"Zaha Hadid ([born] 1950 in Baghdad), recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, designed and curated a groundbreaking exhibition at Zurich's Galerie Gmurzynska, comparing works of the Russian avant-garde with those of Zaha Hadid Architects. A fierce explosion of Russian works tore through the contemporary works by the architect in a dynamic black and white design. Created specifically for the venue, the projection of a two-dimensional drawing onto a three dimensional space transformed the gallery into a spatial painting in which the threshold of the picture plane expanded and could be entered. Zaha Hadid translated the warped and weightless space of Russian avant-garde painting and sculpture by Kazimir Malevich, El Lissitzky, and Alexander Rodchenko into her very own architectural language."--Publisher's website.

"In this volume, which accompanies the largest exhibition ever mounted at the Guggenheim Museum, twenty-one essays by eminent scholars from Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States explore the activity of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde in all its diversity and complexity. These essays trace the work of Malevich's Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) collective in Vitebsk, which introduced Suprematism's all-encompassing geometries into the design of textiles, ceramics, and indeed whole environments; the postrevolutionary reform of art education and the creation of Moscow's Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops), where the formal and analytical princples of the avant-garde were the basis of instruction; the debates over a "proletarian art" and the transition to Constructivism, "production art," and the "artist-constructor"; the organization of new artist-administered "museums of artistic culture"; the "third path" in non-objective art taken by Mikhail Larionov; the return to figuration in the mid-1920s by the young artists - and former students of the avant-garde - in Ost (the Society of Easel Painters); the debates among photographers, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, on the superiority of the fragmented or continuous image as a representation of the new socialist reality; book, porcelain, fabric, and stage design; and the evolution of a new architecture, from the experimental projects of Zhivskul'ptarkh (the Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture Commission) to the multistage competition, in 1931-32, for the Palace of Soviets, which "proved" the inapplicability of a Modernist architecture to the Bolshevik Party's aspirations."

What is the function of style today? If the 1970s were defined by Postmodernism and the 1980s by Deconstruction, how do we characterize the architecture of the 1990s to the present? Some built forms transmit affects of curvilinearity, others of crystallinity; some transmit multiplicity, others unity; some transmit cellularity, others openness; some transmit dematerialization, others weight. Does this immense diversity reflect a lack of common purpose? In this book, acclaimed architect and theorist Farshid Moussavi argues that this diversity should not be mistaken for an eclecticism that is driven by external forces. The Function of Style presents the architectural landscape as an intricate web in which individual buildings are the product of ideas which have been appropriated from other buildings designed for the different activities of everyday life, ideas which are varied to produce singular buildings that are related to one another but also different. This network of connections is illustrated on the cover of this book (and in more detail inside). Moussavi argues that, by embracing everyday life as a raw material, architects can change the conventions of how buildings are assembled, to ground style, and the aesthetic experience of buildings, in the micro-politics of the everyday. The third volume in Moussavi’s ‘Function’ series, The Function of Style provides an updated approach to style which can be used as an invaluable and highly productive tool by architects today. Assistant Editors: Marco Ciancarella, Jonathan A. Scelsa, Mary Crettier, Kate Kilalea

Published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Sept. 17, 2011-March 25, 2012.

With the international take-up of new technology in the 1990s, designers and typographers reassessed their roles and jettisoned existing rules in an explosion of creativity in graphic design. This book tells that story in detail, defining and illustrating key developments and themes from 1980-2000.

Kazimir Malevich’s painting Black Square is one of the twentieth century's emblematic paintings, the visual manifestation of a new period in world artistic culture at its inception. None of Malevich’s contemporary revolutionaries created a manifesto, an emblem, as capacious and in its own way unique as this work; it became both the quintessence of the Russian avant-gardist's own art—which he called Suprematism—and a milestone on the highway of world art. Writing about this single painting, Aleksandra Shatskikh sheds new light on Malevich, the Suprematist movement, and the Russian avant-garde. Malevich devoted his entire life to explicating Black Square's meanings. This process engendered a great legacy: the original abstract movement in painting and its theoretical grounding; philosophical treatises; architectural models; new art pedagogy; innovative approaches to theater, music, and poetry; and the creation of a new visual environment through the introduction of decorative applied designs. All of this together spoke to the tremendous potential for innovative shape and thought formation concentrated in Black Square. To this day, many circumstances and events of the origins of Suprematism have remained obscure and have sprouted arbitrary interpretations and fictions. Close study of archival materials and testimonies of contemporaries synchronous to the events described has allowed this author to establish the true genesis of Suprematism and its principal painting.

The mental space of painting, expressed in works that experiment with a new idea of existing urban panorama in search of visionary aesthetics. Zaha Hadid, winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004, is world famous for projects such as the the MAXXI in Rome, the Fire Station at Vitra Design Museum or the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinnati.

For over 20 years, this Iraqi-born, English-educated architect has symbolized cutting-edge contemporary architecture. Throughout her training at London's Architectural Association, and her work with Rem Koolhaas at OMA, to the establishment of her own worldwide architectural practice in 1979, Zaha Hadid has been acclaimed for her vanguard architectonic language. This is the first complete monograph on one of the world's most popular and important architects. Zaha Hadid's entire oeuvre - over 80 built and unbuilt works of the past 20 years - is collected in this volume.

A timely and important search for architecture's missing women For a century and a half, women have been proving their passion and talent for building and, in recent decades, their enrollment in architecture schools has soared. Yet the number of women working as architects remains stubbornly low, and the higher one looks in the profession, the scarcer women become. Law and medicine, two equally demanding and traditionally male professions, have been much more successful in retaining and integrating women. So why do women still struggle to keep a toehold in architecture? Where Are the Women Architects? tells the story of women's stagnating numbers in a profession that remains a male citadel, and explores how a new generation of activists is fighting back, grabbing headlines, and building coalitions that promise to bring about change. Despina Stratigakos's provocative examination of the past, current, and potential future roles of women in the profession begins with the backstory, revealing how the field has dodged the question of women's absence since the nineteenth century. It then turns to the status of women in architecture today, and the serious, entrenched hurdles they face. But the story isn't without hope, and the book documents the rise of new advocates who are challenging the profession's boys' club, from its male-dominated elite prizes to the erasure of women architects from Wikipedia. These advocates include Stratigakos herself and here she also tells the story of her involvement in the controversial creation of Architect Barbie. Accessible, frank, and lively, Where Are the Women Architects? will be a revelation for readers far beyond the world of architecture.