ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

Across small cottages and lavish villas, beach houses and forest refuges, discover the world’s finest crop of new homes. This cutting-edge global digest features such talents as Shigeru Ban and Marcio Kogan alongside up-and-coming names like Aires Mateus, Xu Fu-Min, Vo Trong Nghia, Desai Chia, and Shunri Nishizawa. Here, there are homes in Australia and New Zealand, from China and Vietnam, in the United States and Mexico, and on to less expected places like Ecuador and Costa Rica. The result is a sweeping survey of the contemporary house and a revelation that homes across the globe may have more in common than expected. Among guava trees and abandoned forts in Western India is a sanctuary designed for and by Kamal Malik of Malik Architecture. The House of Three Streams is a sprawling spectacle with high ceilings, verandas, and pavilions, perched atop a ridge overlooking two ravines. A medley of steel, glass, wood, and stone, the house weaves along the contour of the landscape, almost as an extension of the forest. Encina House by Aranguren & Gallegos, an elegant, sloping structure reminiscent of a gazebo, similarly inhabits its surrounding vista. Ensconced in a pine forest north of Madrid, the lower level is embedded in rock and connected to the upper by a natural stone wall. Shinichi Ogawa’s Seaside House is an immaculate two-story minimalist marvel in Kanagawa that overlooks the Pacific. Its living area spills onto a cantilevered terrace and infinity pool, almost dissolving into the ocean as one seamless entity. In Vietnam, Shunri Nishizawa’s House in Chau Doc exudes tropical sophistication with exposed timber beams, woven bamboo, plants, concrete panels, and inner balconies and terraces. Its corrugated iron panels act as moveable walls and shutters, ushering in views of surrounding rice fields.

This book documents a revolution. With photos, plans, and descriptions, it explores new approaches in building and presents resourceful and green private homes. Rejecting “stardom” but celebrating diversity, talents such as Suzuko Yamada, Gurjit Matharoo, and the collective Frankie Pappas truly build our future.

Small Houses is a tribute to the endless artistic inventiveness of architects and ingenuity of perception of the familiar and known concepts. It is also a conscious pivot towards sustainability and reduction of impact on the environment as well as a daring attitude of change in lifestyle. As humanity faces inevitable pressures such as climate change, an increase in population, and strain on resources, these solutions are helping shape what the world may look like in the future.Whether in the dense urban areas of Tokyo, the wilderness of Australia, the woods of Canada, or a rooftop in Ecuador, this is the world of Small Houses. The one common point they share, is that they all have an area of no more than 100 square meters. Spanning 25 countries such as Brazil, Hungary, South Korea, Netherlands, USA, Japan, and Australia, described here there are houses designed by 54 architects, including Takeshi Hosaka’s Love2 House, Aranza de Ariño’s Casa Tiny, and the work of Jakub Szczęsny, Charles Pictet, Lada Hršak, BIG, and Fran Silvestre. This is a journey not only through recent evolutions in architectural design and creativity, but it is also a step toward a more sustainable world.

Meticulous reproductions of sublime paintings showcase rikka, the oldest and most traditional form of flower arranging, which is linked to the Ikenobō school, Japan’s first and largest school of ikebana. The images presented here perfectly illustrate the main principles of ikebana—harmonious juxtaposition of flowers, balance between foliage (leaves, fronds, reeds, etc.) and branches, and naturalistic compositions for display. Several schools and styles of ikebana have evolved over the centuries. The rikka style is characterized by the use of erect branches and flowers to display a marked verticality in order to express the beauty of a natural landscape in a single vase. The floral arrangements in this collection date back to the Ikenobō Grand Master of Kyoto’s Rokkakudō Temple and his disciples from the Ashikaga Shogunate (1336–1573). These flower arrangements were officially documented by Igai Sansaemon in 1673 in artworks printed xylographically and then hand-colored using the gansai watercolor technique. The reproductions are accompanied by authoritative text by one of the world’s leading authorities on Japanese art.

India in Fashion explores the beautiful and sophisticated history and aesthetics of traditional Indian fashion, dress, and textiles and their profound impact on European and American fashion from the eighteenth century to today. This intoxicating and visually rich volume—with texts by experts from India, Europe, and North America—is published to accompany a major exhibition that celebrates the long historical contributions that Indian dress, textiles, and embroidery have had on Western fashion. From the introduction of chintz dressmaking fabrics in the eighteenth century to the early nineteenth-century vogue for light Indian fabrics, paisleys, and chikan embroideries to larger realities of empire and cultural appropriation, this volume features paintings, fashion magazine editorials, and portraits of influential people who championed Indian style throughout history.

Este libro apareció originalmente en inglés, fruto de la tesis doctoral del autor. La primera versión española se publicó en 1979 y se reimprimió en 1988. Desde entonces el libro ha estado descatalogado. Esta nueva edición, totalmente revisada y remaquetada con las figuras junto al texto, se publica para celebrar el centenario del nacimiento de Christian Norberg-Schulz. Los arquitectos siempre se han mostrado bastante reacios a desarrollar una base teórica en su campo, sobre todo a causa del prejuicio de que la teoría acaba con la facultad creadora. En este estudio se intentará demostrar que esa visión es errónea. El libro se centra principalmente en los aspectos simbólico y lingüístico, y su propósito es desarrollar una teoría integrada de la arquitectura. Para ello se indaga en la descripción y en las intenciones: la descripción, en la medida en que la arquitectura es una ciencia; las intenciones (tanto las del usuario como las del arquitecto), en la medida en que la arquitectura es un arte. La estructura del libro es seguramente una de las construcciones intelectuales más impresionantes que haya elaborado nunca un arquitecto. Los fundamentos en los que se basa incluyen la psicología de la Gestalt, el mecanismo de la percepción, la teoría de la información, la filosofía analítica (en particular el análisis lingüístico) y la teoría general de los signos y los símbolos. Todos esos conocimientos tienen su lugar y su propósito, ninguno se emplea para lograr un efecto puramente decorativo. Y todos esos enfoques, aparentemente divergentes, se articulan en un plan estrictamente organizado para proponer una teoría de aplicación general, una teoría que abarca los aspectos funcionales, formales y técnicos que, combinados mediante relaciones semánticas, están siempre presentes en la obra de arquitectura, entendida como una totalidad.