A revelatory look at how the mature work of Caspar David Friedrich engaged with concurrent developments in natural science and philosophy Best known for his atmospheric landscapes featuring contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies and morning mists, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) came of age alongside a German Romantic philosophical movement that saw nature as an organic and interconnected whole. The naturalists in his circle believed that observations about the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms could lead to conclusions about human life. Many of Friedrich’s often-overlooked later paintings reflect his engagement with these philosophical ideas through a focus on isolated shrubs, trees, and rocks. Others revisit earlier compositions or iconographic motifs but subtly metamorphose the previously distinct human figures into the natural landscape. In this revelatory book, Nina Amstutz combines fresh visual analysis with broad interdisciplinary research to investigate the intersection of landscape painting, self-exploration, and the life sciences in Friedrich’s mature work. Drawing connections between the artist’s anthropomorphic landscape forms and contemporary discussions of biology, anatomy, morphology, death, and decomposition, Amstutz brings Friedrich’s work into the larger discourse surrounding art, nature, and life in the 19th century.

Modern architecture's evolution during the interwar period represents one of the most radical turns in design history. While the role of new materials and production modes in this development is beyond dispute, of equal importance was the emergence of a distinctly modern physical culture. Largely unacknowledged today, new conceptions of body and movement had a profound influence on how architects designed not only public spaces like the gymnasium or the stadium, but also domestic spaces. Hannes Meyer, Swiss modernist and director of Bauhaus in Dessau from 1928 to 1930, colorfully encapsulated this phenomenon in his 1926 essay The New World as "the advanced school of collective feeling." In their new book, Matthew Kennedy and Nile Greenberg explore the impact of physical culture during the 1920s and '30s on the thinking of some of modern architecture's most influential figures. Using archival photographs, diagrams, and redrawn plans, they reconstruct an obscure constellation of domestic projects by Marcel Breuer, Charlotte Perriand, Richard Neutra, Franco Albini, and others. They argue that the impact of sport on modern architecture was a discursive phenomenon, best understood by going beyond a mere typological reading of the stadium or the gymnasium, to an examination of how gymnastic equipment and other trappings of physical culture were folded into domestic space. The featured houses, apartments, and exhibitions demonstrate their architects' response to, and attempt to dictate, the relationship between body, and the spaces and objects that give it shape.

It is a major challenge to write the history of post-WWII architectural theory without boiling it down to a few defining paradigms. An impressive anthologising effort during the 1990s charted architectural theory mostly via the various theoretical frameworks employed, such as critical theory, critical regionalism, deconstructivism, and pragmatism. Yet the intellectual contours of what constitutes architectural theory have been constantly in flux. It is therefore paramount to ask what kind of knowledge has become important in the recent history of architectural theory and how the resulting figure of knowledge sets the conditions for the actual arguments made. The contributions in this volume focus on institutional, geographical, rhetorical, and other conditioning factors. They thus screen the unspoken rules of engagement that postwar architectural theory ascribed to.

How do we think about architecture historically andtheoretically? Forty Ways to Think about Architectureprovides an introduction to some of the wide-ranging ways in whicharchitectural history and theory are being approached today. The inspiration for this project is the work of Adrian Forty,Professor of Architectural History at the Bartlett School ofArchitecture, University College London (UCL), who has beeninternationally renowned as the UK’s leading academic in thediscipline for 40 years. Forty’s many publications, notablyObjects of Desire (1986), Words and Buildings (2000)and Concrete and Culture (2012), have been crucial toopening up new approaches to architectural history and theory andhave helped to establish entirely new areas of study. His teachingat The Bartlett has enthused a new generation about the excitingpossibilities of architectural history and theory as a field. This collection takes in a total of 40 essays covering keysubjects, ranging from memory and heritage to everyday life,building materials and city spaces. As well as critical theory,philosophy, literature and experimental design, it refers to moreimmediate and topical issues in the built environment, such asglobalisation, localism, regeneration and ecologies. Concise andengaging entries reflect on architecture from a range ofperspectives. Contributors include eminent historians and theorists fromelsewhere – such as Jean-Louis Cohen, Briony Fer, HildeHeynen, Mary McLeod, Griselda Pollock, Penny Sparke and AnthonyVidler – as well as Forty’s colleagues from theBartlett School of Architecture including Iain Borden, MurrayFraser, Peter Hall, Barbara Penner, Jane Rendell and Andrew Saint.Forty Ways to Think about Architecture also featurescontributions from distinguished architects, such as Tony Fretton,Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, and well-known critics andarchitectural writers, such as Tom Dyckhoff, William Menking andThomas Weaver. Many of the contributors are former students ofAdrian Forty. Through these diverse essays, readers are encouraged to thinkabout how architectural history and theory relates to their ownresearch and design practices, thus using the work of Adrian Fortyas a catalyst for fresh and innovative thinking about architectureas a subject.

Architecture has attracted increasing worldwide attention in recent years, not only because of its cultural significance but also because of concern over the performance and resource implications of buildings. 101 in-depth articles by international scholars and practitioners bring the subject into focus by examining issues from various viewpoints. Please contact your representative for a leaflet detailing full contents and contributors. It also includes sample pages and several illustrations from the book.

An account of the life and work of the architect Minoru Yamasaki that leads the author to consider how (and for whom) architectural history is written. Sandfuture is a book about the life of the architect Minoru Yamasaki (1912–1986), who remains on the margins of history despite the enormous influence of his work on American architecture and society. That Yamasaki’s most famous projects—the Pruitt-Igoe apartments in St. Louis and the original World Trade Center in New York—were both destroyed on national television, thirty years apart, makes his relative obscurity all the more remarkable. Sandfuture is also a book about an artist interrogating art and architecture’s role in culture as New York changes drastically after a decade bracketed by terrorism and natural disaster. From the central thread of Yamasaki’s life, Sandfuture spirals outward to include reflections on a wide range of subjects, from the figure of the architect in literature and film and transformations in the contemporary art market to the perils of sick buildings and the broader social and political implications of how, and for whom, cities are built. The result is at once sophisticated in its understanding of material culture and novelistic in its telling of a good story.

First-ever monograph on Carlo Mollino as an architect. Demonstrates Mollino's prowess in architectural design. Based on extensive new research and drawing on rich archival material. Lavishly illustrated with previously unpublished images, plans, drawings, and documents. Today, Italian architect and designer Carlo Mollino (1905-73) is known chiefly for his furniture designs. He is famous also for his erotic polaroid photography of the 1960s, which has been subject of many exhibitions and has lost nothing of its great appeal to the fashion world today. Much less attention has so far been given to Mollino's architecture, and a comprehensive critical study of his work in this field has been lacking. Yet his built work, although relatively small, constitutes a seminal contribution to modernism that is uniquely marked by a strong relationship with Surrealism. Based on years of research and drawing on rich archival material as well as on Mollino's own writings, this new book is the overdue tribute to an extraordinary personality in 20th-century architecture. It features an exemplary selection of his key designs, both built and unrealised, lavishly illustrated with images and reproductions of previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents. Rounded out with scholarly essays by expert authors, this is a long-awaited addition to the library of architecture lovers, professionals, and scholars.

Bridges the gap between the history and theory of twentieth-century architecture and cultural theories of modernity. In this exploration of the relationship between modernity, dwelling, and architecture, Hilde Heynen attempts to bridge the gap between the discourse of the modern movement and cultural theories of modernity. On one hand, she discusses architecture from the perspective of critical theory, and on the other, she modifies positions within critical theory by linking them with architecture. She assesses architecture as a cultural field that structures daily life and that embodies major contradictions inherent in modernity, arguing that architecture nonetheless has a certain capacity to adopt a critical stance vis-à-vis modernity. Besides presenting a theoretical discussion of the relation between architecture, modernity, and dwelling, the book provides architectural students with an introduction to the discourse of critical theory. The subchapters on Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and the Venice School (Tafuri, Dal Co, Cacciari) can be studied independently for this purpose.

The Founding Myths of Architecture brings together and discusses the work of some of the most influential and intriguing figures in the history of architecture. By returning to the authentic roots from which modern architectural thought has sprung, it explores the significance of the discipline in relation to the evolution of mankind. The contributors, international leading theorists from a variety of disciplines, provide fascinating texts that contribute to the broad discussion on architecture and its relationship with science, nature, art and society. Kari Jormakka, Fabio Barry, Pedro Azara, Caspar Pearson and Henry Dietrich Fern�ndez are just some of the respected scholars whose writings comprise this authoritative look at the origins of architectural practice and its importance to the development of modern society. By exploring architecture as a basic human instinct, linking contemporary architecture to ideas surrounding mythology and cosmos and assessing the importance of architecture from an anthropological viewpoint, The Founding Myths of Architecture is a refreshing take on architectural theory. The oeuvre of Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn, Francesco Borromini, Andr� Le Notre, Giorgio Grognet and Marcus Vitruvius Pollio amongst others is visually referenced in the context of these topics. Published in both French and English editions, this collection of essays pushes the boundaries of architectural criticism by encompassing history and anthropology in its analysis of design theory and by moving away from a purely rational and functional understanding of architecture.