Architectural Design – serie

American architect Lebbeus Woods (1940–2012) remains a quiet hero not only among his colleagues, but also for architectural students intrigued by the ideas and fluent beauty of his powerful graphic verve, as well as of his writing. His projects from the mid-1980s until the end of his life have been widely published. However, this AD, in collaboration with the Estate of Lebbeus Woods, explores the earlier period beginning in the late 1960s when Woodswas honing his draughtsmanship and theoretical positions while experimenting with a variety of themes and different modes of expression.When he burst onto the international architectural scene with a solo exhibition and accompanying catalogue (Lebbeus Woods: Origins) at the Architectural Association, London, in 1985, some wondered how anyone could emerge so fully formed, from nowhere. Working against the logic of ‘nowhere’, this issue charts his early trajectory through the largely unpublished drawings and texts, linking them with what came after. Aiming to generate new scholarship, its roster of international interdisciplinary critics and commentators offer a new understanding of Woods’s work and of his formative years, also shining a light on how we might think about the ‘early work’ of any architect’s career.Contributors: Joseph Becker, Aaron Betsky, Peter Cook, Mark Dorrian, Riet Eeckhout, Kevin Erickson, Joerg Gleiter, Sharon Irish, Eliyahu Keller, Lawrence Rinder, Ashley Simone, Ben Sweeting.

Focusing on the intersections between textiles and architectural design, this title communicates the full range of possibilities for a multidisciplinary design hybrid. It examines the generative concepts, forms, patterns, materials, processes, technologies and practices that are driving this cross-fertilisation in contemporary urban and architectural design. Architextiles represent a transition stage in the reorientation of spatial design towards a more networked, dynamic, interactive, communicative and multifunctional state. The paradigms of fashion and textile design, with their unique, accelerated aesthetics and ability to embody a burgeoning, composite and complex range of properties such as lightness, flow, flexibility, surface, complexity and movement have a natural affinity with architecture's shifts towards a more liquid state. The preoccupation with textiles in architecture challenges traditional perceptions and practices in interior, architectural, urban, textile and fashion design. Interweaving new designs and speculative projects for the future, Architextiles, brings together architects, designers, engineers, technologists, theorists and materials researchers to unravel these new methodologies of fabricating space.     Contributors include:Dominique Perrault (DPA)Lars Spuybroek (NOX and University of Atlanta)Will Alsop (RCA and SMC Alsop)Nigel Coates (RCA and Branson Coates Architecture)Matilda McQuaid (Cooper Hewitt Museum)Ron Arad (RCA and Ron Arad Associates)Tristan Simmonds, Daniel Bosia and Martin Self (Arup Advanced Geometry Unit)David Wakefield (Tensys)Dagmar Richter (UCLA)Peter Testa and Devyn Weiser (Columbia University and Testa Architecture)Tom Verebes, Yosuke Obuchi and Theodore Spyropoulos (AA_DRL)Robert Kronenburg (University of Liverpool)Anne Toomey (RCA)Bradley QuinnMarie O' MahoneyMark Garcia (RCA)

Food and the City makes the relationships between food and the city visible by exploring both the ways in which buying and eating food have become such a significant part of urban public life, and the ways in which design supports and enhances the place of food in the city. It is timely because the proliferation of urban cafes, restaurants, and markets continues, but is not sufficiently recognized or analyzed. Food related topics are now of great interest in academic and design disciplines but the theme of this issue, food as it relates to the variety and vitality of urban life, has not been addressed. Food and the City, will develop ideas from the popular Food and Architecture (2002).  Contents include: Raw, Medium, Well Done: A Typological Reading of Australian Cafes by Jane Lawrence & Rachel Hurst; Blurring Boundaries, Defining Place: The New Hybrid Space of Dining by Gail Satler; The New and the Rare: Gourmet Food in the Japanese Department Store by Masaaki Takahashi; Tasting the Periphery: Bangkok’s Agri and Aqua-cultural Fringe by Brian McGrath & Danai Thaitakoo; “Big Sign” Dining in Hong Kong: The City as Dining Room by Jeffrey W. Cody and Mary C. Day; Taste, Sound and Smell:  On the Street in Chinatown and Little Italy by Nisha Fernando; What’s Eating Manchester? Gastro-culture and Urban Regeneration David Bell & Jon Binnie; Designing the Gastronomic Quarter by Susan Parham

This third AD by the guest-editors of the highly successful Emergence and techniques and technologies in Morphogenetic Design titles shifts the morpho-ecological design project into the realm of performance. Whereas the dictionary definition of performance -to 'carry out an action' or 'to fulfill a task' - invokes a tired utilitarian debate, Hensel and Menges inject the meaning of the word 'performance' with an entirely new life. In this context, form is redefined not as the shape of a material object alone, but as the multitude of effects, a milieu of conditions, modulations and microclimates that emanate from an object's exchange with its specific environment, a dynamic relationship that is perceived and interacted with by a subject. A synergetic employment of performance and morpho-ecological techniques combine to create integral design solutions that will render an alternative model for sustainability. This issue presents historical precursors and precedents for this approach, as well as the current state of the art of morpho-ecological design. Key contributors include: Klaus Bollinger and Manfred Grohmann of Bollinger & Grohmann, Aleksandra Jaeschke, OCEAN, Professor Remo Pedreschi, Defne Sunguroglu, Peter Trummer and Michael Weinstock.

The illusive and uncertain world of translating ideas into matter is a negotiation between the ideal and the real and a central preoccupation of architectural production. By invading the toolbox of digital fabrication, design has transgressed into protocols of manufacturing previously the domain of other disciplines and skills sets. Craft, assembly and installation, once the realm of trades, are qualities that are now dependent upon design information and its status as an instruction to make. The ensuing loop between the physical and tactile, the imaginary and speculative, has defined a new expectation in making architecture as a construct that is part real, part ideal. With contributions from Lebbeus Woods, Evan Douglis, Theo Jansen, Shin Egashira and many more, Protoarchitecture presents an explicitly diverse collection of works from leading and emerging practitioners, educators, researchers and visionaries from all corners of this innovative field.

Guest-editor Mariana Leguía The announcement of Rio de Janeiro as the 2016 Olympic host city has placed Latin America on the world's stage. Latin America has not been the centre of international architectural attention and pilgrimage since the mid 20th century when economic growth triggered the development of Modernist urban design and architecture on an epic scale. Since then the centralised, utopian planned model has broken down. Mass migrations from the countryside and erection of informal settlements have left cities socially and spatially divided. Within this context and in the mist of globalization Latin America is set to go though major change once again.In recent decades, resourceful governments and practices have developed innovative approaches to urban design and development, less to do with the utopian and totalitarian schemes and more to do with "urban acupuncture", working within rather than denying the framework of informality to stitch together disparate parts of the city.This title of AD will explore the current urban issues faced by Latin American cities and the response of alternative local practitioners at different scales. Large-scale urban case studies, such as the revitalisation of Bogotá and Medellin, will be featured alongside architectural practices, research-based organisations and university studios working at a grass-roots level. Contributors include: Saskia Sassen, Hernando de Soto, Ricky Burdett and Bogotá ex-mayor Enrique Peñalosa.Featured architects: Teddy Cruz, UTT-Urban Think-Tank, Jorge Jauregui, Alejandro Echeverri, MMBB and Alejandro Aravena.

In this latest issue of Architectural Design the guest editors are drawn, like the content, from contrasting tastes and generations. Charles Jencks, the definer of Post-Modernism for thirty years, discusses some issues that have re-emerged today, while the young group of British architects, FAT, argues for a particular version of RPM. An interview between Rem Koohaas and Charles Jencks discusses the influence of Post-Modernism while investigations of street art, graffiti and the 1980 Venice Biennale show that communication is at the heart of this radical strain of architecture. This issue brings together an unlikely and exciting pairing of guest-editors: internationally acclaimed critic Charles Jencks, whose name became synonymous with Post-modernism in the 80s, and the dynamic architectural group, FAT.Features work by: ARM, Atelier Bow Wow, Édouard François, FOA, Rem Koolhaas, John and Valerio Olgiati.

Pattern-making is ubiquitous in both the natural and manmade world. The human propensity for pattern recognition and fabrication is innate. Encompassing the historical, vernacular and parametric, this title explores the creation, materialisation and theorisation of some of the world's most significant and spectacularly patterned spaces. It investigates how interiors, buildings, cities and landscapes are patterned through design, production and manufacturing, use, time, accident and perception. It also brings into focus how contemporary advanced spatial practices and CAD/CAM are now pushing patterns to encompass a greater range of structural, programmatic, aesthetic and material effects and properties. Extending patterns far beyond the surface notion of style and decoration, Patterns of Architecture assesses how and why the deployment of patterns is shaping the future of architecture. Analysed through a multidisciplinary and international series of essays and designs from architects, engineers, academics, researchers and expert professionals in the field. Key contributors include: Hanif Kara, Patrik Schumacher and Alejandro Zaera-Polo.

Advancing a new relationship between architecture and nature, Territory emphasises the simultaneous production of architectural objects and the environment surrounding them. Conceptualised within a framework that draws from physical and human geographical thought, this title of Architectural Design examines the possibility of an architecture that actively produces its external, ecological conditions. The architecture here scans and modifies atmospheres, arboreal zones, geothermal exchange, magnetic fields, habitats and toxicities – enabling new and intense geographical patterns, effects and sensations within architectural and urban experience. Territory charts out a space, a territory, for architecture beyond conceptualisations of context or environment, understood as that stable setting which pre-exists the production of new things. Ultimately, it suggests a role for architecture as a strategy of environmental tinkering versus one of accommodation or balance with an external natural world.

POST-TRAUMATIC URBANISM Urban trauma describes a condition where conflict or catastrophe has disrupted and damaged not only the physical environment and infrastructure of a city, but also the social and cultural networks. Cities experiencing trauma dominate the daily news. Images of blasted buildings or events such as Hurricane Katrina exemplify the sense of 'immediate impact'. But how is this trauma to be understood in its aftermath, and in urban terms? What is the response of the discipline to the post-traumatic condition? On the one hand, one can try to restore and recover everything that has passed, or otherwise see the post-traumatic city as a resilient space poised on the cusp of new potentialities. While repair and reconstruction are automatic reflexes, the knowledge and practices of the disciplines need to be imbued with a deeper understanding of the effect of trauma on cities and their contingent realities. This issue will pursue this latter approach, using examples of post-traumatic urban conditions to rethink the agency of architecture and urbanism in the contemporary world. Post-traumatic urbanism demands of architects the mobilisation of skills, criticality and creativity in contexts in which they are not familiar. The post-traumatic is no longer the exception; it is the global condition.

Today, a ‘new alliance’ is being forged between designers and commercial property developers who are championing   progressive design, in projects as diverse as apartment blocks, houses, hotels and offices.  While some architects are taking a proactive role in property development, other firms are hammering out a new position for themselves as designer-developers. Simultaneously, property developers are starting to recognise the added value that an architect can bring to a project in terms of planning, design quality and creativity.This issue takes a truly international look at the projects architects and developers are achieving together. It explores the opportunities that are driving the architect-developer alliance in Hong Kong, London, Tokyo and Melbourne, as well as the marketing potential of design excellence in New York.‘Property development has to be market driven and certainly not product driven. The architect can creatively add great value to the developers' commercial objectives by design - in doing so he can achieve his architectural agenda at the same time." Ken Yeang."Thank goodness the old guard is dying of obsolescence. Our cities will revel for the evolution." Gregg Pasquarelli, SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli

The New Pastoralism demonstrates how small-scale additions or conversions using planting and wildlife can bring about engaging, delightful and efficient structures and spaces. The book’s numerous contributors each showcase a particular Nature device that they used to enhance their built proposals. Images are provided with text as annotation. The prominent featured architects will include: Michael Sorkin, Nicholas Grimshaw, Ken Yeang, Kathryn Findlay and Mos Architecture. The other contributors will show small or medium sized built projects they have worked on. All contributors will showcase a building, structure or surface as either drawn proposal or built construction.

A radical shift is taking place in the way that society is thinking about cities, a change from the machine metaphors of the 20th century to mathematical models of the processes of biological and natural systems. From this new perspective, cities are regarded not simply as spatially extended material artefacts, but as complex systems that are analogous to living organisms, exhibiting many of the same characteristics. There is an emerging view that the design of the thousands of new cities needed for an expanding world population are to be founded on intelligent and inhabited infrastructural systems or ‘flow architectures’ of urban metabolisms. The physical arrays of the flow architecture of the city are intimately connected to the networks of subsidiary systems that collect and distribute energy, materials and information. They animate the city, and should therefore be intimately coupled to the spatial and cultural patterns of life in the city, to the public spaces through which people flow, and should unite rather than divide urban morphological and ecological systems. Featured architects: AMID(cero9), Buro Happold, Foster + Partners, Groundlab and SOM.Contributors include: Joan Busquets, Kate Davies and Liam Young, Mehran Gharleghi, Evan Greenberg and George Jeronimidis, Marina Lathouri, Wolf Mangelsdorf, Daniel Segraves, Jack Self, Ricard Solé and Sergi Valverde, and Iain Stewart.

Transgression suggests operating beyond accepted norms and radically reinterpreting practice by pushing at the boundaries of both what architecture is, and what it could or even should be. The current economic crisis and accompanying political/social unrest has exacerbated the difficulty into which architecture has long been sliding: challenged by other professions and a culture of conservatism, architecture is in danger of losing its prized status as one of the pre-eminent visual arts. Transgression opens up new possibilities for practice. It highlights the positive impact that working on the architectural periphery can make on the mainstream, as transgressive practices have the potential to reinvent and reposition the architectural profession: whether they are subverting notions of progress; questioning roles and mechanisms of production; aligning with political activism; pioneering urban interventions; advocating informal or incomplete development; actively destabilising environments or breaking barriers of taste. In this new dispersed and expanded field of operation, the balance of architectural endeavour is shifted from object to process, from service to speculation, and from formal to informal in a way that provides both critical and political impetus to proactively affect change.Contributors: Can Altay, Edward Denison and Guangyu Ren, Kim Dovey, Chris Jenks, David Littlefield, Silvia Loeffler, Alistair Parvin, Louis Rice, Patrik Schumacher and Robin WilsonFeatured architects: atelier d’architecture autogérée, Lina Bo Bardi, Construire/La Machine, EXYZT, Didier Faustino/Bureau des Mésarchitectures, Lacaton & Vassal, N55, Catie Newell/*Alibi Studio, Wang Shu, Superflex and Bernard Tschumi

A pioneering title, High Definition explores the onslaught of new and highly accurate digital metrology tools in large- and small-scale 3-D scanning and 3-D modelling. Capable of measuring space to an accuracy of less than 1 mm, these tools offer unprecedented precision for the development and interrogation of design before, during and post production. Over the last decade or so, the array of designers’ digital tools to propose and make their ideas have evolved significantly, but the absence of high-accuracy, zero-tolerance design production has often remained the missing piece between design and fulfilment. Innovative technologies are thus substantially recalibrating the way that designers operate in the world between the drawn and the made, having the power to transform the architect’s role from that of visualiser to one that is intensely involved with the realisation of objects and buildings. High Definition will examine the capabilities of advanced technologies in design production through their impact on design theory, practice and greater levels of collaboration between design and manufacturing. It will permeate the entangled world between means and meaning and unravel a new understanding between the representation and production of architectural design. Contributors include: Philip Beesley, Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Gehry Technologies, Ruairi Glynn, Zaha Hadid Architects, ScanLAB Projects, Territorial Agency, Skylar Tibbits, Mike Webb.

Highlights how architecture needs to rise to the challenge of a demographic revolution As people sixty-five and older constitute an ever increasingly proportion of population in most industrialized nations, the design of housing and other built provisions needs to be rethought in order to accommodate this ever-expanding ageing population. How can far-reaching architectural solutions play a key part by creating sustainable cities for the changing profile of the population, reducing models of dependency for care and transport while creating opportunities for recreation, leisure and work? This issue reflects on the population challenges facing Europe, Australia, North America, and Asia, offering innovative responses to these problems on a practical and speculative level. Addresses a major social issue for architects, designers, and studentsIncludes contributions from Arup Global Foresight + Innovation; Baronness Greengross, President of the International Longevity Centre-UK; Matthias Hollwich of HWKN; Jerry Maltz of AIANY Design for Aging; David Birbeck of Design for Homes; Edward Denison, Research Associate at University College London; Kathryn Firth of the London Legacy Development Corporation; Richard Mazuch of IBI Nightingale; architect Walter Menteth; author Jayne Merkel; architect, writer and researcher Terri Peters; Anjali Raje, Executive Director of International Longevity Centre-India and architect Radhika Vaidya; Robert Schmidt of the Adaptable Futures research group at Loughborough University; Sally Stewart of Glasgow School of Architecture; Mark Taylor of The University of Newcastle; and Katherine Wilkinson of RMITFeatures architects including Amie Gross Architects, Ariktema, Dattner Architects, HWKN, Deborah Gans/Gans Studio, JJW Architects, Henning Larsen Architects, Michael Maltzan Architecture, nARCHITECTS, Nord Architects, PRP Architects, and Yanmin Zhou

Despite the exaggerated news of the untimely 'death of the detail' by Greg Lynn, the architectural detail is now more lifelike and active than ever before. In this era of digital design and production technologies, new materials, parametrics, building information modeling (BIM), augmented realities and the nano-bio-information-computation consilience, the detail is now an increasingly vital force in architecture. Though such digitally designed and produced details are diminishing in size to the molecular and nano levels, they are increasingly becoming more complex, multi-functional, high performance and self-replicating. Far from being a non-essential and final finish, this new type of highly evolved high-tech detail is rapidly becoming the indispensable and critical core, the (sometimes iconic) DNA of an innovative new species of built environmental form that is spawning in scale and prominence, across product, interior, urban and landscape design. This issue of AD re-examines the history, theories and design of the world’s most significant spatial details, and explores their innovative potentials and possibilities for the future of architecture. Contributors include: Rachel Armstrong, Nic Clear, Edward Ford, Dennis Shelden, Skylar Tibbits.Featured architects: Ben van Berkel, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Peter Macapia, Carlo Ratti, Philippe Rahm, Patrik Schumacher, Neil Spiller.

The current trend for constructing experimental structures is now an international phenomenon. It has been taken up worldwide by design professionals, researchers, educators and students alike. There exist, however, distinct and significant tendencies within this development that require further investigation. This issue of AD takes on this task by examining one of the most promising trajectories in this area, the rise of intensely local architectures. In his seminal essay of 1983, Kenneth Frampton redefined Critical Regionalism by calling for an intensely local approach to architectural design. Today, Frampton’s legacy is regaining relevance for a specific body of work in practice and education focused on the construction of experimental structures. Could this ultimately provide the seeds for a compelling and alternative approach to sustainable design?Contributors include: Barbara Ascher, Peter Buchanan, Karl Otto Ellefsen, David Jolly Monge, Lisbet Harboe, David Leatherbarrow, Areti Markopoulou, Philip Nobel, Rodrigo Rubio, Søren S Sørensen, Defne Sunguroðlu Hensel.Featured practices: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Rintala Eggertsson, SHoP, Studio Mumbai, TYIN tegnestue.

At the end of the 20th century, Dubai attracted international media attention as the world sought to make sense of the city’s extraordinary growth. Exuberant projects such as the Burj Arab, the Burj Khalifa and the Palm Islands attracted investment in dreams to transform the region. While the global financial crisis kept dreams from becoming reality, this issue of AD seeks to present a view of architecture and urbanism in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other states in the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at a time when greater economic stability promises new beginnings. The issue presents examples of architecture that transcends preoccupation with fabricating images, and traces the process of making contemporary Gulf cities, from material tectonics to large-scale masterplans. By presenting the architecture of UAE and the Gulf within the context of broader regional developments and global trends, it highlights how projects in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have contributed to unprecedented urban growth, while emphasising the continuing environmental challenges of building in the region. In addition to highlighting various sustainable initiatives intended to counteract these challenges, the issue also explores how computational design and new technologies are being innovatively employed to mitigate the impact of arid climates. Contributors include: Ameena Ahmadi, Kelly Hutzell, Varkki Pallathucheril, Todd Reisz, Rami el Samahy, Terri Meyer Boake, Jeffrey Willis.International architects: Foster + Partners, Frank Gehry, HOK, IM Pei, Legoretta + Legoretta, Jean Nouvelle, Reiser + Umemoto, Allies and Morrison.Regional architects: AGi (Kuwait), DXB.lab (UAE), X Architects (UAE).

Around the world, a new architectural form is emerging. In public places a progressive architecture is being commissioned to promote open-ended, undetermined, lightly programmed or un-programmed interactions between people. This new phenomenon of architectural form – Pavilions, Pop-Ups and Parasols – is presaged by rapidly changing social relationships flowing from social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The nexus between real and virtual meeting is effectively being reinvented by innovative and creative architectural practices. People meet in new and responsive ways, architects meet their clients in new forums, knowledge is ‘met’ and achieved in new and interactive frameworks. It contrasts bluntly with the commercially structured interactions of shopping malls and the increasingly deliberate interactions available in cultural institutions. These experiences imbue a new type of client; casually engaged, flocking, hacking, crowd funding and self-helping.Contributors include: Rob Bevan, Pia Ednie-Brown, Roan Ching-Yueh, Dan Hill, Martyn Hook, Minsuk Cho, Andrea Kahn, Felicity Scott, Akira SuzukiContributing architects include: Alisa Andrasek/Biothing, Peter Cook/CRAB studio, CJ Lim/Studio 8, Tom Holbrook/5th Studio, Matthias Hollwich/HWKN, Mamou-Mani Architects, Benedetta Tagliabue/EMBT

The traditional veneration of architecture for its monumental and enduring qualities seems to be changing. Architects and other designers are moving away from seeking permanence towards a more open, creative use of what time has to offer. This is revealed in new approaches to historic preservation, the proliferation of temporary structures, concerns regarding sustainability, and the employment of time-efficient processes. Architecture Timed explores the role of ideas about time in the design inclinations and choices of contemporary designers of the environment. Contributors consider how the new can be incorporated into the old; how designing for the very short term has significant advantages; how what is temporary can be re-used; and how the design of materials, buildings and landscapes can improve sustainability and enhance experiences of time passing. Many designers have replaced the ideal of ‘timelessness’ and the view of time as a series of singular, static moments with an enriched and more nuanced perspective, treating time as a source of inspiration to be embraced, not a condition to be defended against.Contributors include: Juhani Pallasmaa, Brian McGrath, Federica Goffi, Jill Stoner, Richard Garber and Eric Parry.Designers featured include: Agence Ter, Shigeru Ban, BanG Studio, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, EMF Landscape Architects, Gluck+, GRO Architects, Interboro Partners, Toyo Ito, Kengo Kuma, Enric Miralles, Eric Parry Architects, Carlo Scarpa, Taylor Cullity Lethlean, UNStudio and Peter Zumthor.

What happens when computational design and fabrication technologies ramp up to the urban scale? Though these innovative production processes are currently now largely limited to small-scale design projects, what will happen when they are applied to the vast scale of the 21st-century world city? Could new technologies enable an important shift away from mass production to increasingly bespoke and custom-designed systems? The introduction of standardisation and mass production processes in the 20th century saw the industrial city take on a repetitious and homogeneous quality through the duplication of component parts. Today non-standard, bespoke systems hold out the promise of realising a distinctive urbanism; characterized by the differentiation of serial production and the variation of simple parts that should lead to a more complex and compelling whole. Given the current pace and rate of urbanisation in Asia, the mass customization of the city is set to have imminent and far-reaching practical consequences for the rest of the developing and developed world.

The rural is not what it used to be. No longer simply a site for agricultural production for the city, the relationship between the rural and urban has become much more complex. Established categories such as rural /urban and village/city no longer hold true. Rural and urban conditions have become increasingly blurred, so how can we identify and distinguish their specific characteristics? Where is the rural, and what role does it play in an urbanised world? In developing countries the countryside is a volatile and contradictory landscape: legally designated rural areas look like dense slums; factories intersect fields and farmers no longer farm. In contrast, in developed regions, the rural has become a highly controlled landscape of production and consumption: industrialised agriculture coexists with leisure landscapes for tourism, retirement and recreation. This issue of AD investigates how architects and researchers are critically engaging with the rural as an experimental field of exploration. Contributors: Neil Brenner, Christiane Lange, Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, Sandra Parvu, Cole Roskam, Grahame Shane, Deane Simpson, and Milica Topalovic and Bas PrincenArchitects: Anders Abraham, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin (Rural Urban Framework), Ambra Fabi and Giovanni Piovene (Piovenefabi), Rainer Hehl, Stephan Petermann (OMA), Huang Sheng Yuan (FieldOffice), and Sandeep Virmani (Hunnarshala)

Evoking Through Design: Contemporary Moods in Architecture is visually stunning, featuring built work and speculative projects, which highlight how contemporary practices are using devices such as spatial compositing, surface articulation and novel manipulations of materials in order to constitute spatial conditions radiating in delicate and sophisticated atmospheres. Contributors: Benjamin Bratton, Jeffrey Kipnis, Neil Leach, Silvia Levin, Frederic Migayrou, Juhani Pallasmaa, David Ruy, and Mario Carpo.Architects: Phillip Beesley, Marjan Colletti, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Evan Douglis, Michael Hansmayer, Steven Holl,Ferda Kolatan, Sean Lally, Greg Lynn and Peter Zumthor.

Design for Health: Sustainable Approaches to Therapeutic Architecture Guest-Edited by Terri PetersThis issue of AD seeks out innovative and varied sustainable architectural responses to designing for health, such as: integrating sensory gardens and landscapes into the care environment;specifying local materials and passive technologies;and reinvigorating aging postwar facilities.Contributors include: Anne-Marie Adams, Sean Ahlquist, Giuseppe Boscherini, Robin Guenther, Charles Jencks, Richard Mazuch, Stephen Verderber,Featured architects: 100% Interior, Arup, C.F. Møller, Lyons, MASS Design Group, Mongomery Sisam Architects, Penoyre & Prasad

Workflows are being rethought and remodelled across the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) spectrum. The synthesis of building information modelling (BIM) platforms with digital simulation techniques and increasing access to data, charting building performance, is allowing architects to engage in the generation of new workflows across multidisciplinary teams.By merging digital design operations with construction activities, project delivery and post-occupation scenarios, architects are becoming instrumental in the shaping of buildings as well as the design process. Workflows expand the territory of architectural practice by extending designers’ remit beyond the confines of the design stage. The implications for the AEC industry and architecture as a profession could not be greater. These new collaborative models are becoming as important as the novel buildings they allow us to produce.Contributors include: Shajay Bhooshan, John Cays, Randy Deutsch, Sean Gallagher, Ian Keough, Peter Kis, Jonathan Mallie, Adam Modesitt, Rhett Russo, Dale Sinclair, and Stacie Wong.Featured architects: Arup, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, GLUCK+, GRO Architects, PLANT, Populous, Young & Ayata, and Zaha Hadid Architects.

New modes of practice are now emerging in architecture. Rural Studio, Exyzt, Muf, Assemble and many more have led the way by challenging conventional ideas of ‘The Architect' and reclaiming the notion of architecture as something public that should work ultimately towards the collective good. This quiet revolution is born out of a crisis in the profession and a wider vacuum in the political, environmental and economic situation. On the one hand, architecture as a profession has seen its influence diminish rapidly over the last 50 years through privatisation and the dominance of finance, while on the other hand it has also lacked collective courage and readiness to evolve. Without necessarily being aware of each other, studios around the world are now redefining the profession of architecture as something more proactive, self-aware and political. They are broadening their skill sets and becoming deeply involved in their projects, initiating them themselves, financing them and running them. Though much of this work is dealing with local issues at a relatively small scale, it is inherently ambitious with global application. Contributors include: Shumi Bose, Indy Johar, Alison Killing, Douglas Murphy, and Finn WilliamsFeatured architects: Aterlier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), adamo-faiden; Baupiloten, Grupo Toma, Hector, Inteligencias Colectivas, raumlaborberlin, studioBASAR, Studio GutGut, Taller Ken, and We Made That.

Architects are facing a crisis of agency. For decades, they have seen their traditional role diminish in scope as more and more of their responsibilities have been taken over by other disciplines within the building construction industry. Once upon a time, we might have seen the architect as the conductor of the orchestra; now he or she is but one cog in a vast and increasingly complex machine.In an attempt to find a way out of this crisis, there is growing debate about how architects might reassert the importance of their role and influence. On one side of this argument are those who believe that architects must refocus their attention on the internal demands of the discipline. On the other are those who argue that architects must, instead, reacquaint themselves with what many still believe to be the discipline’s core mission of advancing social progress and promoting the public good, and at the same time the scope of their traditional disciplinary remit.At root, this question is fundamentally about freedom, about whether architects still possess it – if they have ever done – and whether it is possible to find the professional, disciplinary and individual autonomy to be able to define the spheres of their own practice. Presenting a variety of views and perspectives, this issue of AD takes us to the heart of what freedom means for architecture as it adapts and evolves in response to the changing contexts in which it is practised in the 21st century.Contributors include: Phillip Bernstein, Peggy Deamer, Adam Nathaniel Furman, Kate Goodwin, Charles Holland, Anna Minton, Patrik Schumacher, Alex Scott-Whitby, Ines Weizman, and Sarah Wigglesworth.Featured architects: Atelier Kite, ScottWhitbyStudio, C+S Architects, Anupama Kundoo, Noero Architects, Umbrellium, and Zaha Hadid Architects.

Today, architecture in China is at a watershed. Over the last decade, rapid urbanisation and the burgeoning economy turned the country into a playground for the world’s signature architects, making it possible to realise extravagant forms and structures at a vast scale. The Chinese government has now drawn a line under this phenomenon by issuing a directive calling an end to the ‘oversized, xenocentric, weird’ buildings devoid of character or cultural heritage that have sprung up across the country, requiring that urban architecture be 'suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye'.This government directive comes at a time when homegrown architecture has become increasingly self-assured and reflective in its approach. A new generation of architects in China in their 30s and 40s are emerging, and in a wholly contemporary way they are exploring local responses to often bewildering urban and rural conditions and serious social and environmental challenges. This is often expressed through a revival of interest in traditional street patterns, courtyards and gardens. At the same time, architects are also recognising the opportunities to harness the potential of China’s established manufacturing base to develop prefabricated building systems. Innovative practices are employing new modes of working, such as research-based studio teaching and exhibitions, field workshops, cross-disciplinary collaboration, laboratory-based practice, design think-tanks and collective projects, generating a vibrant culture of design research.Contributors: Lu Feng, Murray Fraser, Xiao Fu and Wei You, Xiahong Hua and Shen Zhuang, Xinggang Li, Yichun Liu, James Shen, Yehao Song, Hui Wang, Shuo Wang, Xin Wang and Qiuye Jin, Philip F Yuan and Xiang Wang, Li Zhang, Xin Zhang and Jingxiang Zhu.Featured architects: Archi-Union Architects, Atelier Archmixing, Atelier Deshaus, Atelier Li Xinggang, Integrated Architecture Studio, LanD Studio, META-Project, People's Architecture Office, SUP Atelier, URBANUS and Zaoyuan Gardening Studio