The Persistence of the Pastoral

Architect, animator and educator Nic Clear challenges the contemporary notion of the pastoral to go beyond the simplistic binary opposites of the untainted rural idyll and the industrialised city. He explores how the narratives of the pastoral have provided a mainstay for science fiction and how this can be used to re-imagine nature itself with the aid of advanced biotechnologies to create new architectures for the 21st century.     

Pastoral Manoeuvres: Ecologies of City,Nature and Practice

In the 21st century, the greening of public open spaces has proved one of the most compelling marketing teasers, but also one of the biggest ‘elephants in the room’. Architect, educator and urban designer Duncan Berntsen describes how students within the School of Architecture, Design and Construction at the University of Greenwich were encouraged to tackle this by developing ‘measurable innovative disruptions’ that could contribute positively to an urban sense of place.     

The Golden Age: Between Wilderness and Utopia

Artist Dominic Shepherd pursues the imaginative and a sense of mystery in his work; his 2012 one-man show at Charlie Smith London was entitled ‘Jerusalem’. Here he reflects on the Golden Age as depicted in Cranach's masterpiece of that name, and ruminates on the cyclical nature of the pastoral, a landscape that is tended and nurtured by generations of hands.     

Flexibility and Ecological Planning: Gregory Bateson on Urbanism

Does ecological design create a holistic shift in thinking? Jon Goodbun suggests it does. He takes the lead from systems theorist Gregory Bateson, who argued that an ‘ecological aesthetic’ was required to understand how complex systems like cities behave. Goodbun explains how, with this new approach, it is flexibility rather than efficiency that becomes a priority.     

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.     

Water and Asphalt The Projection of Isotropy in the Metropolitan Region of Venice

Through an exploration of the Veneto region close to Venice, in northeastern Italy, Paola Viganò provides an alternative definition of the dispersed territory. Rather than archetypal sprawl, which has developed out of untamed growth of metropolitan areas, this is an ancient landscape of evenly scattered development that has grown up alongside roads and waterways. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lightness and Fluidity: Remarks Concerning the Aesthetics of Elegance

Over the last century, elegance as a term has been conspicuously absent from discussions centred on both architecture and the philosophy of aesthetics. Elegance's time has, however, now come. David Goldblatt describes how the maturation of digital discourse has led to the onset of a new, multifaceted, sensual rationality that is evident in recent designs and constructed works. Copyright © 2007 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.     

After the Event: Speculative Projects in the Aftermath

Working on speculative architectural projects in the aftermath of traumatic events requires both fearlessness and sensitivity on the part of the designer. Samantha Spurr describes how architecture studios organised by the University of Technology, Sydney, held in Shenzhen, Berlin and Beirut, have brought students into direct contact with these issues and fragile sites. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diving into the Depth-Scape: Exuberance and Personalities

Exuberance is about more than appearance. Yael Reisner argues that it engenders an emotional response. It provides a whole ‘depth-scape’ of expression by offering extensive qualities that go beyond the merely practical or the required. Exuberance proffers a full emotional range from the horrific to the sublime, which requires complexity but also the presence of creative personalities who lend personal interpretation to the design process. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Quit the Grey Limbo and Return to Paradise

In three projects, Matthew Cannon and Mascia Gianvanni of FutureScape Studio explore the possibilities of alleviating the mundaneness of urban life through the introduction of the absurdity of nature, which brings ‘joy and laughter to the stressed worker’. Devices range from a sardine on the London Underground and a giraffe in the office to injecting a sublime, painterly light into the city.     

‘Never Mind All That Environmental Rubbish,Get On With Your Architecture’

Could the primacy of green architecture in recent years be eroding the discipline? Is it reducing architecture to a mere ‘environmental techno-science’? Penelope Dean argues for a revised environmental agenda that is driven by ideas and concepts rather than subservient technologies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross the River by Touching the Stones: Chinese Architecture and Political Economy in the Reform Era: 1978-2008

China's Open Door Policy and economic development set in motion in 1978 can be regarded as the triumph of pragmatism over theory - specifically Chairman Mao's brand of Marxist theory. Tao Zhu traces the progress of reform over the last 30 years, and its impact on Chinese architectural culture. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Figures in the Sand

Coastal regions have become a magnet for recent development and globalisation, most conspicuously with the artificial islands off Dubai. This is a trend that has been offset by natural disasters, such as the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Christopher Hight and Michael Robinson describe how the Last Resort design studio at Rice School of Architecture has made its research focus Galveston Island, a nexus of natural, cultural and economic forces. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Visceral City and the Theatre of Fear

Over the last decade in India, intensive urbanisation, with the aid of the mass media, has unleashed a new culture of fear. Widespread access to TV, text messaging and the Internet have heightened and played upon individuals' anxieties. Ravi Sundaram describes how in Delhi, in particular, the media provided the catalyst for ‘mass hysteria’ and ‘psychosis’ during the summer of 2002. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond the Flatline

High Post-Modernism with its understanding of the significance of the image anticipated the flattening of culture, first in advertising and the printed media, and more recently online. Sam Jacob of FAT speculates on architecture's relationship with the Internet, ‘a flatland of undifferentiated information’, and how Radical Post-Modernism might be best placed to resist the ubiquity of global culture while reanimating the social and cultural agenda of Modernism and Post-Modernism. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New Architectural Horizons

In recent years, the over-intellectualisation of architecture has detached it ‘from its experiential, embodied and emotive ground’. Juhani Pallasmaa provides a template for architecture and landscape design that enables a stronger continuum between our outer and inner landscapes, drawing on historic and modern artistic inspirations alike. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.