Aaron Betsky

A timely overview of innovative contemporary design in the Netherlands, an international hotbed of design creativity. 1,000 images offer a visual sourcebook of Dutch design in all forms: architecture, urban planning, industrial design and graphic des ign. Features work by acclaimed designers Rem Koolhaas, MVRDV, Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos, Marcel Wanders, Petra Blaisse and Jop van Bennekom, among others. A collaboration with renowned Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom.

UN Studio, led by Dutch architects Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, creates spaces that are surprisingly innovative. Their work doesn`t rehash Modernism but rather embraces the digital age via the invention of new, time-based techniques expanding the imagination, exploding the hierarchy of the design process, and encouraging the input of different disciplines. UN Studio`s architecture is the result of a design strategy that repeatedly and constantly advances in different ways via leitmotifs call ed "design models." The most important examples of this new kind of architecture are the New Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart and the Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, which has become the town`s new landmark. Another manifest aim is to come up with fund amentally new ideas for complex infrastructure projects and to give these a contemporary structure that fosters future (including urban) development. This can bee seen, for example, at the central train station in Arnhem, at the Ponte Parodi pier in Genoa, and at the Canadian Centre for Architectures (CCA) prestigious "Competition for the Design of Cities." This book presents an overview of UN Studio`s work to date.

Zaha Hadid is the leading architect in the world, and is the first female recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Prize (2004). This is the complete monograph of Hadid's works, from her early, unbuilt projects and ideas from her student years to her very latest projects around the world, including the Aquatics Centre for the London 2012 Olympic Games, the Guangzhou Opera House in China, and the Eli & Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan, USA. The book also includes her furniture, product and exhibition designs.

Architecture matters. To our cities, to our planet, to our personal lives. How we design and what we build has an impact that usually lasts for generations. The more we understand the importance of architecture, and the thinking and decisions behind the buildings we create, the better world we will construct. Who better to guide readers into the rich and complex world of contemporary architecture than Aaron Betsky, former architect, author, curator and museum director, and today dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Combining his early experiences working and meeting cutting-edge architects with his frequent role as jury member selecting the world's most prominent global architects to build icon for cities, Betsky possesses rare insight into the mechanisms, politics and personalities that play a role in how buildings in our societies and urban centres come to be. In some fifty themes and drawing from his own experiences and encounters with people and buildings around the world, he explores a broad spectrum of topics, from the meaning of domestic space to the spectacle of the urban realm.Accessible, instructive and hugely enjoyable, this book will open the eyes of anyone dreaming of becoming an architect, and bring a wry smile to anyone that already is.

Andrew Bromberg, of global architecture and design practice Aedas, was born and raised in the Rocky Mountains of the United States and now lives and works in Asia. He is a leading light in the design of cutting-edge skyscrapers and large-scale development projects that consider cities not just as collections of buildings but as human-made landscapes shaped by social and economic forces as gradual or as abrupt as the erosions, accretions, uplifts and explosions that shape the natural world. Now inhabiting the craggy mixture of natural and human-made structures that define Hong Kong, Bromberg has long modelled his work on his knowledge of nature and his understanding of tectonic forces, both natural and human. Drawing on a series of conversations and exploratory walks in major Asian cities - including Singapore and Ghuangzou - architecture critic Aaron Betsky reveals how Bromberg visualizes his settings and locates his designs within the complex and dynamic contexts in which they appear. Interspersed amid these urban reflections is a largely visual presentation of over twenty of Bromberg's most exciting recent projects across Asia and the Middle East. Together these comprise a monograph/manifesto that offers a singular vision for the cities that will shape our future world.

Renny Ramakers is realizing projects that combine virtual technologies and social media with the craft of design to develop new social relations. For more than three decades, the Dutch art historian, critic, and curator has been changing the nature and purpose of design. As co-founder of the Droog Design collective, she has championed the notion of furniture and industrial design as a rethinking of today's world. When Droog first exhibited at the Milan furniture fair in 1993, its assemblies of found materials and witty forms instantly changed the landscape of design. Since then, Ramakers has worked with makers and creators to move beyond slick objects and towards critical projects that open our eyes to our multifaceted realities while offering easy access and great joy to users.