Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. Jorge Otero-Pailos shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. In the first critical intellectual account of the movement, Otero-Pailos discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, Otero-Pailos contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However, as Otero-Pailos makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory. Otero-Pailos reveals how, ultimately, the rise of architectural phenomenology played a crucial double role in the rise of postmodernism, creating the antimodern specter of a historical consciousness and offering the modern notion of essential experience as the means to defeat it.

Things fall apart. But in his innovative, wide-ranging, and well-illustrated book, Daniel Abramson investigates the American definition of what falling apart entails. We build new buildings partly in response to demand, but even more because we believe that existing buildings are slowly becoming obsolete and need to be replaced. Abramson shows that our idea of obsolescence is a product of our tax code, which was shaped by lobbying from building interests who benefit from the idea that buildings depreciate and need to be replaced. The belief in depreciation is not held worldwide which helps explain why preservation movements struggle more in America than elsewhere. Abramson s tour of our idea of obsolescence culminates in an assessment of recent tropes of sustainability, which struggle to cultivate the idea that the greenest building is the one that already exists."

Architektur im digitalen Zeitalter, eine zwei Jahrzehnte alte und wechselvolle Geschichte. Dieses Buch aus der Reihe Architectural Design (AD) beschreibt sämtliche Stufen und Phasen: von Folding zu Cyberspace, Nichtlinearität und Hypersurface-Architektur, von Versionierung zu Skripting, Emergenz, Informationsmodellen und Parametricism. Es erfasst und interpretiert den Geist der jeweiligen Zeit mit dokumentarischer Präzision, fördert und antizipiert oftmals bedeutende Entwicklungen in Architektur und Architekturtheorie. Diese Anthologie der bedeutendsten Artikel aus Architectural Design ist chronologisch und thematisch geordnet, bietet einen vollständigen historischen Zeitstrahl zu computergestütztem Design und digitalen Produktionsformen, von den Anfängen bis zur heutigen Vorrangstellung dieser Technologien. Mario Capo gibt in seiner ausführlichen Einleitung und im Vorwort zu jedem Originaltext einen scharfsinnigen Überblick über die jüngste Geschichte des digitalen Designs. Diese Synopse fehlte bislang, sowohl als pädagogisches Instrument für Studenten als auch Forschungsinstrument für Wissenschaftler. Sie spannt den Bogen zwischen dem Status quo "digitaler" Architektur und der Geschichte und Theorie jüngster Entwicklungen und Trends, stellt wichtige Fragen zu den heutigen Methoden und Techniken im professionellen Design. Eine umfassende Anthologie digitaler Architektur von Mario Carpo, einem der herausragendsten Wissenschaftler in diesem Fachgebiet. - enthält bahnbrechende Essays von Bernard Cache, Peter Eisenman, John Frazer, Charles Jencks, Greg Lynn, Achim Menges und Patrik Schumacher - stellt die wichtigsten Werke von FOA, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Ali Rahim, Lars Spuybroek/NOX, Kas Oosterhuis und ShoP vor

provides a fascinating, clear, and provocative definition of the phenomena of postmodernism, particularly in relation to the major ideas of modernism

In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As nodes of public dialogue, they serve as platforms for dissenting views about the future and past of Berlin. In this book, Daniela Sandler introduces the concept of counterpreservation as a way to understand this intentional appropriation of decrepitude. The embrace of decay is a sign of Berlin's iconoclastic rebelliousness, but it has also been incorporated into the mainstream economy of tourism and development as part of the city's countercultural cachet. Sandler presents the possibilities and shortcomings of counterpreservation as a dynamic force in Berlin and as a potential concept for other cities. Counterpreservation is part of Berlin's fabric: in the city's famed Hausprojekte (living projects) such as the Køpi, Tuntenhaus, and KA 86; in cultural centers such as the Haus Schwarzenberg, the Schokoladen, and the legendary, now defunct Tacheles; in memorials and museums; and even in commerce and residences. The appropriation of ruins is a way of carving out affordable spaces for housing, work, and cultural activities. It is also a visual statement against gentrification, and a complex representation of history, with the marks of different periods—the nineteenth century, World War II, postwar division, unification—on display for all to see. Counterpreservation exemplifies an everyday urbanism in which citizens shape private and public spaces with their own hands, but it also influences more formal designs, such as the Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt redevelopment proposal for a site peppered with ruins of Nazi barracks. By featuring these examples, Sandler questions conventional notions of architectural authorship and points toward the value of participatory environments.

"The baggage that phenomenology carries with it in architectural discourse is weighty," writes guest editor Bryan E. Norwood in Log 42. "This issue of Log aims to lighten the load, or at the very least redistribute it." Subtitled "Disorienting Phenomenology," the thematic 204-page Winter/Spring 2018 issue presents 18 essays by philosophers, theorists, art and architectural historians, and architects that range from Mark Jarzombek's close reading of the first three sentences in Husserl's Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology to Caroline A. Jones's historical analysis of phantom phenomena in Doug Wheeler's work Synthetic Desert; from Charles L. Davis's speculations on an architectural phenomenology of blackness to Adrienne Brown's look at the role of space in producing racialization to Jos Boys's and Sun-Young Park's explorations of disability. In addition, Norwood - a philosopher/architectural historian - talks with Jorge Otero-Pailos, author of Architecture's Historical Turn: Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern, a key reassessment of the idea of architectural phenomenology first put forth in the mid 20th century.As Norwood concludes, "Architecture doesn't need a phenomenology; it needs phenomenologies." Log 42 is a critical observation of those phenomenologies that reflects architecture's and society's increasing awareness of the sociocultural richness to be had in diversity.Also in this issue: Joseph Bedford rethinks the practice of phenomenology, Kevin Berry projects a new mode of being-in-the-world, Lisa Guenther infiltrates the gated community, Bruce Janz wonders about creativity, Rachel McCann exfoliates the flesh, Winifred E. Newman disputes disembodied visuality, Ginger Nolan historicizes the metahistorical, Dorothée Legrand suspends the reduction, Benjamin M. Roth seeks out meaninglessness, David Theodore inverts the Vitruvian Man, Dylan Trigg excavates a prehistory.

Affordable reprint of rare 1909 catalog, featuring authentic illustrations and floor plans for homes ranging from simple three-room bungalows to elaborate 10- and 12-room structures with sitting rooms, libraries, parlors, and wraparound porches. An excellent reference for home restorers, preservationists, and students of American architectural history. A delight for Americana fans and nostalgia lovers.