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SOON! — IN KÜRZE!

Nikos A. Salingaros
ANTI-ARCHITECTURE AND DECONSTRUCTION
THIRD EDITION
Paperback, 200 Seiten, englisch
ISBN 978-3937954-097
EUR 19,- (inkl. Versand/shipping included)

“Less than twenty pages of text is enough to deprive Deconstruction of the complex scientific arguments that offer its exponents scientific authority and social approval."

“Finally, some clarity on Deconstruction!"

“Nikos Salingaros thoroughly eviscerates the nonsense that passes for deconstructionist architectural ‘theory’, and goes on to explain why it won’t just go away and die."

"[It] is the clearest description of the state of architecture and the destructiveness of the Decon movement."

"It’s guaranteed to get the brain buzzing; what a treat too that it’s a real reading pleasure, written in a voice that’s both urbane and forceful.”

"Definitely, the true importance of this text is to remove every support that modern Architecture has ever claimed from Science."

"Architects cannot go on indulging themselves in the misty atmosphere of ‘constructive ambiguity’, with the logic of cults, the rhetoric of twisted pseudo-philosophy, and the terminology of disciplines they have no understanding of."

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NEW

Nikos A. Salingaros
A THEORY OF ARCHITECTURE
Paperback, 280 Seiten, ca. 100 s/w-Illustrationen, 16,5 x 23,5 cm, englisch
ISBN 3-937954-07-4
EUR 19,- (inkl. Versand/shipping included)

More than a decade in the making, this is a textbook of architecture, useful for every architect: from first-year students, to those taking senior design studio, to graduate students writing a Ph.D. dissertation in architectural theory, to experienced practicing architects. It is very carefully written so that it can be read even by the beginning architecture student. The information contained here is a veritable gold mine of design techniques. This book teaches the reader how to design by adapting to human needs and sensibilities, yet independently of any particular style. Here is a unification of genuine architectural knowledge that brings a new clarity to the discipline. It explains much of what people instinctively know about architecture, and puts that knowledge for the first time in a concise, understandable form. The later chapters of this new book touch on very sensitive topics: what drives architects to produce the forms they build; and why architects use only a very restricted visual vocabulary. Is it personal inventiveness, or is it something more, which perhaps they are not even aware of? There has not been such a book treating the very essence of architecture.

“A Theory of Architecture is not a cook book. It does not tell architects how to compose a building in several easy steps. Rather, it gives architects permission to do what we would automatically do if we had not been taught the style rules and the worldview of the ‘Modern Movement’ and its successors. A Theory of Architecture reveals the scientific food value of most tried and true building recipes while demonstrating that contemporary junk food is exactly that.

Why should the architect, who is more often a creator and a builder than a reader, plough through pages of analogies that link our perception of spaces and surfaces with the laws of nature in mathematics and physics? Simply because the laws come alive for us in the author’s straightforward and active prose. They remind us that when we design a building, we do far more than please a client or satisfy demands of use and economy. They remind us that we shape order in our world. We can base that order on an ideological whim. Or we can base it on patterns and forms found in nature and in the majority of architecture throughout history.

A Theory of Architecture is a book we can read again and again. Then we can put it down and forget about it. The lessons we glean from it will have taken form in the designs we make. We discover that our buildings have levels of scale, meaningful ornament, proportions that the human eye notices inherently. We notice that both patterns and forms comprise the language, which our spaces and their boundaries speak. We realize we have learned to design in consonance with our own nature. What a breakthrough! What a book!”

— Jaap Dawson, Architect and Assistant Professor, University of Delft.

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Léon Krier
ARCHITEKTUR : Freiheit oder Fatalismus

Paperback, 207 Seiten, ca. 140 s/w-Illustrationen, 16,5 x 23,5 cm, deutsch
ISBN 3-937954-00-7
EUR 19,- (inkl. Versand)

Angenommen, eines Tages verschwänden aus unerfindlichen Gründen alle Häuser, Siedlungen, Vororte und Bauwerke, die nach 1945 errichtet wurden - vornehmlich jene, die man gemeinhin als „modern“ bezeichnet - vom Angesicht der Erde, würden wir ihren Verlust ernsthaft beklagen? Würde das Verschwinden vorgefertigter Turmhäuser, Massenwohnanlagen, Gewerbeparks und Ladenkomplexe, Autobahnkreuze, gerasterter Universitätsgebäude, Schulen und neuer Viertel die Identität unserer geliebten Städte und Landschaften beeinträchtigen? Würden wir andererseits durch einen ähnlichen Vorfall auf einen Schlag unser gesamtes architektonisches Erbe aus der Zeit bis zum zweiten Weltkrieg verlieren, vor allem die sogenannten „historischen“ Gebäude, Weiler, Dörfer und Städte, welche Bedeutung und Folgen hätte ein solches Ereignis für uns?
Obgleich traditionelle Architektur nicht mehr gelehrt wird, haben ihre Berufe, Disziplinen und Techniken viele industrielle Revolutionen überlebt. Damit ist sie ein wesentlicher Bestandteil moderner Architektur. So wird heute nicht ihre Existenz in Frage gestellt, sondern ihre Qualität jetzt und in Zukunft. Auf dieser Ebene ist unsere Wahl von entscheidendem Einfluß.

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Rob Krier
STADTRAUM / URBAN SPACE

Paperback, 260 Seiten, mehr als 400 Illustrationen, 22,5 x 22,5 cm, deutsch/englisch
ISBN 3-937954-05-8
EUR 19,- (inkl. Versand/shipping included)

Dieses Buch dokumentiert eindringlich, daß in unseren modernen Städten der traditionelle Begriff des Stadtraums verlorengegangen ist. Was dieser Verlust bewirkt, ist allen Stadtbewohnern bekannt, die mit offenen Augen leben und sensibel genug sind, die städtebaulichen Leistungen der Gegenwart und der Vergangenheit miteinander zu vergleichen und den Mut haben, sich ihr eigenes Urteil über diese Entwicklung zu bilden. Was ist unter Stadtraum zu verstehen, und welche Bedeutung hat er im Stadtgefüge? Hat der Begriff "Stadtraum" im heutigen Städtebau noch eine Berechtigung, und weshalb? "Raum" ist in diesem Zusammenhang ein heiß diskutierter Begriff. Hier wird keine neue Definition aus der Wiege gehoben, sondern im Gegenteil die ursprüngliche Bedeutung aktualisiert.

This book shows that in our modern cities we have lost sight of the traditional understanding of urban spaces. The cause of this loss is familiar to all city dwellers who are aware of their environment and sensitive enough to compare the town planning achievements of the present and the past and who have the strength of character to pronounce sentence on the way things have gone. What has to be clearly defined is what should be understood by the term urban space and what meaning it holds within the urban structure, so that we can go on to examine whether the concept of urban space retains some validity in contemporary town planning and on what grounds. ’Space’ in this context is a hotly disputed concept. Not a new definition is generated, but its original meaning is brought back into currency.

Rezension @ DBZ Deutsche Bauzeitung

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Nikos A. Salingaros
ANTI-ARCHITECTURE ET DECONSTRUCTION

Paperback, 210 Seiten, 16,5 x 23,5 cm, francais
ISBN 3-937954-06-6
EUR 19,- (inkl. Versand)