural history of food and of eating from a cultural history, sociology, psychology, economy, and media perspective, as they exist within the contemporary discourse on nutrition with its extremes of hype and hubris. Volker Fischer was deputy director of the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt am Main for over ten years. From 1994 to 2012 he has built up a new design department at the Museum for Applied Arts in Frankfurt. At the same time, he taught on the history of architecture and design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. Fischer is already represented in Edition Axel Menges by books on Stefan Heiliger, Richard Meier, Stefan Wewerka, the Commerzbank in Frankfurt am Main by Norman Foster, Hall 3 of Messe Frankfurt by Nicholas Grimshaw, on "beauty design" as well as on the design activities of Lufthansa and Apple.

Text in English & German. The ongoing paradigm change in regard to the use of energy, its efficient usage and the consumption of resources is giving rise to new light systems and lighting appliances. This development might also lead to the use of light as a building material in its own right, comparable to traditional building materials, making it possible to create light space productions something that did not seem feasible up to now due to the high cost of energy and of light systems. The goal of this book is to develop temporary light spaces that re-interpret the existing urban environment on a seasonal basis or over a cycle of several years. As a result, the city will literally appear in a new light. Strollers in the city streets will experience their familiar environment in a new way. Illuminated planes interlacing with planes made by linear fields of light beams will create immaterial material space experiences: still lifes of light within which one can move about and light choreographies that move barely noticeably, creating still lifes in motion. Current research aims at exploring, imagining and inventing stand-alone spatial structures of light, adding on to and transforming existing spaces, creating a new spatial awareness that may enable people to experience urban space in a different way. Similar to the process of architectural design, where haptic built volumes create interspaces, the light spaces that are currently being designed make these interspaces visible and allow urban dwellers to experience unexpected spatial constellations. In addition to the presentation of light-planning examples in Paris, Shanghai, Helsinki, Mekka and Frankfurt am Main the book includes a number of essays relating to the subject, among them: "Light architecture" (Werner Oechslin), The Potemkin city (Adolf Loos), Glass architecture and letters about glass houses (Paul Scheerbart), Alpine architecture (Bruno Taut), The unvisible cities (Italo Calvino), Architecture must burn (Coop Himmelb(l)au), In search of light (Wolfgang Rang), City light. About the social power of light (Helmut Bien), Light or the loss of darkness (Manuel Cuadra), Visible and unvisible light (Andreas Danler), Light concepts for Frankfurt am Main (Michael Hootz), Light planning for cities in China (Hao Luoxi), City light. An instrument of urban planning (Roger Narboni), Light for the public space (Susanne Seitinger), Sustainable urban lighting (Mark Burton-Page), Borders, places, light (Niels Gutschow), Earth and spirit (Wolfgang Rang). With texts by Michael Batz, Niels Gutschow, Hao Luoxi, Roger Narboni, Werner Oechslin, Wolfgang Rang and others.

Together with his colleagues and students at the University of Cyprus, Phocas challenges traditional definitions of utopia by presenting us with analytical research and clearly delineated visions of some architectural futures, which defy easy description. Some may view the architecture-diploma projects in this book skeptically as fantastical or even as frightening visions of some technologically driven future, but they are anything but fantasy. They should be appreciated as a continuing creative search for the defining of what is the meaning in our 21st-century world of "utopia" and the role of architectural technology in expressing it. This search takes us beyond the traditional notions of utopia, which have historically been illustrated as overtly romantic, whimsical images along with a plethora of mechanistic formal architectural or architectonic proposals for utopian cities or communities. Some of these utopian visions, which were realized as isolated acts during the first half of the 20th century, in as socio-economically and culturally diverse places such as the United Kingdom, suburban North America or the Indian sub-continent proved to be, once inhabited, less than utopian. In studying the student proposals, one could argue that these architectural visions are derived from an evolution of human technology and an understanding of growth and adaptability in nature. For instance, some of the projects propose new "building blocks" which can be likened to the ancient technology of making bricks and the quarrying and shaping of stone which led to the development of masonry construction and an entire new architecture. Other proposals can be likened to the self-generating growth and renewal process of plant life. Like in nature, we see in the students work proposals for structural systems that grow vertically out of constructed or natural landscapes in a symbiotic relationship with the forces of gravity, wind and sun, while mining these primal forces to enable human habitation. Others appear as in natural growth, as expandable adaptable infrastructure systems intertwined with and serving existing conditions. And yet other proposals are developed as independent systems that are more au-tonomous in their form and function.

If there is a plateau that continuously unites Hans Dieter Schaals numerous artistic fields of activity, a kind of fundamental level, then it is surely that of landscape architecture. Landscape motifs are as convincingly present in his stage sets as they are in his installations, his exhibition architectures, his texts, and, naturally, also his park and garden designs. Schaal has been on the track of the fascination of landscapes since the 1960s. For him, encountering the parterre or 'carpet patterns' of the baroque Herrenhäuser Gärten in Hannover was a key experience. This was followed by an intensive study of the early landscape gardens of Great Britain, the park complexes of the Romantics and the Enlightenment in Weimar, Wörlitz, and Muskau, and by studies of the garden-art ideas and philosophical implications that underpinned each of them. As a twice-over 'artist-in-residence' at the Villa Massimo in Rome, Schaal was also able to absorb the whole cosmos of Italian garden and park planning, from the Renaissance to the present day. In 1978 Schaal published his first book, Wege und Wegräume (Paths and Passages), today considered a classic. Wege und Wegräume has become required reading and an artistic leitmotif for generations of landscape designers and architects. In 1994, a further key work appeared, entitled Neue Landschaftsarchitektur/New Landscape Architecture. It proved to be among the late-20th centurys most comprehensive studies of the topic of 'landscape' in the wider sense. Above all, it prompts an existential subjective excursus into all those spheres that are inscribed into landscape beyond the professional mainstream. Schaal was subsequently able to build a large number of spectacular 'follies' and installations in gardens and parks. From 1998 to 2014 he was finally able to actually realise a whole city park, complete with artistic installations: the Wielandpark in Biberach. The complex architectonic and artistic layout of this park embodies, as it were, the distilled essence of decades of working with the bridle paths at the boundaries of landscape. Frank R. Werner studied painting, architecture and architectural history in Mainz, Hanover and Stuttgart. From 1990 to 1994 he was professor of history and theory of architecture at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart, from 1994 until his retirement in 2011 he was director of the Institut für Architekturgeschichte und Architekturtheorie at the Bergische Universität in Wuppertal. Peter C. Horn studied architecture in Munich. After working for several years in his original profession in South America, he runs a studio for architectural photography in Stuttgart since 1985.

Text in German. Erdmut Bramke, who was born in 1940 in Kiel and died in 2002 in Stuttgart, is one of the few 20th-century artists whose work consistently expressed a purely painterly position. She worked only with colour and structures. The use of acrylic colours enabled her to create unique colour constellations. Her unusual palate of colours and novel shades of colour were a constant surprise. In her stylistic idiom she emphasised flowing lines, interspersed colour shadowing with linear structures and experimented with images produced by dip-ping the image body in colour and also by using different materials. Her works are represented in many public and private collections, including the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, the Ulmer Museum, the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the Bundeskunsthalle, also in Bonn, and the Kunsthalle Kiel. Erdmut Bramke studied painting from 1961 to 1967 at the academies in Berlin and Stuttgart. Her teachers were Heinz Trökes and K R H Sonderborg. Repeated study periods in France and Italy took her creative work into constantly new directions. Particularly important for her artistic development was the time she spent as a stipendiary fellow at the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1979/80 and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 1986. The present catalogue raisonné of the artists freelance work was commissioned by the Freunde der Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, as prescribed by the terms of the bequest of Erdmut Bramke her artistic design of buildings will follow in a later volume. Volume one is devoted to the paintings. It is introduced by essays of six people in her circle who focus on Bramkes importance for painting in the latter half of the 20th century. Volume two presents the sizable uvre of her works on paper, which must be accorded equal weight in the artists work. Reprinted in both volumes are contemporary texts from catalogues, newspaper articles and talks by Reinhard Döhl, Eugen Gomringer, Karin von Maur and others that show how the artists work was received during her lifetime. Until her retirement, Ulrike Gauß was the head of the Graphische Sammlung of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Susanne Grötz is a freelance art historian and exhibition curator, Carolin Jörg teaches artistic design at the Hochschule Augsburg.

Sanjay Patils tryst with architecture began in his early childhood as he soaked up the environs that surrounded him in his birthplace, Nashik. Moving on to formal education in architecture at the Sir JJ College of Architecture in Mumbai, Sanjay returned to his hometown in 1981 to immerse himself into a meaningful and sensitive architectural practice. Over the years, Sanjay Patil has received many honours from the industry and his projects have been widely published in architectural journals. His greatest reward however continues to be the appreciation and support of his numerous clients who have played a vital role in his approach to architecture. His Workspace 'Environ Planners' has also evolved into a centre for learning; inspiring, training and providing roots and wings to budding architects from various parts of the country. 'Knowledge sharing is integral to me and has always given me great pleasure and satisfaction. I have always made a conscious effort to share with others the little bit that I have learnt through my work, travel and other hobbies. This book is just an extension of this love for sharing; a humble effort to document some of my works across the last three decades and present it to a wider audience. It is an honest endeavour to make the reader a part of the design process and my passion for my work that is so much a part of my being.' The book is an attempt to chronicle the architects journey and delve deeper into his philosophy towards architecture and life, his love for nature and his commitment to architecture. Our journey thus encompasses influences from vernacular architecture, his leaning towards sustainable design, response to nature and his diverse use of courtyards in varying building typologies. It showcases 19 noteworthy projects, which include private residences, restoration projects, educational institutions, resorts and retreats, office spaces including his own workspace and farmhouse. It also includes essays by Christopher Benninger, Anand Mahindra (chairman and managing director, Mahindra Group) and Anu-rag Kashyap (principal, BNCA College of Architecture, Pune) providing valuable insights and perceptions about Sanjay Patils work.

Text in English & German. When architects design a house for themselves, the often tense relationship between clients and builders is usually absent. That is why in many such buildings the architect-designers artistic stance and political position, preferences and antipathies, temperament and character are more pronounced than usual. Moreover the architectural theories, debates and trends of an epoch also leave their traces in them in a particular way. We encounter both attachment to tradition and commitment to the avant-garde, willingness to experiment and pragmatism, distinctive artistry and views shaped by the fact that a building is also a product of engineering. And last but not least, expressed in their houses are the personal life circumstances of the people concerned, or the messages the houses are meant to convey above and beyond their actual purpose: as a 'manifesto', as the 'self-portrait' of the architect, but also as an advertising tool or as a sign of connection to specific milieux or positions. Building for oneself has a special connotation under the conditionsof migration and exile. Among the most prominent examples are the private homes of Rudolph Schindler in West Hollywood (1921/22), Richard Neutra in Los Angeles (1932), Walter Gropius in Lincoln, Massachusetts (1937/1938), Ernst May near Nairobi (1937/1938), Bruno Taut in Istanbul (1937/1938), Ernö Goldfinger in London (19371939), Marcel Breuer in New Canaan, Connecticut (1938/1939 and 1947/1948), Josep Lluís Sert in Lattingtown, New York (19471950) and Max Cetto in Mexiko-Stadt (1948/1949). What expression could voluntary migration or forced change of location find in these buildings? To what extent do the architects other buildings differ from such 'homes of ones own' in a foreign country, to use an expression borrowed and modified from Virginia Woolf? The book is a collection of contributions by internationally renowned authors and examines not only the buildings themselves but also other aspects of the topic that have hitherto received little attention.

Situated at the intersection of public realm, urban design and site specific art, Martha Schwartz Partners has over 35 years of experience designing and implementing installations, gardens, civic plazas, parks, institutional landscapes, corporate headquarters, master plans, and urban regeneration projects. MSP works with city leaders, planners and builders at a strategic level so as to advocate for the inclusion of the public landscape as a means to achieve environmental, economic and social sustainability. With offices in London, New York and Shanghai, the practice is engaged in projects and consultation around the globe and has to date worked on projects in over 20 countries and five continents. This monograph is the first publication to document 55 built projects and a selection of master plans by this internationally acclaimed practice.

Text in English and German. Erich Engelbrecht (19282011) called his pictures "introspective". He remarked on this: "The introspective image inspects the arena of the soul, the field of operation of archetypes, which constitute the fundamental pattern of our behaviour." We are indebted to C.G. Jung for providing especially deep insights into the nature of archetypes. According to him, they constitute, in their totality, the collective human unconsciousness, and determine our actions. These archetypesbecome visible only in symbolic images. For Werner Haftmann such images are the works of symbol-forming artists of all times. The works of Erich Engelbrecht, whether graphics, oil pictures, gobelins, or wooden and steel figures, appear planimetric and abstract. In his steel figures, for instance, the third dimension exists only in the thickness of the steel plates. This makes his artworks akin to folk tales. In his book The European Folktale, Max Lüthi describes the style of the folk tale as "planimetric and abstract", with projecting all happenings on the level of plot. When the sister cuts her little finger off and uses it to open the door to the glass castle to free herimprisoned brothers in the folk tale The Seven Ravens, no blood flows and we hear no cry of pain.Both the folk tale and the "introspective image" tell a story and use primal images in order to do it. This mode of action of creating a coherence of meaning through a narrative of archetypalimages such as forest, cavern, or sea that rests upon primal human experience is described by C. G. Jung as an "archetypal programme ", a primal behaviour pattern that all human beings follow,regardless of race, culture, or epoch. With the introspective image, as with the folk tale, the creative process must be intuitive and meditative, an immersion in the unconscious. Erich Engelbrecht had no plan or idea for an artwork, merely an empty sheet of paper or canvas in front of him; he made himself receptive, waited, and allowed himself to be guided by the images, a process that he experienced very much as an ordeal and even as a threat to his existence. He did, however, have a sense for when his process of searching was at an end, albeit without understanding the meaning of a picture created in this way. His wife Waltraud Engelbrecht would then try to "read" these images and to derive a coherence of meaning from correspondences of form and colour.

The condition of "fake" and "real" in architecture is rarely publicly discussed nor has it encountered broad journalistic or scholarly attention. This book explores the realm of truth, authenticity and fakery in architecture, providing a timely collection of analytical essays and projects. Photographers, writers and architects share their understanding and speculations about a broad range of spaces and concepts all searching for common ground between real and imagined, function and story. The authors challenge our perception of "authenticity " through the examination of built and simulated environments, architectural fiction, theatric illusions and mannerist trickery. They examine the notion that the principle of Sullivans "form follows function" contains a paradox caused by the ambiguity and complexity of architectural expression. Buildings are perceived through an individuals personal experiences while also being interpreted along broader cultural values. The works shown reveal that under scrutiny, any built environment harbors both, reveals moments of truth, deception and ambiguity all of it partially in the eye of the beholder.The diverse contributions shed light on unexpected identities in architecture inviting criticalthought about our built environment analog and digital. The goal of this publication goes beyond unmasking deception in architecture, it aims at unfolding time-lines and revealing the layerednature of people and places. The images and essays reveal our contemporary condition and let collective and individual narratives unfold, a range of truths in themselves. Expanding from the discussion about truthful materiality and tectonics, this book provides an understanding ofreal, authentic, and fake in urbanism and architecture. Anne-Catrin Schultz studied architecture inStuttgart and Florence. Following post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technoloyin Boston, she worked for several years with Turnbull Griffin Haesloop and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in San Francisco. While developing her own practice, she has taught at the University of California in Berkeley, the California College of the Arts and the Academy of Arts University in San Francisco. In 2013 she joined the Department of Architecture at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.

Since 1970, based in an isolated building situated on the peninsula of Posillipo, Pica Ciamarra Associati (www.pcaint.eu) has acted as a laboratory of architectural and urban design which has gradually incorporated new members and new energies over the time: using a multidisciplinary approach, the roots of the architectural practice lie in the intensive theoretical and practical work begun in the early 1960s by Massimo Pica Ciamarra. Since then the practice has been marked by a continuous relationship with Le Carré Bleu Feuille internationale darchitecture and leading members of the cultural milieu of Team 10: this has led to constant attention to everything that lies beyond form, to the relation ship with contexts that also include non-spatial contexts, and to high levels of integration and dialectical discussion. According to Pica Ciamarra Associati, a design transcends the approaches of a single sector, providing simultaneous solutions to contradictory requirements, combining utopia and practicality. The poetics of the fragment: it mediates between architecture and the urban dimension; some designs also have the aim of becoming absorbed within a context as 'informed fragments'. This monograph is the result of an intensive period of work and consists of two interacting parts. It stems from research into the archive of the studio Pica Ciamarra and conversation with the members of the architectural practice. Organised diachronically, the book tells the long story, unfolding over a period of over fifty years of a team of Neapolitan architects and designers, who have maintained the lively spirit of the practice which is still geared towards the future. The textual and iconographic account tells a story and offers an interpretation that highlight the vibrant atmosphere of the studio, based on a consistency of thought and action, and fuelled by an interest in many different forms of knowledge. The contextualisation of the events related to the studio, as they unfolded over time, is wide-ranging, coherent and connotative. Antonietta Iolanda Lima, professor of history of architecture at the University of Palermo, has always tried, through theory, teaching and design, to disseminate the importance of history which can embracing innovation and tradition to an equal degree, forming a new architectural language. According to her view of architecture, history and design are closely connected, a 'single entity' as is reflected by her career. Since the 1980s, her academic work has gained increasing importance, a way of avoiding narrow sectoral approaches in the training of future architects, offering a holistic stance of the history of architecture and an architecture that contributes to shaping critical thought and a thriving cultural life.

Spread over a hill that climbs up from the plain, Himeji Castle with its white walls shimmering in the sunlight like the feathers of a fantastic bird seems to be rising into the blue sky like a great heron. This impression has given it the name "Castle of the White Heron". The castle, which has nothing martial about it, on the contrary, it is extraordinarily elegant, is undoubtedly one of Japans most impressive fortresses. It was built between 1601 and 1609, when the period of war was almost over, and was used primarily for administration and residence, with defence as a secondary role. Thus its aesthetic impact was as important when it was built as its actual purpose as a fortification. The main building in the castle is the Tenshu or Tenshu-kaku in the northem part of the complex, a wooden structure about 46 m high. Its complicated intermediate roofs make it look more like a skyscraper than a tower. Himeji Castle represents an architectural type that probably does not occur in other areas of the world. Large parts of the building were classified as "Kokuho State Treasure" as early as 1951, and others as "Important Cultural Property". The building was placed on the World Cultural Heritage list in 1993. Art historian Irmtraud Schaarschmidt-Richter specialized in classical and modern Japanese art and architecture at an early stage, as is shown by numerous publications. Her book on the Japanese garden has long been a standard work. Most recently she was involved in publications on architects Kazuo Shinohara and Toyo Ito. Photographer Mo Nishikawa, a pupil of Ken Domon, one of the most important photographers of our century, sees his work as a spiritual and intellectual contemplation of art. His photographs of the Katsura Palace, the Himeji Castle and the Ise Shrine are among the great masterpieces of contemporary photography.

Text in English & German. An ode to light sings the way of the wandering light, which comes from the universe and is born from the union of night and light. Wandering, it lingers for a short time in each place it visits, wandering around it, going from door to door and leaving its gift of light behind. It overcomes boundaries, falls in love, is angry, shows the future and laughs. It visits places of humiliation, powerlessness and hopelessness, and gives them a home, courage and protection. The wandering light tries to understand each place it visits and shows itself to them in different guises: as a shimmering cube, a folded labyrinth of light, as a pulsating vibration in rainbow colours, as a diamond light floating above the horizon, gently humming the music of the night. It dissolves boundaries, unites continents in the air, transforms what is fear, is here and there at the same time, lifts up the reality of time. At the end of its wanderings around the earth, it moves on into space, but not before leaving behind its scent, like the scent of time and its omnipresence. Beijing, Agra, Barcelona, New York, Gerona, Ankara and Zaatari are the places it encounters on its journey. The movements, frozen for a moment, allow us to sense its vibrations and its pulse on its way around the earth.

Text in English & German. Since beyond time, rainbow lightning has been exploring space, leaping from star to star and forming light beings and crystals of light on our planet, just as they do there. They bubble, flame, flare, flash, weave a web of light, attract, condense, become space that inspires and into which one can enter. Become figurines, cubes, gurgling sky discs, flying labyrinths -- cathedrals of light! Vibrating, stretching time, laughing, refreshing, exploding like dreams in buds of light, timeless and passing away. The rainbow flashes are particularly attracted to cities. There they magically sparkle pink-red, jasmine-yellow-gold, flower-blue and breathe new life into them. Beauty is their goal. If their light were sound, what sweet melody! What overflowing happiness rained down! What sound of light-worlds! The journey of the rainbow lightning travels to Mongolia, Belize, Rome, Kathmandu, Guilin, Norway, Dubai and Japan. Frozen for a moment, the bubbling lightning and light crystals suggest their vibrations as they travel around the earth and into space.

Play-acting but above all the opera have only seemingly little to do with our everyday life. In fact opera is a very artificial work of art in which reality is nevertheless present, but condensed in such a way that it touches us throughout the ages. In experiencing opera performances, we thus become companions of the bard Orpheus in Monteverdis opera L'Orfeo, who mourns the death of his beloved nymph Eurydice with his laments. We transform ourselves into sympathetic and compassionate brothers and sisters of Orpheus, Wozzeck, Tosca, Tristan, Isolde or Jenufa and are thus directly referred to the perils and also pleasures in our own lives. In order to make the visual and sound dimensions of an opera tangible for the audience, a close interaction of dramaturges, actors, singers, dancers, directors, stage designers and technicians is necessary. What role do stage designers play in this? Dont some performances owe their success primarily to the work of the set designer? The stage settings created by Hans Dieter Schaal, who has worked on almost all German stages, but also in many important international theatre venues, including Vienna, Salzburg, Zurich, Brussels, Paris, Moscow and San Francisco, have, over and over again, such a lasting effect due to their visual power that they remain in the memory of the audience for a long time. The first volume on Hans Dieter Schaals stage settings covered the years 1982 to 2000, and this book now brings out a further volume dedicated to the works from 2001 to 2021. The book is captivating not only because of its abundance of mostly large-format photographs and many design drawings, but also because of the detailed texts written by Schaal himself, which reveal how intensively the artist deals with the respective work. As a result he invents images that often trigger a completely new perspective on the works. Hans Dieter Schaal, born in Ulm in 1943, is an architect, landscape designer, stage designer, exhibition designer and artist. His works, the majority of which have been published by Edition Axel Menges, have found an audience far beyond his home country. The author lives and works near Biberach an der Riß.

Text in German and Chinese. Architects usually try to create "finished" buildings, i.e. coherent works of architecture for eternity. But does this claim stand up to reality? Should that be the claim at all? After all, it cannot be ruled out that the building will change after completion. Inspired by references from architectural history, art and anthropology, the young Kaiser Shen studio developed various theses at the beginning of its practice and tested them on the basis of its own projects. Central to this is the question of how buildings change in their lifespan due to external influences and what this change means for permanence in architecture and for the idea of space. In earlier times, it was common practice to build on existing structures. Thus, in most buildings that have survived for several centuries, countless layers of time overlap. This can be seen particularly clearly in the additions and conversions of cathedrals, for example. Due to new framework conditions and requirements for use, buildings were always pragmatically developed further in the currently valid architectural style. Often, only experts are able to distinguish between the different time periods. Only a few buildings are considered so outstanding by society that they are conserved and musealised in a fixed time layer. However, such conservation is rather unnatural and can only be justified in exceptional cases. In this book, therefore, promising strategies are to be pointed out as to how "unfinished" houses, with rooms lacking special qualities, can be further built and adapted to the present framework conditions. For Atelier Kaiser Shen, a good structure means developing a future-proof spatial idea, and this cannot be reduced to the supporting structure. When building further, it should be possible to build on this architectural-spatial idea. Since a conversion can even destroy it in extreme cases, it is important to create a potential that is recognised and taken up by those who continue to build. Ideally, the building should have such a strong spatial idea that it can survive future renovations and still be viable. Stuttgart-based Atelier Kaiser Shen was founded in 2017 by Florian Kaiser and Guobin Shen and works on projects of various scales. Their work has been awarded various prizes, including the Hugo-Häring-Auszeichnung 2020 and a recognition at the BDA-Architekturpreis max 40 for young architects. Parallel to their work in the studio, Florian Kaiser and Guobin Shen taught at the University of Stuttgart from 2014 to 2021.

In his note to the edition of Neue Landschafts-architektur/New Landscape Architecture published 1994 in England as Landscape as Inspiration, Geoffrey Jellicoe compares my drawing considerations with the works of Paul Klee. What at first sounds a bit highfalutin is correct insofar as I do not move exclusively in the banal everyday and functional space in everything I draw, design and realize, but always reflect second and third surrealities as well. Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible", how Paul Klee formulated the process. Every viewer and reader could rightly ask the question: What do such expressions of art have to do with every-day architecture? I think: a great deal. And that is because all architectural problems and their solutions are multi-layered. Just like pure works of art. Every building summarizes and redefines its architectural, urban, village and landscape surroundings. Intentionally or unintentionally, exaggerated or restrained, each building can look like a meteorite or bomb strike, an inconspicuous remark or a beautification attack. I am interested in the past, the present and the future of an urban or landscape site. My view wants to integrate archaeological working methods just as much as functional fulfilments and imaginative-surreal, sometimes utopian efflorescence. I would never go so far as to formulate: Architecture is the necessary, and art is the unnecessary. Of course, every artist-architect who embarks on this complicated-complex path will have difficulties with the banal, seemingly superficial everyday reality in nature, the landscape and the city. It is therefore not surprising that I have only been able to realize a few architectural and visual productions and that, in the course of the last decades, I have been increasingly pushed into the areas of stage design and other design areas. At the moment, thanks to the ecological movement, hardly anyone is interested in the connection between art and architecture. More important are sustainability and zeroenergy houses in which the windows can hardly be opened. Could it be that building culture, indeed the whole of culture, will soon sink into green primeval forests and huge wetland biotopes? Or will foreign, warlike peoples destroy or occupy our cities and landscapes and cultivate them anew?

The dream of owning your own home in the countryside has led to that Cities are expanding more and more, growing together and the destroy untouched nature. In addition, however, the demand is increasing affordable housing and small residential units in the cities. The proximity to the workplace and the good infrastructure are clear advantages of city life. The concept Penthouses for everyone represents the individual living wishes of people at the center. It shows that sophisticated architecture can be affordable for everyone can and is also possible in cities in the course of densification. The Development of the new living space for everyone takes place via the development of flat roofs, which exist in large numbers in urban areas are. Unfortunately, the possibilities of targeted development remained roofs especially in the new development areas in the past largely unrecognized. So far, flat roofs are mostly only here planted or used for energy production. Here and there will be although they are also subsequently built on, they usually remain unused for residential purposes. How different it is in many people southern countries. It goes without saying there that flat roofs are used To use housing and to include it in the planning right from the start. The book gives an insight into the inexhaustible possibilities that arise when living on roofs. Based on numerous Examples are shown that the dream of home ownership in the countryside can also be realized in the city. It's not just small inexpensive roof houses possible. With special construction kits larger units can also be assembled; also alternatives Forms of living can be thought of and implemented, nothing remains utopia. Ultimately, it's about living in the cities to make it more attractive again, to avoid urban sprawl and the destruction of nature to prevent and people well in the city home and return identity. However, this requires new building laws and development plans create the conditions. So far, a subsequent development of roofs is often prevented or excluded by building laws rejected for aesthetic reasons. A further construction on roof surfaces is paralyzed with the demand for adaptation to the existing situation. Only roof structures are created that are hardly recognizable as such or the given monotonous design elements record to adapt to the inventory.

What all these buildings have in common is that with the available material, wood, and the most modest means, places of worship, centres in the villages, were built with much feeling and love. The constructions in wood were derived in an old tradition from the dwellings and farm buildings of the peasant population. Their architecture, the typological forms probably penetrated into this seclusion as an idea. "The idea of a church as a building", brought with them by clergymen and wandering master craftsmen from the more fertile plains and the rich, large mining and trading towns.The oldest churches were built as early as in the 15th century, most of those still standing were built in the 18th and 19th centuries, and quite a few are still being built today. Many were destroyed in the two world wars, many fell victim to ethnic cleansing after 1945. Many were destroyed in the two world wars, many fell victim to ethnic cleansing after 1945, some fell into disrepair during the Soviet era, others were burnt down by lightning or short circuits, and quite a few simply gave way to the more "representative" stone churches as early as the 19th century. But a large number are still standing, consecrated, and believers gather in them. In fact, almost all of them in the various Carpathian countries are protected monuments, and many have been lovingly restored in recent times.More than the architectural-historical value, the question arises here of the aesthetic assessment of these small buildings. It is not a refined canon of forms of great architecture that can be derived and proven from the history of architecture that inspires us so much. Basically, they are not overly sophisticated constructions in terms of craftsmanship, they are safe and beautiful in their simplicity. Their aesthetic appeal, however, also includes the surface-weathered material, deformed structures, colour improvisations, recently ornamented sheet metal, inside wall paintings, altar and iconostasis furnishings derived from Renaissance and Baroque periods, but above all their location in the village, mostly isolated, often elevated, surrounded by old trees, enclosures and graves without cemetery order.

The analysis of the corpus formed by Christopher Nolan’s works allows us to derive its poetics. The key to this is provided by the magic tricks script in The Prestige. All of Nolan’s films from Insomnia onwards are influenced by this aspect. The analysis not only shows how outstanding Nolan’s films are, but they also prove to be surprisingly political. The joker in The Dark Knight turns out to be the embodiment of neoliberalism, and in The Dark Knight Rises, we see Bane, a populist who benefits from the destruction that his neoliberalism wreaks. Inception is an allegory of filmmaking entirely shaped by the script of magic tricks. Interstellar and Tenet are about how humanity reacts to the climate catastrophe: in Interstellar, all that remains for humanity is to flee into space; in Tenet, Nolan allows future generations to fight back against the present. With the first nuclear bomb the protagonist of Oppenheimer gives humanity the power to destroy itself. In doing so, he not only heralds the atomic age but also the anthropocene.Other key topics in this analysis: the attack on the Kiev Opera house in Tenet and the Russian war against Ukraine in 2022; the references in Inception on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris; the relation of the dead female characters in Nolan’s films to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Philosophy of Composition; in Nolan’s later films, the canary birds of The Prestige transformed into planes; the escape from earth in Interstellar complemented by the evacuation in Dunkirk; the interdependencies between Interstellar and Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel; neoliberalism reflected in Michael Mann’s thriller Thief; the allusions in Tenet on the James Bond film Skyfall by Sam Mendes.Because of the last point, there is a digression that deals with Skyfall. Against the background of changing gender relations, Bond is looking for a new identity. Silva’s homosexuality is a cipher for misogyny, and the femicide on Sévérine is a reference to the death of Joan Vollmer Burroughs. This includes an explanation of why Bond has to do without his Beretta in Terence Young’s Dr No and is instead accompanied through his film series by the »triumvirate« of the Walther PPK, the Aston Martin, and the Vodka Martini. These findings are looked at in relation to Daniel Craig’s subsequent Bond films.

Europe, indeed the whole world, is littered with concentration-camp memorials, information centres, memorial plaques, and other signs that have been set up as a reminder of the atrocities committed by the National Socialists and their numerous willing helpers. In the United States alone, there are around 100 Holocaust memorials. In Germany, there are over 500 of all kinds of memorial facilities commemorating the Nazi victims (without the uncounted "Stolpersteine" by Gunter Demnig installed in memory of individual Nazi victims). Perhaps without these facilities, the deeds of that time would have long since been forgotten. Nevertheless, the memories of what happened are fading everywhere. Almost all of those once affected, victims and perpetrators, have now passed away, and many of us today would rather not be bothered by it.How should we deal with this? Remembrance can only be present and have an effect in the future if those dealing with the subject succeed in touching us emotionally in such a way that what we hear, read and see causes us to begin to deal intensively with what happened and and ask questions: How could so many of our ancestors be so merciless, so inhuman? How could these monstrosities happen? How was this possible, especially in Germany, against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, German Humanism, German Classicism, German Romanticism and the highly developed German culture in general? And as the present unfortunately shows, much of this has since been repeated – even in places where one would no longer have expected it.The author has visited over 60 memorial sites himself in the last 40 years and has been personally involved in many of them as an architect, designer and artist. The book presents his views on the design of Nazi memorials and information centres with numerous examples of his own, illustrated with photographs and drawings. For the author, the creative confrontation with the Nazi past is a means of naming and visualising the suffering and cruelty of which people are capable, using all the artistic means at his disposal.

In recent decades demographic shifts have significantly influenced young peoples’ residential preference. Due to the rise of single-person households, smaller family sizes, and the desire for lower maintenance and utility costs, many young individuals are choosing to live in smaller, efficient spaces in proximity to work and urban amenities. These changes have led to an increase demand for multi-functional, space-efficient designs.As people’s daily routines and expectations evolve, the design of living spaces must adapt accordingly. The need for multifunctional rooms has become apparent; a living room that seamlessly transitions into a home office represents just one of the many adaptations that modern dwellers require. Architects, interior designers, and homebuilders are responding with innovative solutions like convertible furniture, built-in storage, and open-plan layouts that facilitate a compact but comfortable living environment.An often-discussed notion in design and construction is sustainability. Its origin and widespread use of the term sustainable development can be attributed to events and circumstances that occurred several decades ago. The 1992 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm addressed concerns regarding humanity’s potential overuse of the earth’s "carrying capacity".As people’s awareness of protecting our living environment increases, the choice of smaller homes is becoming a more common and environmentally responsible decision. This shift is driven by the need to reduce resource consumption, as smaller homes require fewer materials for construction, maintenance, and repairs. Moreover, smaller homes are inherently more energy-efficient due to their reduced space, which requires less energy for heating and cooling. Additionally, the smaller footprint means using less land per dwelling unit.

Architects and artists have always acknowledged over the centuries that Rome is rightly called the »eternal city«. Rome is eternal above all because it was always young, always »in its prime«. Here the buildings that defined the West appeared over more than 2000 years, here the history of European architecture was written.The foundations were laid even in ancient Roman times, when the first attempts were made to design interiors and thus make space open to experience as something physical. And at that time the Roman architects also started to develop building types that are still valid today, thus creating the cornerstone of later Western architecture. In it Rome’s primacy remained unbro- ken – whether it was with old St. Peter’s as the first medieval basilica or new St. Peter’s as the building in which Bramante and Michelangelo developed the High Renaissance, or with works by Bernini and Borromini whose rich and lucid spatial forms were to shape Baroque as far as Vienna, Bohemia and Lower Franconia, and also with Modern buildings, of which there are many unexpected pearls to be found in Rome.All this is comprehensible only if it is presented historically, i. e. in chronological sequence, and so the guide has not been arranged topographically as usual but chronologically. This means that one is not led in random sequence from a Baroque building to an ancient or a modern one, but the historical development is followed successively. Every epoch is preceded by an introduction that identifies its key features. This produces a continuous, lavishly illustrated history of the architecture of Rome – and thus at the same time of the whole of the West. Practical handling is guaranteed by an alphabetical index and detailed maps, whose information does not just immediately illustrate the historical picture, but also makes it possible to choose a personal route through history.

Dominikus Zimmermann's pilgrimage church of Our Lady and parish church of St Peter and Paul in Steinhausen, built between 1728 and 1733, is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable creations not only of Upper Swabian Baroque architecture. Architectural history has devoted considerable space to it, and yet there are important aspects that have remained unnoticed and unexamined.The first question that arises is that of the ovals on which the building is based, whereby two different versions need to be examined: the design drawing that the architect presented to his abbot client, and the completed building, which could be analyzed in detail for the first time thanks to a recently created precise measurement. In both cases, the result shows ambitious oval constructions that deviate from the usual practice, as well as two fundamentally different geometric approaches, the respective reasons for which are open to speculation.The second complex deals with peculiarities of perception. Here, one cannot help but accord the Steinhausen church a prominent position. Zimmermann designs the path into and through the church interior as a sequence of stations, each characterized by different expectations of what is to come—by illusory images of space that the viewer creates in his imagination based on what he can perceive from his respective vantage point. These images dissolve as one walks through the church, they change, expectations are in a state of constant metamorphosis, until finally the image of the last station coincides with reality.A concluding chapter is devoted to the question of whether, and if so, to what extent Zimmermann's Steinhausen spatial artwork can be said to have a dialectical constitution of architecture, and which dialectically related moments prove to be constitutive of a unity.

Rising housing and energy costs, the emergence of the non-traditional small household and an increase in the number of seniors have contributed to a renewed interest in adaptable dwellings. These designs can be defined as units or furnishings that permit change of space or function at any time. With their popularity rising rapidly around the world, people are becoming aware of the environmental and budgetary implications of owning a very large single-family home, especially when some spaces in these homes are hardly ever used. Notable additional advantages of adaptable homes are lower property taxes and construction costs, and time savings through possible prefabrication. To be efficient, adaptable dwellings must be carefully designed since minor decisions can have a large impact on their use. Light, boundaries, circulation, choice of materials and furnishings are some of the tools that can be used by designers to resolve challenges and expand spatial perception. Therefore, a good adapt- able design should not only be versatile and efficient but also avoid simplicity and dullness.Japanese architects, such as Shigeru Ban, have pioneered solutions to these problems by using curtains or shutters to separate between outdoors and indoors. Such fixtures can be opened during the day to let in light and fresh air but can be closed at night. Those designers also encourage the inhabitants to engage with the outside by creating large, easily accessible rooftop spaces that can used for outdoor seating, for example. When partitions must be installed, transparent ones are recommended since they still permit the dispersal of light. Moveable partitions, or sliding panels, are also useful in defining spaces since they allow one to temporarily redefine small spaces according to need. Lastly, an open floor concept with large exterior openings permit views of the outside which, as noted above, can increase the perception of a house’s size. Increasing the floor height can greatly expand space without enlarging the floor area.The book displays a collection of outstanding innovative residential projects and furnishings made to accommodate the daily or yearly changing living space needs of occupants.

The automobile, the self-moved vehicle, existed long before Carl Benz’s patented motor car of 1886. In 1769, Frenchman Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot crashed his steam-powered vehicle into a wall on its maiden voyage. In 1875, Austrian Siegfried Marcus presented a rudimentary motor-driven vehicle. However, even Benz’s three-wheeled vehicle was still a long way from what we understand today as an automobile. Numerous developments followed in terms of wheels, mudguards, axles, springs, bonnets, seats, lamps, windscreens and roofs. By the turn of the century, the construction of the automobile as we know it today had been established: with four wheels of identical size and often already enclosed bodies, although formally and technically still indebted to carriage construction. The advent of closed bodies soon led to their previous materials of wood and fabric being replaced by sheet steel and glass, which allowed for arbitrary spatial deformations. In addition to necessary technical considerations, this inspired numerous formal variations. Initially, these variations mostly concerned the radiator, followed by the mudguards and windows, and later also the closed surfaces. With the design of the chassis to increase the wheelbase, passengers could now sit between the axles and not above them as before – with the result that the height of the car could be reduced. This also brought the car roof into focus and, in addition to new technical requirements, invited various formal variations. Lighting technology transformed carbide pots into real headlights. Glass surfaces cautiously ventured out of two-dimensionality into three-dimensional design. Ironically, it was technology-based aerodynamics that showed early signs of the modern car as we know it today.The book shows many examples of models and their replicas, although there can be large-time differences between the originaland the replica. Digitalised image research led to extensive and insightful results. However, it can also be assumed that an ideawas sometimes conceived completely independently and that the later designer had no knowledge of the earlier idea.