Architectural Design - Böcker

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 Working against the logic of ‘nowhere’, this issue charts his early trajectory through the largely unpublished drawings and texts, linking them with what came after.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.

The 1970’s was marked by a seismic change that occurred in the representation of ideas in architecture as they appeared monthly on the pages of AD. The magazine bears out the energetic, experimental, environmentally-conscious and ultimately pluralist culture that prevailed throughout the 1960’s, carrying it through to the emergence of Post-Modernism in the late 1970’s. This issue of AD presents a 'Cosmorama for Now', looking at such subjects as housing, schools, health, urban design and planning. Contributors will include amongst others: Jon Goodbun, FAT,  Kester Ratternbury, David West of Will Aslop Architects, Liza Fior of Muf, Jeremy Till, Nic Clear, Robert Webb, John-Paul Frazer, Pauline van Mourik Brekman and Simon Worthington of Mute Magazine, Sand Helsel, Will McLean & Pete Silver, Adam Kalkin, Chris Muller, Samantha Hardingham.

Will cities exist in the next century? Or will everywhere be urban? Contemporary communication and transportation networks allow for greater urban dispersal, yet cities continue to centralise great densities of activities and innovations. What form will the 21st century city take? And what role will architects and urban designers take in shaping the future form of the city? The sensing of the city -- remotely and up close -- addresses an immense variety of issues, relating to the problems and complexities of contemporary and future urban design. Pulls together work by architects and urban designers at the forefront in their utilisation of remote sensing and telecommunications tools.Provides concise and accessible information on new scientific theories and technologies for a general architecture and urban design professional and student readershipFeatures spectacular satellite and night-time light imageryIncludes critical discussion on the politics of mass media and urban morphogenesis -- who will be the actors in shaping and designing the future of cities?It will have an interdisciplinary appeal - of interest to a wider audience of urban studies and future studies in general.

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.

China is undergoing a process of unprecedented urbanisation, with cities often being built from scratch in just three to five years. It is projected that 400 new cities will be built over the next 20 years with newly urbanised populations of over 240 million.

Guest-edited by Neil Leach What is the impact of digital technologies on the design and analysis of cities? For the last 15 years, the profound impact of computer-aided techniques on architecture has been well charted. From the use of standard drafting packages to the more experimental use of generative design tools and parametric modelling, digital technologies have come to play a major role in architectural production. But how are they helping architects and designers to operate at the urban scale? And how might they be changing the way in which we perceive and understand our cities?  Features some of the world’s leading experimental practices, such as Zaha Hadid Architects, R&Sie(n), Biothing and Xefirotarch.Takes in exciting emerging practices, such as moh architects, kokkugia and THEVERYMANY, and work by students at some of the most progressive schools, such as the AA, Dessau Institute of Architecture and RMIT.Contributors include: Michael Batty, Benjamin Bratton, Alain Chiaradia, Manuel DeLanda, Vicente Guallart and Peter Trummer.

Practical, technical and topical, this new title from Architectural Design brings together contributions on all aspects of housing around the world: from design solutions to the focus on technical and cultural approaches to affordable innovation in housing design Housing for the people. What opportunities exist? Who is breaking down the boundaries to create innovative housing stock? Attitudes towards mass housing are changing. Progressive techniques, materials and technologies are opening up new possibilities and new alliances are being hammered out between designers and house builders. Could this signal the onset of a new era of design-conscious mass housing?With contributors writing from six distinct geographical areas - the UK, the East Coast of the US, the West Coast of the US, Sweden, Japan and Australia – this book provides a global picture of the kinds of solutions available.

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

Emergence is an important new concept in artificial intelligence, information theory, digital technology, economics, climate studies, material science and biometric engineering. It is a development which is set to inform not only the construction of buildings, but also the composition of new materials. As a new science, coupled with material and technological innovations, it is set to enter architecture into a new phase of transition.This book presents an account of related developments in artificial intelligence and evolutionary computation, and shows how these developments are being incorporated into new architectures. This book marks the introduction of a new topic in designIncludes high quality CAD imagesAccompanies a travelling exhibition, showing in Oslo and CopenhagenIncludes interviews with Frei Otto and a review of the Advanced Geometry Group at Ove Arup and Partners

Today, architecture schools are truly international in their intake, as students are able to select from courses worldwide. For school leavers and undergraduates, the choice is bewildering. Where different institutions provide very different courses and ultimately very different architects, the very act of shopping for a degree is an incredibly important stage in an architecture student’s career. This book is set to become a touchstone publication for anyone involved in architectural education, from the academic to the aspiring student. It provides interviews with four of the most influential educators/heads of schools around the world:Peter Cook, Chair, the Bartlett School of Architecture, London, UKBernard Tschumi, Dean, School of Architecture at Columbia University, USALeon van Schaik, Innovation Professor of Architecture, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, AustraliaElia Zenghelis, Berlage, Dusseldorf This is followed by short self-biographies of eleven further prominent figures including Rem Koolhaas, Anthony Vidler and Paul VirilioIt is the first publication of its kind to comprehensively cover architectural education in its current context as an international marketIt will feature the first invaluable listing of architectural schools worldwide: no dedicated listing currently exists in printed form or on the web, giving students a useful reference from which to start the decision making process

The production of architecture, both intellectually and physically, is on the brink of a fundamental change. Computational design enables architects to integrate ever more multifaceted and complex design information, while the industrial logics of conventional building construction are eroding rapidly in a context of increasingly ubiquitous computer-controlled manufacturing and fabrication. A novel convergence of computation and materialisation is about to emerge, bringing the virtual process of design and the physical realisation of architecture much closer together, more so than ever before. Computation provides a powerful agency for both informing the design process through specific material behaviour and characteristics, and in turn informing the organisation of matter and material across multiple scales based on feedback from the environment. Computational design and integrated materialisation processes allow for uncovering the inherent morphogenetic potential of materials and thus are opening up a largely uncharted field of possibilities for the way the built environment in the 21st century is conceived and produced. In order to effectively introduce and outline the enabling power of computational design along with its inherent relationship to a biological paradigm, this publication looks at formation and materialisation in nature, integrative computational design, and engineering and manufacturing integration. Architectural contributors include: Cristiano Cecatto, Neri Oxman, Skylar Tibbits and Michael Weinstock.A scientific perspective by Philip Ball and J Scott Turner.Features: Buro Happold's SMART group, DiniTech, Foster + Partners' Specialist Modelling Group, the Freeform Construction group and Stuttgart University's Institute for Computational Design.

By closing the gap between conceptual design and the documentation required for construction, building information modelling (BIM) promises to revolutionise contemporary design practice. This issue of AD brings together a group of pioneering academics, architects, engineers and construction managers all of whom are engaged in the use of building information models in the actualisation of complex building projects, from design stage to construction. Key texts trace the development of building information modelling technologies and address issues of collaboration, design and management, while featured projects systematise the use of BIM in contemporary design practice for students and professionals alike faced with considering these tools within the changing marketplace. •Covers a core area of technological development: BIM systems that span the gap between the design, manufacturing and construction processes.•Key contributions from: Chuck Eastman, Cynthia Ottchen and Dennis Shelden of Gehry Technologies.•Features work by: Asymptote, Greg Lynn FORM, KieranTimberlake, Morphosis and SHoP Architects.

Millennium Architecture: the Sacred versus the Secular The Year 2000 celebrations have forced Britain and most of the world to ask the fundamental question: who are we? The answers, debated in this issue, are both scandalous and interesting. Millennium Architecture holds the mirror up to society in light of the money pumped into the Millennium projects through the National Lottery. It shows culture to be, in spite of lip service to Christ's birth, largely secular and, in Blair's formula, too often created in focus-group enclaves. The scandal of public money supporting the Greenwich Dome and the evasion of the religious content are revealed, amid the transformations that are bringing about a Post-Christian world. In this issue of AD, virtually the only serious debate on the Millennium, the major players speak frankly. A commentary on the few outstanding projects from Britain, Australia, Germany, France and Italy is provided. The opening section on the Millennium Dome reveals the crisis of content posed when over £800 million is spent on celebration, symbolism and entertainment. Charles Jencks, Clifford Longley and David Papineau, writers and philosophers, debate the choice of themes, the Big Idea, and their presentation. Peter Murray gives the precedents - such as the 1851 Exhibition - while Simon Jenkins, a Millennium Commissioner tells how the Dome was conceived amid political indecision. Stephen Bayley, famously exiting from this affair, gives his account of focus-group culture. Claire Sampson and Martin Newman, from the Dome's production department, make the counter-case in favour of consensual design. Nigel Coates, Zaha Hadid and Eva Jiricna explain the most inventive architectural creations, the Body, Mind and Faith Zones.* Nigel Coates* Zaha Hadid* Eva Jiricna* Futures Systems* Alsop & Stormer* Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners* Michael Hopkins & Partners* Richard Meier* Rafael Moneo* Renzo PianoAD Plus* Frederic Borel* Lot/EK* David Chipperfield

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.

In recent years, questions of space have gained renewed momentum in architecture and urban design, as adaptation, densification and sustainable regeneration have become an increasing priority. While most computing-based design tends to emphasise the formal aspects of architecture, overlooking space and its users, the ‘original’ computational design approaches first spearheaded in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s tended to be focused on behavioural and occupational patterns. Over the last decade, a new generation of design research has emerged that has started to implement and validate previous investigations into spatial computation, aiming to understand how to design spatial configurations based on user experiences. This revives an interest in the experiential that was first explored in the early 20th century by German and Nordic organic architects, who invented design methods that correlated cognitive responses of buildings' occupants to spatial structure. The current revival of human-centric design, however, represents the first design approach that synthesises spatial design and algorithmic techniques with organic design thinking, which could also be regarded as a return to the ‘first principles' of architectural design. Contributors include:Paul Coates, Christian Derix, Olafur Eliasson, Lucy Helme, Bill Hillier, Åsmund Izaki, Prarthana Jagannath, Dan Montello, Juhani Pallasmaa, Philip Steadman and Guy Theraulaz.Featured Architects/Designers:Jussi Ängeslevä (Art+Com), Stan Allen, Aedas|R&D, Markus Braach (Kaisersrot), Hermann Hertzberger, Kazuhiro Kojima (Cat), Pablo Miranda and Rafi Segal.

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.