Books: House of Concepts: Design Academy Eindhoven

House of Concepts presents the legendary Design Academy Eindhoven, the Netherlands’ leading institution for developing design talent that has produced a veritable who’s who of the country’s creative scene. The book not only features the school’s graduates and their work, but also gives insight into the conceptual design for which the Netherlands is famous. The exciting visual content is complemented by extensive interviews with renowned alumni such as Jurgen Bey, Richard Hutten, Joris Laarman and Judith de Grauw as well as Jeroen and Joep Verhoeven.

House of Concepts: Design Academy Eindhoven, Edited by Louise Schouwenberg, Gert Staal, Joost Grootens
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Books: Andreas Gefeller: SOMA

In his disconcerting photographs, the Düsseldorf-based artist Andreas Gefeller has turned holiday sites on Gran Canaria into bleak Utopian backdrops. Although taken in a conventional, analogue way, the pictures look as if they have been digitally altered. In an age of cyberspace where virtuality and reality permeate each other, this work raises a number of questions: How real is reality and how true are its representations?

Andreas Gefeller: SOMA
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Books: Typologies by Bernd and Hilla Becher

As both artists and teachers, Bernd and Hilla Becher are among the most important figures in postwar German photography. For the last thirty years, the artists have examined the dilapidated industrial architecture of Europe and North America, from water towers and blast furnaces to the surrounding workers’ houses. Photographing against a blank sky and without any pictorial tricks or effects, the Bechers treat these forgotten structures as the exotic specimens of a long-dead species. Best known for their “typologies”— grids of black-and-white photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure.

Typologies of Industrial Buildings, by Bernd and Hilla Becher
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Books: Walter Gropius

Born and educated in Germany, Walter Gropius (1883-1969) belongs to the select group of architects that massively influenced the international development of modern architecture. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, Gropius made inestimable contributions to his field, to the point that knowing his work is crucial to understanding Modernism. His early buildings, such Fagus Boot-Last Factory and the Bauhaus Building in Dessau, with their use of glass and industrial features, are still indispensable points of reference. After his emigration to the United States, he influenced the education of architects there and became, along with Mies van der Rohe, a leading proponent of the International Style.

Walter Gropius, 1883-1969: The Promoter of a New Form, Edited by Peter Gössel.
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Books: Andrew Zuckerman: Creature

Andrew Zuckerman writes in his second book Creature, published by Chronicle Books “…when a subject is stripped from its context, its behavior, rather than its purpose, is all that remains.”
For the last five years, Zuckerman has been photographing a variety of creatures such as beetles, goldfish, doves, and elephants in a seamless, shadowless void. The photographs give no clue to habitat, habits, or even size: The animals Zuckerman portrays are pure form and presence, both exemplars and unique individuals. But unlike museum exhibits, these creatures are in motion. With the same high-speed technology he uses to capture a splash of liquid, Zuckerman freezes an instant in each animal’s life. The result is a portrait of motion without a trace of movement—no blur, no ambiguity.

Andrew Zuckerman: Creature, Buy it here: Amazon

Books: Loblolly House: Elements of a New Architecture

Known for their in-depth research and innovative, inventive, and meticulously constructed architecture, KieranTimberlake Associates put its ideas about streamlining the making of architecture to the test. The results took the form of a fully modular and award-winning house, featuring an active and adjustable double-skin facade so advanced that no client would consider it.
Situated on idyllic Taylors Island, off the coast of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, Loblolly House inaugurates a truly new, more efficient way of building. Unlike most houses, even those built with sustainability in mind, Loblolly disassembles as easily as it assembles, making it an ecologically sound structure with a manageable environmental footprint. Focusing on a single built project and illustrated with extensive photographic documentation and numerous detailed drawings, Loblolly House is the manual for componentized prefab. The book includes a DVD of the film “A House in the Trees“, a real-time documentary of the design, fabrication, and assembly of Loblolly House.

Loblolly House: Elements of a New Architecture + DVD, KieranTimberlake Associates
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Books: Airworld. Design and Architecture for Air Travel

For nearly a century now the airline industry has been an important player in the field of architecture and design. For many architects and designers it is an honour to design something for this branch of industry, from stewardess’s (and stewards) uniforms to signposting, from a terminal to services and cutlery. Airworld gives a good picture of the history of air travel, with a focus on the developments that design and architecture have undergone.

This is the first time that this theme has been illuminated so widely from the perspective of architecture and design. The exhibition Airworld. Design and Architecture for Air Travel is organized by the Vitra Design Museum. The Stedelijk has added posters from its own collection and objects that are typical for Dutch design.

Airworld. Design and Architecture for Air Travel, Exhibition at Stedelijk Museum
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Books: Jewelry Design

Jewelry is commonly perceived as a beautiful piece of wearable art: stand-alone, sculptural, and aloof. However, in order to understand contemporary jewelry design, we need to view the work as we would the product of any design field: as conceptual projects, as material studies, as social commentaries, and as connections to the past. The various creations by international designers presented in this book give an outline on current trends and developments in the field of jewelry. Their work is presented as a snapshot of individual practices, a broad sampling of innovative creations and forward-looking designers. What unites them are everyday considerations on context and production.

Jewelry Design, Edited by Carissa Kowalski Dougherty.
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Books: Marcel Breuer: 1902-1981

Time magazine called Marcel Breuer one of the “form-givers of the 20th century“: with his invention of steel-tube furniture. In 1943, he conceived the “binuclear” house concept—the splitting of living and sleeping areas into separate wings—which he first applied to the Geller House I (1944-1946), and which would attain great popularity. After designing the UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1953-1958), reinforced concrete, with its formal plasticity und structural elasticity, continued to give monumental character to buildings such as the Abbey and Campus of St. John’s University in Minnesota (1953-1961), the IBM Research Center in France (1960-1962), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1963-1966) in New York City. With his keen sense of proportion, shape, and material, Breuer is one of the most important Modernists and is still very much central in the discussion of contemporary architecture.

Marcel Breuer: 1902-1981: Form Giver of the Twentieth Century, Edited by Peter Gössel, Dr. Arnt Cobbers.
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Monograph: Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel, France’s premier architect designs his own monograph. Limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies packaged in a translucent plexiglass slipcase reminiscent of the translucent facades often seen in Jean Nouvel designs. Five years in the making, a book that will finally give the full measure of the architect’s talent. Two 400-page hardcover volumes give the most complete overview to date of Jean Nouvel’s career, including works in progress such as the new Louvre in Abu Dhabi, the Philharmonie de Paris, and the extension of the MoMA in New York.

Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel. Complete Works 1970-2008 Edited by Philip Jodidio
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