Swiss-born, Paris-based architect Philippe Rahm (born 1967) has synthesized disciplines ranging from physics, physiology and meteorology to create urban and architectural works that radically advance the prospects and possibilities of sustainable architecture. Rahm has presented his ideas internationally, lecturing at Yale, Harvard, Cooper Union and UCLA, and representing Switzerland at the 8th Architecture Biennale in Venice. This book surveys Rahm's works of the past 12 years, including the Taichung Jade Eco Park in Taiwan. The book is designed to provoke a subtle gradation of sensations, by using different papers, by transitioning from very formal scientific presentation to warmer poetic and personal contributions, and through a variation in the illustrations from schematic drawings to evocative photographs.

This book is about climate and architecture. Written by the Swiss architect Philippe Rahm, it is at the same time a monograph on the architectural, urbanistic and landscape work of the office "Philippe Rahm architectes", a manifesto for a climatic architecture to face global warming, and a theoretical and practical treatise on the art of building atmospheres. Architecture and urbanism were traditionally based on climate and health, as we can read in treatises of Vitruvius, Palladio or Alberti, where exposure to wind and sun, variations in temperature and humidity influenced the forms of cities and buildings. These fundamental causes of urban planning and buildings were ignored in the second half of the 20th century thanks to the enormous use of fossil energy by heating and air conditioning systems, pumps and refrigerators, that today cause the greenhouse effect and global warming. The fight against climate change forces the architects and urban designer to take back seriously the climatic issue in order to base their design on more consideration to the local climatic context and energy resources. Faced with the climatic challenge of the 21st century, we propose to reset our discipline on its intrinsic atmospheric qualities, where air, light, heat or humidity are recognized are real materials of building, convection, thermal conduction, evaporation, emissivity, or effusivity are becoming design tools for composing architecture and cities, and through materialism dialectic, are able to revolutionize esthetic and social values.

The original vision on contemporary design and the encounter with other disciplines opens the architecture of Philippe Rahm to multiple possibilities. Constructed Atmospheres provides a selection of projects in which light, temperature, pressure, humidity, represent the 'brick' for a new discipline that can be defined by the term "meteorological design". Philippe Rahm's design is based on the principle that man faces reality from the inside and does not produce objects but atmospheres. The book provides a profile of the Swiss architect both as a theorist and as a designer, through the most recent works and a series of conversations conducted by Massimiliano Scuderi between 2011 and today. This book is in English only, it is a black and white edition of the bilingual book (English and Italian) "Philippe Rahm Architectes.Atmosfere Costruite _ Constructed Atmospheres" published by Postmedia Books (Milano 2014) isbn 9788874901241

"We emphasize such factors in architecture as materials, structures, space, and light, and their physical effects. We pay attention to the electromagnetic, biological, and chemical interaction between architecture, the environment, and our organism." (Décosterd & Rahm). This book has been published for the exhibition in the Swiss Pavilion at the 8th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale 2002. The publication documents Décosterd & Rahm ́s contribution to the Biennale, and also investigates their work, their motivation, and philosophy; it also includes essays and critical appraisals of the work of these young architects from Lausanne. After completing their architectural studies in Lausanne Jean-Gilles Décosterd (*1963) and Philippe Rahm (*1967) founded their own office Décosterd & Rahm associés in 1993 with a branch office in Paris.

We are conditioned over time to regard environmental forces such as dust, mud, gas, smoke, debris, weeds, and insects as inimical to architecture. Much of today's discussion about sustainable and green design revolves around efforts to clean or filter out these primitive elements. While mostly the direct result of human habitation, these 'subnatural forces' are nothing new. In fact, our ability to manage these forces has long defined the limits of civilized life. From its origins, architecture has been engaged in both fighting and embracing these so-called destructive forces. In Subnature, David Gissen, author of our critically acclaimed Big and Green, examines experimental work by today's leading designers, scholars, philosophers, and biologists that rejects the idea that humans can somehow recreate a purely natural world, free of the untidy elements that actually constitute nature. Each chapter provides an examination of a particular form of subnature and its actualization in contemporary design practice. The exhilarating and at times unsettling work featured in Subnature suggests an alternative view of natural processes and ecosystems and their relationships to human society and architecture. R&Sie(n)'s Mosquito Bottleneck house in Trinidad uses a skin that actually attracts mosquitoes and moves them through the building, while keeping them separate from the occupants. In his building designs the architect Philippe Rahm draws the dank air from the earth and the gasses and moisture from our breath to define new forms of spatial experience. In his Underground House, Mollier House, and Omnisport Hall, Rahm forces us to consider the odor of soil and the emissions from our body as the natural context of a future architecture. [Cero 9]'s design for the Magic Mountain captures excess heat emitted from a power generator in Ames, Iowa, to fuel a rose garden that embellishes the industrial site and creates a natural mountain rising above the city's skyline. Subnature looks beyond LEED ratings, green roofs, and solar panels toward a progressive architecture based on a radical new conception of nature.

Urban microclimates cannot be explained solely on the basis of scientific phenomena, but are also affected materially and spatially by the city’s local architecture. The layout, design, and facade construction of buildings have a major impact on wind and temperature conditions. For this reason, architecture and urban design that have an effect on microclimates must be investigated in their social and cultural contexts. The publication uses international case studies to explain these relationships. The focus is on manifestations of urban microclimates in an architectural and urban design context. The places investigated are located in France, Italy, the USA, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Burkina Faso.

Climates: Architecture and the Planetary Imaginary brings together discussions and projects at the intersection of architecture and climate change. Comprehensive essays consider cultural values ascribed to climate and ask how climate influences our conception of what architecture is and does. 0Which materials and conceptual infrastructures render climate legible, knowable and actionable, and what are their spatial implications? How do these interrelated questions offer new vantage points on the architectural rami?cations of climate change at the interfaces between resiliency, sustainability and eco-technology? New approaches to understanding climate in architecture based on research as well as the work of leading practitioners make this forward-thinking book invaluable. 0.

In Proportions and Cognition in Architecture and Urban Design, practicing architects, historians, and theoreticians discuss the proportional systems that juxtapose aesthetic judgements, forms of practice, and human and social bodies with the norms and ideals that have resulted from these relationships. They retrace the history of these proportional systems, the expectations with which they were associated, how they were introduced into design, and how contemporary practice builds upon this tradition-or allows new interpretations to unfold.

Für das umweltbezogene, nachhaltige Entwerfen sind sich stetig ändernde Naturkräfte wie Niederschlag und Feuer, Schatten und Wind zu wichtigen Faktoren geworden. Dieses Buch geht mit Beispielen aus Architektur und Landschaft der Geschichte, den Theorien und Anwendungen der klimagerecht gebauten Umwelt nach. Es wurde in Zusammenarbeit zwischen der University of Sydney und der National University of Singapore entwickelt und von Autoren aus Australien, Singapur und den USA verfasst. Im Rahmen der Kategorien "Trocken", "Feucht", "Kühl" and "Heiß" werden Darstellungspraktiken, -methoden und -beispiele in einer weiten Spanne thematisiert: von Wolken und Sturm bis hin zu Feuer und Eis. Ein abschließender Teil zeigt Anwendungsbeispiele in experimentellen Projektentwürfen.

This volume studies the climate as a design factor and examines its influence on energy and design consequences. Instead of an abstract, technical perspective, the approach is illustrative and spatial, thereby consciously stimulating the search for inspirational solutions.