Weisz + Yoes (WXY architecture + urban design)

Few small avant-garde practices have an impact on visitors to New York like that of WXY, as the firm is sometimes called. Theirs is particularly surprising since, as Jayne Merkel notes, they have only completed a handful of freestanding buildings. But this mid-career husband-and-wife team of Claire Weisz and Mark Yoes - and their new partner, Layng Pew, whom they met at Yale 20 years ago - are changing the face of Times Square and redesigning historic Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan where ferries leave for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. These heavily used public places are only the most recent ones that they have inventively improved over the last decade and a half. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rural Studio: Incarnations of a Design-and-Build Programme

Catering for the needs of an impoverished rural community in Alabama through its design-and-build activities, Rural Studio leads the way internationally as a university-affiliated architecture programme with a social remit. Guest-Editor Michael Hensel describes how the initiative has grown and developed since it was first established over two decades ago, in 1993, by Samuel Mockbee for students from Auburn University. The realisation of tens of houses and community projects have not only helped to reshape the local environment, but with the more recent strategic approach advanced under Andrew Frear's directorship more long-term projects have been launched and greater emphasis has been placed on the responsible local sourcing of materials, energy and food.     

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.     

Practices Abroad: Today's Diaspora,Tomorrow's Architecture

A surprising number of architects of Iranian origin, working outside of Iran, have come to international attention in recent years. Guest-Editor Michael Hensel looks at the work of US-based Hariri & Hariri and NADAAA&; and London-located Farjadi Architects and studio INTEGRATE. Chosen for the variety of their approaches, Hensel attempts to trace whether there are indeed shared connections and traits in their work that can be characterised as uniquely Iranian.     

Extreme Integration

Tom Wiscombe advances an argument for an architecture of ‘extreme integration’, where the sanctity of the single surface responsible solely for affect is challenged by multilayered and multidimensional built surfaces. The new species of architecture is ‘robust enough to be both formally and technologically innovative’, replacing a mechanistic model with a biological jungle ecology of messiness and excess. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alice Tully Hall,New York

This sensuous redesign of a 40-year-old concert hall at the Julliard School is the first major project completed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in their planned remodelling of the entire Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York. Jayne Merkel believes this lively, elegant, personal and welcoming building bodes well for the dozen other public places and performance spaces that the architects will be renovating there over the next few years. It also suggests that the most respectful way to treat historic structures may be to meet them head-on. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

In the Pursuit of Pleasure: The Not so Fleeting Life of the Pavilion and its Ilk

Author and architecture critic for the London Evening Standard, Robert Bevan reflects on the enduring appeal of the temporary structure, speaking ‘to a latent desire for freedom and movement’ as a hangover of our nomadic past in a sedentary ‘civilised’ society. He highlights the type's historical apex in Henry VIII's palatial pop-up on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, questioning the purpose and purposelessness of more recent examples.     

That Old Thing Called Flexibility: An Interview with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown hold an unrivalled position within architecture. Now written several decades ago, their classic books Learning from Las Vegas and Complexity and Contradiction remain unsurpassed for their ability to shock and overturn current architectural thought. Francesco Proto talks to Venturi and Scott Brown on their present thinking about iconography, transparency, spectacularisation, architectural pornography and the contemporary architectural avant-garde. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bogotá and Medellín: Architecture and Politics

In the last 15 years, Bogotá and Medellín, Colombia's two largest cities, have undergone urban renaissances. These are a direct result of a political will to tackle the social, economic and physical segregation caused by the large-scale urban migrations of the 1970s and 1980s, which resulted in informal developments that were often isolated from central urban areas with no infrastructure. Lorenzo Castro and Alejandro Echeverri describe the shared experiences and distinct approaches of each city. Copyright © 2011 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.     

100 Year City (Maribor): The Virtual Concourse Reframed

For interactivity, the virtual world so often relies on a physical component, but how might virtual spaces be made more tangible as spatial environments for exchange? Under the direction of architect and RMIT University professor Tom Kovac, in 2012 the 100 Year City project rose to this challenge as part of the Maribor European Capital of Culture programme. Here, Guest-Editor and Deputy Curator of the project, Fleur Watson , describes how this ‘super studio’ incites cross-disciplinary exchange and the sharing of progressive design ideas for sustainable blueprints for our cities. It is an initiative that is to be continued under Kovac's directorship with the 100 Year City-themed Malaysian Biennale in the summer of 2015.