New York City-based Dean/Wolf Architects have been praised for their uncanny ability to turn architectural constraints into powerful generators of form. Since founding their firm in 1991, architects Kathryn Dean and Charles Wolf have completed residential and institutional projects at a variety of scales. Their projects are distinguished by a thought-provoking manipulation of light and space. The firm's award-winning loft interiors are small-scale wonders precisely crafted from sensuous materials such as concrete, steel, wood, and glass. The Dean/Wolf firm activates these highly resonant materials with deliberately focused light in order to dissolve boundaries of interior and exterior space. For Dean/Wolf, this requires not only a consideration of physical space, but also a psychological engagement between the clients minds and the space they inhabit. Versed in architectural thought and theory, the firm finds aesthetic applications for their investigations into the nature of spatial perception. The architecture that emergesa mixture of unexpected exterior views and areas for quiet reflectioncelebrates both the outgoing and introspective sides of the inhabitants. The firm's 2007 AIA Honor Award-winning Operable Boundary Townhouse Garden in Brooklyn is one such example. Inside and outside are integrated vis--vis a giant, pivoting, steel-framed glass wall and a continuous thirty-foot-long table piercing the wall. With company, the glass wall can be pushed aside allowing the back garden to become an extension of the interior living room. The work of Dean/Wolf Architects is bursting with similar exquisite details and Dean/Wolf Architects showcases twenty-four projects in detail with photographs, drawings, and renderings as well as an introduction by architect Robert McCarter.

Lofts, by definition, are former commercial spaces that have been converted for residential use and living/work environments. But lofts, by design, are vast silent expanses, soaring arches, stalwart steel girders, massive beams, and all the powerful drama of a curtain-time stage set. Lofts are a designer's dream. The importance of urban loft design for the architectural and design world is highlighted in this collection of the finest, most dramatic of these transformed spaces. Lofts: New Designs for Urban Living takes you on an intimate tour of residential lofts in the major cities of the world including New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, London, Toronto, Paris, and Tokyo. Projects include work from cutting-edge designers: Roto, Fred Fisher, Peter Anders, Neil Frankel, Briggs/Iacucci, Peter Tow, Kar Ho, Moneo/Brock, Belmont Freeman, Lotek, Brayton & Hughes and more. Complete with informative text, Lofts features full-color photographs, plans, and a valuable resource guide for anyone who has every dreamed of converting a commercial building into a residential loft.

The essential walking companion to more than two hundred cutting-edge buildings constructed since the new millennium. The first decade of the 21st century has been a time of lively architectural production in New York City. A veritable building boom gripped the city, giving rise to a host of new—and architecturally cutting-edge—residential, corporate, institutional, academic, and commercial structures. With the boom now waning, this guidebook is perfectly timed to take stock of the city’s new skyline and map them all out, literally. This essential walking companion and guide features 200 of the most notable buildings and spaces constructed in New York’s five boroughs since the new millennium—The High Line, by James Corner Field Operations/Diller Scofidio + Renfro; 100 Eleventh Avenue, by Ateliers Jean Nouvel; Brooklyn Children’s Museum, by Rafael Vinoly Architects; 41 Cooper Square, by Morphosis; Poe Park Visitors Center, by Toshiko Mori Architect; and One Bryant Park, by Cook + Fox, to name just a few. Projects are grouped by neighborhood, allowing for easy, self-guided tours, with photos, maps, directions, and descriptions that highlight the most important aspects of each entry.

Rising stars in Boston's design scene, architects Eric Howeler and J. Meejin Yoon have in a single decade developed a reputation for radical experiments in architectural form. Their design methodology--what they call an "expanded practice"--combines intense research with interdisciplinary experimentation. Howeler and Yoon's sensational, competition-winning lighting entry for the 2004 Athens Olympics exemplifies their fearless approach: without any prior experience in public space interactive design, the firm constructed a luminous, interactive soundscape installation at the base of the Acropolis. White Noise White Light featured a field of semiflexible fiber-optic strands that emitted white light and white noise in response to the movement of pedestrians. The project, an enormous success, enchanted a multitude of visitors who moved amidst the cilia of light. Expanded Practice presents twenty-nine recent projects by this young firm encompassing a broad range of scales and media. The projects, divided into distinct but often overlapping research themes, include a museum courtyard program inspired by the Voronoi cell-packing algorithm (PS1 Loop); an outdoor light installation featuring hovering cones that capture and interact with solar energy, rainwater, and sound (Hover); a garment designed to turn inside out as it unravels (Mobius Dress); and a landscape design that weaves technology and texture into an integrated and interactive landscape (Tripanel). Packed with drawings, diagrams, and photographs of each project's design process, Expanded Practice provides an inspirational look into one of the most exciting young firms working in architecture today.

It's often said a child's lifelong love of reading begins at home. But declining literacy rates among the nation's public elementary school students suggests this maxim needs revision. For reading to become an everyday habit, it needs to be nurtured in a home of its own. Fortunately, there is space available inside most elementary schools. At just 5 percent of a school's total real estate, the school library is the most powerful and efficient way to reach 100 percent of the student body. But far too many of the nation's public school libraries lack even the most basic resources to support learning and encourage achievement. The nonprofit L!brary Initiative, created by the Robin Hood Foundation, has been working since 2001 to enhance student literacy and overall academic achievement by collaborating with school districts to design, build, equip, and staff new elementary school libraries. The L!brary Book takes readers behind the scenes of fifty groundbreaking library projects to show how widely varied fields and communities—corporate underwriters, children's book publishers, architects, graphic designers, product manufacturers, library associations, teachers, and students—can join forces to make a difference in the lives of children. Based on the premise that good library design can actually inspire learning, the L!brary Initiative brings together some of the world's leading architects to reimagine the elementary school libraries in New York City—the nation's largest public school system. Working on a pro bono basis, architecture firms—including 1100 Architects, Weiss/Manfredi Architects, Della Valle Bernheimer, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and Dean/Wolf Architects—have in just eight years built or transformed more than fifty libraries into vital resources for the whole school community. These libraries—both beautiful learning spaces and innovative architecture—feature a wide range of design solutions, including creative uses of space, color, lighting, and furniture. Author and former L!brary Initiative director Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi documents every project with beautiful photos as well as renderings and measured drawings. The L!brary Book concludes with the chapter How to Make a Library which shows how community organizers and architects can pursue similar initiatives in their own communities.