Construction and Design Manual – serie

Prefabricated housing is a pressing issue – for those looking­ for affordable homes as well as for refugees fleeing wars or natural disasters. In common with politicians, architects were caught unawares by the largest wave of migration since the end of the Second World War. However, are tent cities and containers the best solution for cheap, dignified, and quickly assembled accommodation for displaced persons? This challenging situation, along with the changing urban landscape, with its ever-diminishing space, calls into question existing standards in relation to serial housing. Bold and unconventional ideas are called for if architects are to offer high-quality solutions. From eccentric experiments all the way to projects that have already been realized, international design teams present their work between the twin poles of unconventional developments and life-saving shelters in this volume spanning more than 250 ­pages.Introduced with articles on design principles, and divided into three sections according to the form the structures take when delivered – cuboid, panels and custom units – the book covers everything from playful follies to architectural constructions for the homeless and out­patient medical stations which offer a response to social problems and space shortages.The text, photographs and plans put forward ideas as to how more can be done than the mere assembling of containers. Should we not first consider notions ­bordering on the absurd in order to come up with workable solutions for housing today?

This book chronicles and analyses the role of the perspective within the history and evolution of landscape architecture and design.The first part of the book examines perspectives produced at key stages of the profession’s history, beginning with their origins in Renaissance art, and moving chronologically into present day practice. It charts how both linear and atmospheric perspective helped visualize imagined landscapes, first in paintings, later real spaces, and expanding from private gardens into designs for public spaces. Used both as a visualization tool preceding construction and as a persuasive tool for publicity and prestige afterwards, it has always played a role in influencing the understanding of landscape. Shown through key images, perspective visualization has resonated between artistic influences, media, and technology, yet its role has evolved differently than it has in architecture. In distinct contrast, landscape perspectives must convey positive experiences of being outdoors while communicating key design ideas, forms, and materials.The second part of the book is an instructional chapter, which outlines and describes the perspective’s key characteristics and variables. Perspective types are explained in an easy to understand way. Step by step procedures for using grids, constructing spaces, and fine-tuning pictorial composition, encourage readers to construct perspectives themselves.The third part of the book is an inspirational chapter with many diverse examples from international landscape architecture offices and practitioners. This extensive gallery showcases the perspective’s remarkable versatility as a stage for projects of all sizes, as well as its capacity for story­telling and expression. The many eye-catching images illustrate the perspective’s power in the digital age.With its focus on history, theory and practical aspects of the perspective and its specific role in landscape architecture, the book is an invaluable reference for researchers, students, and designers.

'In the last few decades, the ‘diagram’ has evolved into a constitutive, generative medium for the architectural design process and is now an everyday term used in the context of design. The diagram represents an imaginative process that enables architects to transform typologies, figures, and models using analogue and digital design procedures. This process is creative and erratic – it is highly intuitive and variable and follows its own logic. As such, the diagram, with its lines, points, and strokes, operates at the intersection of geometry, art, and theory.' (from the introduction).The second edition of this book from the series Construction and Design Manuals presents a selection of projects by prominent architects and designers in the form of diagrams, drawn from the fields of architecture, interior design, and installation.This volume also features an essay by the philosopher Lidia Gasperoni.

This is the first ever manual to systemati-cally delve into the zoo as an architectur-al typology. The author Natascha Meuser examines five generations of zoological structures in order to show that the archi-tecture of zoos has always incorporated social values, fostering the coexistence of humans and animals, ever since the opening of the first scientifically run zoo. The manual presents documentation of 30 historical, pioneering zoo buildings that set new standards both functional-ly and aesthetically. Moreover, it offers an in-depth analysis of 50 internation-al zoos that have been built in the last 20 years. It includes floor plans to scale, elevations, and sections as well as large photos that offer deep insights that have never been available before. The author also presents ten design parameters that can serve as guidelines for the planning of a zoological structure.

After its golden age in the last decades of the 20thcentury, diagramming is still an experimental practice today, but it focuses onthe synthesis of complexity and on new disciplinary territories on the edgebetween humanities, art, architecture, urban planning and landscape. Thismanual presents experimental diagrams through sensing, analysing andtransforming space. The contributions critically delineate diagrammaticbehaviours in architectural history, present the design practices of officessuch as AZPML and MVRDV, take the medium to its extreme consequences, and outlinefuture trajectories.