12 books to add to your bookcase. METALOCUS #2017
03/01/2017.
The Three Wise men
metalocus, LAURA CENTELLAS
metalocus, LAURA CENTELLAS
The best books of 2016 in METALOCUS. This year we are more centered in architecture, which doesn't mean we are only thinking in architects. Interesting thoughts capable of activating anybody's neurons, amazing images with which surprising friends. A great quality compilation that will surely not disappoint you.
Our 2016 book selection. METALOCUS # 2017.
Varia Architectonica is a compilation of texts that contains Alberto Campo Baeza's thoughts on architecture, the architect and the works of architecture as well as art and history between others. In its introduction, Shut up, Listen, Campo explains how the intentions described in his previous books are still present in this one, emphasizing his desire to write with a clarity that philosopher Ortega could have required.
02. Museografías. 25 Spanish museums
The selection of these 25 outstanding Spanish museums is used as the basis for theoretical reflections on the current state of the Spanish museology by Juan José Lahuerta, Javier Arnaldo, Selina Blasco, Rocío Robles, Ángel Seisdedos y Ángel González García (posthumously). Therefore, Museografías selects museums taking into account their ability to enhance and excite the visitor from its space distribution and the organization of samples.
03. #positions, by José Juan Barba
The projects show utopias that are complemented by possible territories, where the proposal widens the scope of their ambition. It allows the authors to revisit the support on which they construct, rejecting or reaffirming it, delving into something more than a mere contextual relationship and focusing on the construction of a 'locus' of possibilities, a possible, future, utopian place, as their reality depends in turn on the architecture that is projected on it.
04. Herman Hertzberger. Monograph by R. McCarter
NAI 010 publishes the first in-depth survey of the complete oeuvre of Herman Hertzberger, by Robert McCarter. Herman Hertzberger is one of the most important and critically influential figures in international architecture of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A constant champion of fundamentally humanist modern architecture, Hertzberger is rightly regarded as the world’s foremost designer of schools, a building type he has almost single-handedly redefined.
This book is the first collection that brings together the full investigation of the artist, held for 50 years, around playgrounds. Throughout its pages, the remarkable contribution of Noguchi to the visual arts and education, getting involved in the analysis of these wonderful aesthetic, ludic and recreational spaces that playgrounds are, exalted by the artist, American and Japanese but above all 'internationalist', as he liked to be defined.
06. MConvertible Mediterranean (Ridiculous tour around the happy country)
Publishing house Libros del K.O. collects this series of articles that were published seven years ago in the newspapers of the Vocento group. 18 chapters that are 18 stages of a journey from Portbou to Tarifa in which Íñigo Domínguez (the traveller) describes the aberrations, waste and absurdities of that time with an irony that makes the reading not too depressing.
07. Treacherous Transparencies by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
Treacherous Transparencies, written by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron and edited by Gustavo Gili, could almost be considered an essay in which the well-known architects, with the excuse of a visit to the Farnsworth House -to which they go as guests after winning the MCHAP Award in 2013- think about glass as material and, above all, as anstylistic principle. The House Farnsworh, of course, is one of the 6 examples chosen to contextualize the appearance of a new aesthetic, of which van der Rohe's project is a living example.
22 renowned cartoonists and illustrators make the paralympic swimmer become the main character of a very special comic. The comic is about the history of the most award-winning paralympic swimmer in Spain and it has been done by some of the most brilliant spanish draftsmen. Among them names like Paco Roca or Javier Olivares, who won the National Comic Award stand out, as well as renowed names as Miguel Gallardo, Purita Campos, Joaquín Reyes, Paula Bonet, Natacha Bustos, Mauro Entrialgo and Peridis. A total of 22 cartoonists who, each from their essence, have represented Teresa. The foreword was written by Pau Gasol, one of the greatest Spanish sportsmen and personal friend of Teresa.
09. Drawing ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association
This book (before was the exhibition) brings together an iconic set of drawings by some of the most prominent architects and artists of our time—including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Mary Miss, OMA-Rem Koolhaas, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bernard Tschumi, Shin Takamatsu, and others. The combination of critical texts and close-up reproductions of prints, drawings, and the limited edition AA Folio series provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore both the techniques and the imaginative spirit of drawing practices that permeated this time of change and experimentation in architecture worldwide.
Pointes is an Art and Architecture magazine starting in 2010 in the university environment. Before college students from different artistic fields -architecture photography and cinematography- and their in for knowledge and reflection related to the period of the magazine would be digitally offered altruistically every four months to anyone open to challenge his mind. Fundamental ideas of the publication was precisely that arts nourture each other in a reciprocal way. That is how it is understood that every continent is embracing the natural way leaving in the hands of the reader the possibility to establish unexpected links between them. Therefore, open to everyones participation, that university journey has finally come to life in the paper world. Six years later and trough Asimétrica editions, POINTES 2010-1016 is presented as a compilation of the best articles written through this period, carefully selected, laid out and edited for the enjoyment of all us.
11. Luis Peña Ganchegui: The Architect as Place
In this monograph the author, Mario Sangalli Uggeri, collects the keys that allow to unveil the work of Luis Peña Ganchegui from a novel perspective. The thesis, read in the ETSA San Sebastian in 2013 and edited in 2015 by the COAVN Delegación de guipuzkoa, does not think so much in making a critical journey throughout his career, but rather to expose how his life converges with his work to discover the Reasons that led him to make decisions about the projects. A line of research that perfectly fits Luis Peña Ganchegui's ley motiv: The project as thesis, under which he channeled his teaching activity and which used as an argument for his professional research. An attitude that placed him in syntony with the paradigm with which modernity conceived the creator, a subject who forges his own identity combining life and work.
12. Mies van der Rohe. A critical biography
Edited by Reverté and with the permission of The University of Chicago Press, Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography is a major rewriting and expansion of Franz Schulze’s acclaimed 1985 biography, the first full treatment of the master German-American modern architect. Coauthored with architect Edward Windhorst, this revised edition, three times the length of the original text, features extensive new research and commentary and draws on the best recent work of American and German scholars.
