Lighting the Cavern: ‘Alvar Aalto: Through the Eyes of Shigeru Ban’

Michael Spens has an intimate working knowledge of the buildings of Alvar Aalto having supported a restoration programme for Aalto's Viipuri Library in Russia between 1993 and 1997, which involved professionals from Russia and Finland. Here he offers his thoughts on the recent Aalto exhibition at the Barbican. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recombinant Landscapes in the American City

How are urban actors, such as landscape designers, community groups, developers and local politicians, actively restructuring their environments to meet the challenges of the American city in the new global context? Grahame Shane outlines the approaches to landscape that have been emerging since the mid-20th century and are set to recombine urban assemblages whether they are located in historic city centres, postindustrial waterfronts or suburban sprawl. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Off the Peg: The Bespoke Interiors of Ben Kelly

Known for his unique ability to assemble disparate materials, colours and textures, interior designer Ben Kelly speaks with Graeme Brooker and Sally Stone about the ideas and intentions behind his work. His thoughts and works indicate a respect for revealing the underlying qualities of existing spaces and serving new programmatic needs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Living with Freud

Lilian Chee introduces several art installations displayed at the Freud Museum in north London. While each individually opens up further critique of Freud's practice and its cultural impact, collectively they measure the ability of objects to charge interior atmospheres with provocations of gender, modernity, ethnicity, objectivity and domesticity. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Baroque Parameters

Andrew Saunders describes how students on Rensselaer School of Architecture's Rome programme were encouraged to explore the geometry and mathematics that underlie the architecture of the Baroque through parametric design. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards an Architectural History of Performance: Auxiliarity,Performance and Provision in Historical Persian Architectures

Despite its extensive empire, Persia historically presented a challenging environment for the building of structures and infrastructure. The mountainous landscape of the Iranian plateaus has an arid or semi-arid climate with distinct seasonal variations and temperatures that fluctuated throughout the day. Despite this, water management and soil-fertilisation strategies and passive environmental modulation in architecture were all highly developed previous to the 19th century so as to be finely attuned to the local context, while also responding to the greater demands of a centralised empire. Here Michael Hensel, Defne Sunguroğlu Hensel, Mehran Gharleghi and Salmaan Craig discuss and illustrate their detailed findings of the performance of historic structures. These include qanats (water canals), water cisterns, ice houses and pigeon houses as well as the seminal Khaju Bridge in Isfahan and the Boroujerdi's House in Kashan.     

“景观优先”的百年坚守——韦尔斯利文理学院校园规划探究

位于美国马萨诸塞州的韦尔斯利文理学院(Wellesley College)以"培养影响世界的女性"而全球闻名,但作为北美校园设计的杰作之一,韦尔斯利文理学院在校园规划方面的参考价值却鲜有人挖掘。本文从校园规划的视角,对韦尔斯利文理学院从"为女性提供美的教育环境"到"可持续发展的二次规划"的百年发展历程中,针对"校园选址""建筑布局""活动空间营造""交通组织"等方面,对建设者及设计师在不同社会发展背景下如何贯彻"景观优先"的规划理念进行了解读。理念明确、体系化及规模化的校园规划建设在高等院校发展历史上屈指可数,对于韦尔斯利文理学院"景观优先"校园规划理念的研究不但能填补校园规划历史中这类案例的欠缺,同时能为现代大学依托于社会及时代发展需求的校园规划建设提供一定的借鉴与参考。     

Architecture + Textiles = Architextiles

A hybrid term, ‘architextiles’ encompasses a wide range of projects and ways of thinking that unite architecture and textiles. By way of introduction to this issue, guest-editor Mark Garcia highlights the significant rise of interest in this confluence by theorists, architects, engineers, textile designers, materials scientists and artists. He also explains how, as a hybrid mode of design and practice, architextiles is better able to respond to society's fast-changing cultural and consumer demands, enabling the production of more dynamic, flexible, interactive, event and process-based spaces. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Artists of the Floating World: SANNA,Niedermayr and the Construction of Atmosphere

Hugh Campbell expands upon the mutually collaborative spatial qualities evoked in the photographic works of Walter Niedermayr and the architecture of Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Tokyo-based practice SANAA. Describing their relation as forming a ‘thickened presence’, he alludes to a particular atmosphere reliant on an ambiguity of scale, detail and discernible proximity that serves to liberate the architecture and the photographs from mere documentation whereby instead they figure as transparent recordings of spatial intentions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

It's All Inside My Head

The physical manifestations of built architecture are often discussed in terms of a single architect's inspiration, overemphasising and romanticising the intellectual contribution of the signature architect. Here Neil Spiller describes the extraordinary departure that Marcos Novak is undertaking at the University of California's Santa Barbara campus, where Novak's own scanned brain becomes a literal, reflexive generating force in the formation of a spatial environment. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Surrealistic Exuberance – Dark Matters

For Neil Spiller, there is a current vacuum in much of contemporary parametric design. It is devoid of embodied cultural experience and character. Much can be learnt by rediscovering the dark matter of Baroque and Surrealistic art and architecture, which through repressed eroticism optimised on the simultaneous presence of the secular and the profane - the heaving physicality of the everyday world and the repressed strictures of the Catholic church. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Works In/On//Around///Behind Progress

Artist Hilary Powell describes how her work in film, food and the pop-up book offers playful critiques of regeneration and place making. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ville-Port,Saint-Nazaire The Historic Periphery

The harbour town of Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic coast of Brittany in northern France remains divided both by its memories and its built environment. Manuel de Solá-Morales describes how his Ville-Port project seeks to address the structural, visual and mnemonic divisions that have grown up over time between a working port and seaside resort. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In Depth: Inscribing the Indian Landscape

When India was colonised by the British in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was systematically surveyed and delineated in map form for administrative and political purposes. Here, Anuradha Mathur and Dilip da Cunha urge a new, ‘deeper’ reading of the landscape that fully acknowledges the multiple uses and potential initiations of public spaces. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Sense of Purpose: Mathematics and Performance in Environmental Design

Mathematics in design is most often associated with its visual manifestation in geometrical surfaces and elements. The finely tuned ambient qualities of a space, necessary for environmental performance, may not be so apparent, but can involve the application of many branches of mathematics. Martha Tsigkari, Adam Davis and Francis Aish of Foster + Partners' Specialist Modelling Group bring this to the fore by describing how at Al Raha Beach development in Abu Dhabi and the City of Justice in Madrid environmental considerations were interpreted through analytical numerical data. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

London Calling

An ethnic mix has always been an essential part of London's character, with areas such as Spitalfields home to successive waves of immigrants - from Huguenots in the 18th century to a diverse Jewish population in the mid-20th century, and a sizable Bangladeshi community today. Jeremy Melvin explains how, through its dynamic sense of the multicultural, ‘London taught other cities how to become metropolises’. How, though, does an urban mix, such a natural phenomenon in areas such as Old Compton Street (left), Brick Lane (centre) and Electric Avenue (right), translate into current architectural form? Here Melvin looks at the work of three London-based practices that have all worked on community schemes that engender notions of inclusiveness. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Natural Methods of Interaction Or Natural Interaction in the Everyday Digital World

Computers, mobiles and automatised machines are so omnipresent that the means by which we interact with digital devices is now generally regarded as a given. Italian practice iO Agency, though, questions our use of mechanised interfaces and the language that they require us to learn. Valentina Croci explains how iO Agency has developed more natural ways for people to interact with digital environments through physical or tactile ‘triggers’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

自出手眼 标新创异（一）——李渔造园美学思想掇要

发端于汉代的中国私家园林，在明清两代得到了极大的繁荣。我国著名的古代造园理论家——李渔，生性巧慧，又博览名园、胸有丘壑，且有亲身实践，是一个多方面的艺术家，更是一个美学家，他在丰富的艺术理论知识和实践经验的基础之上构筑起虑周而精深的美学体系。他对造园艺术的特性作了准确而深刻的把握，对造园的美学法则作了高度的概括，对加强园林审美功能的许多基本手法作了系统的研究，李渔在中国造园美学史上占有一定的地位。     

自出手眼 标新创异（二）——李渔造园美学思想掇要

发轫于汉代的中国私家园林，在明清两代得到了极大的繁荣。我国著名的古代造园理论家——李渔生性巧慧，又博览名园、胸有丘壑，且有亲生实践。是一个多方面的艺术家，更是一个美学家，他在丰富的艺术理论知识和实践经验的基础之上构筑起虑周而精深的美学体系。他对造园艺术的特性作了准确而深刻的把握，对造园的美学法则作了高度的概括，对加强园林审美功能的许多基本手法作了系统的研究，李渔在中国造园美学史上占有一定的地位。     

Urban American Landscape

Landscape architecture has emerged from the deep sleep it entered during the Modernist period and remained in for most of the 20th century. Now, valued because of the environmental movement, stimulated by collaborations with architects and artists, and presented with opportunities to transform abandoned industrial sites, landscape architects are enthusiastically producing new kinds of parks on brownfields, along waterfronts, even on rooftops and in garbage dumps. Jayne Merkel here looks at ways the designed landscape is creating outdoor public space in a country where it has not always been valued. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.